This new album from By Divine Right features an expansive, mature sound that maintains the band’s old energy while moving the music in new directions. Frontman Jose Contreras has an upgraded line-up that kicks By Divine Right into a new area of the stratosphere. Listen to the beefy drum and guitar interplay on “Supernatural” or the Stones riff that propels “Soul Explosion” and you’ll hear a band that’s cocksure, but never cocky. A sunshine-laden song like “Stella Heart Ocean” provides the gritty pop rocks you’d expect from By Divine Right, but the Lou Reed-meets-Staxx steamer “Sweet Lovin’” adds a little soul food to the table. Frontman Jose Contreras and company soar back into the clouds with the quirky bossa nova ditty “Angels,” interlacing electronic blips and bleeps over skeletal rhythm and Contreras’ love-struck lyrics. The disc’s pi?ce de r?sistance is “Hugger Of Trees,” a song that develops with industrial-rock precision. It’s actually less a song than a blissful six-minute exercise in Kodo-like drumming and sonic experimentation. “One More City” may be the disc’s most telling tune, hearkening back to tribulations during the old band’s tour with The Tragically Hip. When Contreras kicks into the stomping chorus of “One more city and we’re gonna fall apart,” he sounds like he’s exorcising old demons. By chorus’ end, however, he’s returned to relative calm, singing, “This is where the song falls apart/But the music goes on.” Indeed it does and for By Divine Right it’s moving more eloquently than ever before.
- By Divine Right @ NXNE 2001
- Ron Sexsmith And By Divine Right Find Homes
- By Divine Right @ Lee’s Palace
- By Divine Right Start Up Again
- By Divine Right Dropped By Label
