It has been my experience that Canadians are, in the main, nice people. You can hear this niceness in the acoustic folky music of The Fugitives. If the group have any strong or abrasive views then they keep them to themselves. Smooth harmonies, straight storytelling and polished musicianship are their collective stocks in trade.
The Vancouver-based band formed in 2005 and have previously released six albums. Their seventh is self-titled as though they are aiming for a reset, or else it reflects an awareness that they are still a largely unknown quantity outside their native country. The record brings together band leaders Brendan McLeod and Adrian Glynn with Marlene Ginader on violin and a Brit, Dan Walsh, on banjo.
Their homeland landscape features a lot with songs about the Canadian Shield ( Wolf Road), the Fraser River (River Hymn), East Vancouver (Café Deux) and a Saskatoon parking lot (Under The Ice). To offset this bias there’s also a tune about Glastonbury.
Politics and other controversial topics are deliberately avoided. This makes for a reassuring, if slightly, insipid feel to the music. There are enough clap-along crowd-pleasers to ensure these tunes will go down well in a live setting, which I imagine is where they are in their element. Holy Strength even has some whistling!
Time and change are other themes, notably in the banjo-led Young Enough. “When you’re touring together, time stops being individual - it becomes shared,” says violinist Carly Frey. Adrian Glynn adds: “We wouldn’t be a band if we weren’t also friends.”
