COUSINS

We all have cousins, but COUSINS are not actually cousins. COUSINS are Leigh and Aaron (not Lee Aaron) and they are, and have been the hardest working band in Halifax, Nova Scotia for some time. COUSINS are a guitar/drums duo that play the rock and roll music of and for today. There are/have been/forever will be ten thousand bands in Halifax, rising up, gasping for air, sinking, stuck in the mud, or flaring up like model rockets over the harbour's shitty waters. The geographic, cultural, and economic factors of the region take their toll on the lifespan of the average Atlantic Canadian rock unit. But these COUSINS have persisted and carry on.

After several years of skin shedding metamorphosis, near-endless north American touring, two full length albums, and a string of limited edition releases on various formats and labels, they've grown up, they sound refreshed and unencumbered by the weight of the region, and their own history. This band is poised, clean, and lean. This COUSINS version of rock and roll music will break through fences and set off roman candles. It is devastating and joyful, full of love and punk romance. It will fix your bike and leave paint under your fingernails. It is a music that will shake off all that faux, dead, cool.

This record will change your life if you let it. A heartbreaker and a healer, it looks an awful world dead in the eye, fills the lungs up with all that pain and worry, and then comes back breathing a beautiful fire. This is the fine art of defense and hope. A ramshackle monument built over a steady spring of melancholy. Electricity and blood in the lines. Guitar and drums. A musical avalanche set apart from the macho and debaucherous posturing and fictions of rock culture. This is a sound set loose, rolling down hill in a shopping cart, at once full of confidence, excitement, dread, and anticipation.