The Harlots

More often than not, five little syllables is all it takes. Renegades Of Funk is a classic hip-hop track, originally recorded by urban music pioneer Afrika Bambaataa and resurrected rather brilliantly by the four fierce men of Rage Against The Machine. Satellite Of Love is a classic Lou Reed song, originally recorded in the heroin daze of the early 70s and resurrected almost lovingly by the fulsome foursome known as U2. The Harlots dont claim to be a classic anything, but that hasnt stopped this straight-up Canadian band from taking a page from the vintage rock n roll playbook and using five little syllables to resurrect their own true selves. Connoisseur Of Ruin, the third album by the Winnipeg quartet, brings the hard-working Harlots back into a happy place where music is made for the sake of making music and the sheer love of playing it resonates with every chord. Maybe happy isnt the best word, as The Harlots would rather be fierce than fulsome and their brand-new album is fraught with themes of disappointment, adversity and regret. But its impossible to listen to the Winnipeg bands latest creation and not be struck by the sense of exuberance that can only infect a record made exactly the way a band wanted it to be made, with no interference from above, below or beyond. The Harlots, assuming youve never heard of the guys, have been around since 1998 and are one of the premiere live acts in the gorgeous expanse of wide-open space Canadians call the Prairies. Two earlier albums, The Harlots (1998) and Crawl Spaces (2003) tried to capture the essence of a close-knit band comprised of three songwriting brothers Buck, Lane Bradley and Lee Charles Garinger and one non-familial drummer, Mark Sawatzky, who may as well be a sibling despite his dissonant DNA. But only Connoisseur Of Ruin presents the band in the studio as it sounds on stage, with three different voices behind the microphone presenting a unified vocal front. In the past, the band succumbed to pressures to present Buck, the youngest Garinger, as the lead singer. While he is indeed the bands most prolific songwriter, he just didnt feel right singing songs by Lee and Lane and trying to convey his brothers emotions. Earlier experiences have taught us to be true to ourselves and uncompromising, says singer-guitarist Lane. Buck also sings and plays guitar, while Lee plays bass against Sawatzkys kit-pounding. The three Garinger brothers started playing together as teens in tiny Kelvington, Sask., a town better known for producing hockey players Wendel Clark and Joey Kocur come from the hamlet than rock n roll. The Garingers wound up in small-town Saskatchewan following the death of their globe-trotting father, a civil engineer who worked in exotic kingdoms such Nepal, in the Himalayas and Swaziland, near the southern tip of Africa. One by one, the brothers migrated to larger Winnipeg, a veritable metropolis of 700,000, to work as hairdressers by day and play rock n roll at night. The Harlots were actually born out of the ashes of an earlier band, the much more glammy Ballroom Zombies, which featured Lane, Lee, Mark and a flamboyant vocalist from tiny Pinawa, Man. by the name of Robin Black. When Black moved to Toronto and the Zombies broke up in 98, the Garingers enlisted little brother Buck to join the fledgling Harlots. Despite a couple of hiccups, bumps and bruises most notably an ill-advised 2001 name change to Raised By Ghost, which reflected the Garinger brothers fatherless teenage years the quartet has managed to survive a tumultuous time in rock n roll. This isnt hyperbole: Boy bands, the moral panic over downloading and now Canadian Idol all come and gone over the past eight years. OK, so maybe that last statement was just wishful thinking, but you get the point. In 2005, The Harlots began recording what became Connoisseur Of Ruin with producer Brandon Friesen, a Winnipeg knob-twiddler well-regarded for his treatment of guitar sounds. The Harlots and Friesen made the album on their own, with no record-label people looming in the background. The result is melodic but unforced and easily digestible, too, at 39 economical minutes, just like an old vinyl album. This is probably the most honest CD weve ever put out, says Sawatzky, whose use of probably, in this case, is superfluous. Connoisseur Of Ruin is clearly the best album the band has ever made. But The Harlots are a little less dark than their latest title, five syllables notwithstanding. Connoiseur Of Ruin, as it turns out, has nothing to do with nihilism. Its actually a not-so-oblique reference to the way rock bands persevere despite getting smacked upside the head with disappointment. They could have called it Gluttons For Punishment and conveyed the same meaning. But then they wouldnt have appeared on the same page as classics like U2, Lou Reed, Rage Against The Machine and Afrika Bambaataa.