Toronto's Sadies are as renowned for the records they have made backing other singers (blues veteran Andre Williams, the Mekons' Jon Langford, who is here tonight) as for their own. More conventional than fellow travellers Giant Sand and Calexico, and considerably more eccentric, they are the darlings of the resurgent country scene. It's easy to see them as dyed-in-the-wool traditionalists; the beautifully embroidered matching outfits worn by sibling singers Dallas and Travis Good make them look like they should be taking tickets at the door of the Grand Ole Opry. While they certainly make convincing hicks, however, there is something decidedly strange and artful about their breathless conflation of classic country, surf rock and psychedelia.
They play almost 30 songs with barely a pause for breath. "It's not that we don't have anything to say," they explain in a rare lull, "we'd just rather play." Langford is first up, playing material from his Sadies collaboration, The Mayors of the Moon. Later, he returns for a blistering version of the Mekons' peerless Memphis, Egypt, whose opening line commands: "Destroy your safe and happy lives before it is too late." Robyn Hitchcock is here too, lurking in an unmissable polka-dot shirt; he leaps on stage for an impromptu tear through Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd freak-out Astronomy Domine.
In between, the Sadies play their own songs and a welter of covers: traditional country standards and heads-down, surf-rock instrumentals. Someone really ought to tell them less is more, but they appear to be having so much fun that it would seem a shame to break up the party.
Oak Ridges, from current album Stories Often Told, is rendered unearthly by a bowed xylophone, an extraordinary sound that may be as close as we'll ever come to the mythical music of the spheres. A cover of their friends the Handsome Family's Milk and Scissors takes on a full-blooded, ominous rock swagger.
What excuses the Sadies' indulgence is their thrilling musicianship. But, in the rush to cover all the bases, their own songs - elegiac, articulate, bewitching - are unjustly obscured.
