David Kilgour's unique jangly guitar sound and stream-of-consciousness lyrics speak to me like no other musician ever has. Kilgour is from New Zealand so he rarely plays Toronto, but my devotion to his music is such that I recently flew across the continent just to see him play shows in Portland and San Francisco. Pitchfork's review assigned End Times Undone a numeric score of 6.9, but in my books it's a 10.0.
"The beautiful new record from David Kilgour & The Heavy Eights, opens with the sound of guitars drifting down slowly, like rain on a windowpane. It almost sounds mournful, grey streaks of sound pooling together. Then, after about 50 seconds, it stops short and redirects entirely. A big, clanging guitar figure enters, the clouds break, and the song lightens and expands. The effect is arresting, as if the musicians were suddenly and simultaneously struck by a different idea and decided, all at once, to enthusiastically pursue it. As Kilgour explains it, that secenario is perhaps not too far from the truth. 'The more you think about music, and the more you work on it, the more it stinks,' he says. 'We were trying to just let the songs be in their organic state, and to catch them while they were as fresh and lively as possible.' To do this, Kilgour convened the group only once every four months or so. Rather than approach each session with a set of pre-written songs, they simply got in a room and waited for the muse to arrive." - Wondering Sound