They were dressed like funeral directors, in formal black suits and ties that cast them as tall, gaunt shadows against a boisterous backdrop of lights, noise, and action. It seemed, at first glance, to be a curious marriage of sobriety and celebration, like a wake with an open bar. But then, as one murder ballad bled into a barnyard square-dance number that in turn bumped up against a spaghetti-western instrumental, the incongruity seemed perfect, a consummate expression of what made the Toronto-based Sadies’ music stand out at T.T. the Bear’s a week ago last Thursday.
They are — as singer/guitarist Dallas Good says and as the Sadies’ third album, Tremendous Efforts (Bloodshot), attests — an "uncategorizable" band of stylish contrasts and unpredictable moods that all seem rooted in life’s core elements: love, death, individualism, and the fear of a freshly dug grave with your name on it. In trying to avoid that cold earthbound fate and steer clear of the swindling men and cheating women who would put them there, the Sadies — led by singer/guitarist brothers Dallas and Travis Good and fleshed out by upright-bass player Sean Dean and drummer Mike Belitsky — did their darnedest to kick up as much life as possible.
Dallas, blessed with a troubled voice that occasionally dropped to a Johnny Cash baritone when he delivered rhymes like "fiery hole" and "worthless soul," spoke of his desire to "make God hush till I ease my head" and then dug himself an even deeper black hole with a choice Gun Club cover ("Mother of Earth"). But suddenly his spirits brightened, and he picked himself up and dusted himself off with a crystalline reading of the winsome Goffin-King classic "Wasn’t Born To Follow." Older brother Travis, in contrast to his sibling’s laconic comportment, was a finger-picking marvel on electric guitar, and he got wild with some foot-stomping fiddle on the gleeful "Pretty Polly," which Dallas had genially introduced as "an old killing song."
Rather than singling out individual numbers, though, you want to take the Sadies’ experience whole, a giddy assortment of pop-culture snapshots and suggestive moments: Lee Van Cleef’s squint; Jack Lord’s hair; John Barry’s spy soundtracks; the Ventures and the Mekons; Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs. And, of course, Pretty Polly herself, smiling and standing and waiting beside that freshly dug grave with a shovel.
