Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

City and Colour released their sophomore album, Bring Me Your Love, on February 12, 2008. This album features twelve acoustic tracks from the genius Dallas Green of the band, Alexisonfire. City and Colour is Green’s personal side project. He has been featured on Myspace.com and will soon be touring Canada.

Green initiates the album by begging for forgiveness, because he is so honest with his lyrics. Death of Me is a song about becoming an alcoholic in order to write and in order to sleep, and in Body in a Box, he begs the ones that he loves not to come on his dying day. “Just let me go in peace,” he sings. Then, in Sleeping Sickness, he asks for someone to save him, because he is worried, miserable, and crazy. In What Makes a Man, he poses four questions: “What makes a man walk away from his mind?...What makes a man spend his whole life in disguise?...What makes a man want to break a heart with ease?…[and] What makes me a man pray, when he’s about to die?” Green croons, “I think I know, I think I might know.”

His lyrics are a testament to the pain and uncertainty that individuals face on a daily basis. He has stated in interviews that he wrote most of these acoustic songs when he was about eighteen or nineteen, and the lyrics definitely show the confusion that he was feeling at that time in his life. Waiting…, which is the first single off of the album repeats, “So say goodbye to love/ and hold your head up high/ There’s no need to rush/ we’re all waiting to die.” It is totally appropriate for this to be the first single, because it summarizes much of the music on this album.

Bring Me Your Love is a search for forgiveness, a longing for understanding, and a reckoning with the misery that filled Green’s head at the time that these lyrics were so painstakingly written. It shows the truth of Green heart’s while at the same time displaying his musical talents and shocking listeners with his honesty. with Sleepercar this summer. Fans of Alexisonfire will enjoy this album as it features the soothing voice of Green and his soulful, insightful, and sentimental lyrics. The album opens with Forgive Me, which begins with the sound of footsteps on a wooden floor. It is a short song that has brilliant lyrics and a plea for forgiveness while he “sings this song.”