SOUND BITES

After capping their first decade with a tight, focused self-titled album, The Trews have taken their time following up their strongest effort in years. Arriving more than four years later, their sixth album finds the band adding a bit of gloss to their sound while attempting to maintain the rock charm that they've built their career on to this point. It's a mostly successful endeavour; by aiming for glossy rock instead of edgy pop, Civilianaires doesn't sound as jarring a sidestep as it could have. Songs like Vintage Love , Time's Speeding Up and the title track are most effective at conveying their new direction without sacrificing their fundamentals, and all three will most likely excel in the live setting. The album's more experimental-minded and pop-infused moments come off with mixed results; the Def Leppard-recalling Leave It Alone , the nocturnal and gritty Harder to Love and the lighthearted love song Up Sweet Baby all use strong hooks to overcome ...

Being a fan of The Trews hasn't always been easy. Sure, there have been great triumphs over the course of the Toronto by way of Antigonish crew's career; they've racked up hits on all four of their previous albums, but haven't crafted a really good album since 2005's Den of Thieves (in this guy's opinion, at least). Follow up No Time For Later may have spawned a couple of great singles, but marked a stylistic step down overall. Hope And Ruin , despite its stellar title track, tended to plod dangerously close to Nickelbackian waters in terms of musical and lyrical simplicity. In their attempts to dumb it down and appeal to a wider audience, they started seeing the opposite effect as average Joes remained indifferent and diehards lamented diminishing returns. Of course, The Trews are better than this, and they went about the process of making things right with Thank You And I'm Sorry , a 2012 EP that saw them loosen up and concentrate on what brought them...

Stream Soundgarden's first album in 16 years here courtesy iTunes. In an increasingly impatient society that's rife with leaks when it comes to high profile albums, that Soundgarden's hotly anticipated return effort King Animal escaped the leak is nothing short of a miracle. Today, patience has been rewarded via an official stream one week ahead of the album's release. So, the burning question is how does it all sound? Well, that's not for me to say right now; outside of posting that link, I'm making no effort to listen to King Animal until I've got a CD in my hand and headphones on my dome next week. I figure I've waited this long while only hearing two (really good) songs in full, why not put myself through another seven days of anticipation and reap a sweet payoff when I'm hearing most of it for the first time and flipping through liner notes? King Animal is out November 13 on Universal.

THE TREWS Hope & Ruin From: Hope & Ruin Released: April 12 The Trews have always been underdogs.  Just being a band from Antigonish, Nova Scotia is hard enough.  But, when they burst onto the Canadian scene in 2003 with their debut House of Ill Fame , an album that came out of the gate swinging and rocked with such swagger you had to root for them, you thought "they're really going to make it".  However, House of Ill Fame stalled out and never achieved anything higher than modest success.  So, they got legendary producer Jack Douglas (who has worked with John Lennon among many others) to helm the boards for their follow up Den of Thieves .  It was a really good album and spawned four hits in Canada, so their record label turned their eye toward the south, releasing the album in the U.S.  You pulled for them, thinking "they just might make it".  Of course, the Americans didn't take hold of the band, and it was back to the drawing board ...