DON'T LIE TO THE BAND

Okay. I'll confess that I'm a little shocked to be the first reviewer of this excellent Canadian export. Admittedly, it took a considerable amount of effort to track down these albums in a listenable form - amazingly, both Dillinger's releases are available on iTunes for a little over 7 bucks a piece. Before continuing this review, I would like to urge any and all to go check them out. This band really, really deserves the attention.

All that being said, this really isn't heavy prog. Dillinger's first album was more overtly experimental, but neither sound anything like Rush to these sensitive ears. Dillinger actually maintain a very unique-yet-accessible sound, an erstwhile combination of jazz and rock that is very easy on the ears while remaining very challenging. They have a very classic eclectic prog sound - the production values are actually quite refined, with the drums in particular having a richness and fullness sometimes lost on more obscure releases. This doesn't sound like a hole-in-the-wall album recorded by an unknown band; on the contrary, the music is very competent and personal, with an evident refinement that makes me very, very surprised that their work isn't more well known.

The album opens with a couple of covers: Two Time Love by Spooky Tooth and a very, very funky version of The Beatles' Tax Man featuring a great talkbox solo. That being said, the album really gets going on Munchkin Men, the album's centerpiece. This is classic epic prog, with some great keyboard soloing and excellent intermittent guitar. The album's other true standout track is the marvelous Robot Race, although in truth there isn't a single song on this release that I dislike in the slightest. There's also some lovely atmospheric mellotron on Coming Home, reminding me why I love that instrument so much.

A great band, possessed of some great experimental chops. Investigate them for their very individual style, which really sounds like nothing else coming out of Canada at the time.

Dillinger are a totaly unknown prog band from Toronto, Canada with two albums released and then gone into oblivion. I was really irritated that this band is so unknown, specially their second offer from 1975 named Don't lie to the band who is a fantastic and complicated little treasure in prog circles. The band was formed in 1973 by Harrison brothers - Jaques and Robert. who right from the beggining compose great catchy mix of jazz rock parts with progressive hooks melted with bluesy hard rock passages. On the album are two cover versions of Spooky Tooth - Two time love and from Beatles - Tax man, both quite ok in this context but not so excellent like their 6 original pieces who grace this release. The music as I said is brilliant, lots of catchy hooks, bith from guitar zone aswell from keyboards and druming parts, all is done with talent and inventivness all the way. The ieces are long, some of them clocking around 8 min, that means thay had room from instrumental exploration here, and is for sure an improvement over their first album. There are some folky arrangements here and there with flute and even sax and all the ingredints of class performance and in combination witt the rest of progressive twists and turns arrangements Don't lie to the band is for me a little tresure for sure. Well sadly this is their last swan song, to bad because this band is needing a far more recognition, at least for this second offer who is really killer and to damn unnoticed. For me easy 4 stars, worth every tune. A prog classic in my opinion who gone under the radar, that's why they disbanded soon after this album in 1976 . Recommended.

Don't Lie to the Band, released in 1976 on Daffodil, was the second album by the Toronto-based Dillinger. They were basically a hard rock band but with a few extra ambitions. Here the album starts off with two covers, Spooky Tooth's "Two Time Love" and George Harrison's "Taxman", both done in recognizable fashion, although the latter with a funky approach, from Paul Cockburn. The rest are all originals. "It's Not Mine" is a ballad, rather nice, but then they get really adventurous on "Munchkin Men". I find it a bit strange to hear a prog rock song about the munchkin men from the Wizard of Oz. There's a bit of a Yes feel in the vocals, although I could have lived without the "We are the Munchkin Men, neh neh neh neh" part halfway through the song, though. There's some nice low key Mellotron on this song. The rest of the album may not reach the heights of "Munchkin Men", but still quite good. I get reminded a bit of Nektar and Camel, even the vocals (apparently from Jacques Harrison) aren't too terribly different from Roye Albrighton, although Paul Cockburb's guitar playing at times is closer to David Gilmour or Andy Latimer. There's an occasional Jethro Tull reminder when the flute pops up. This album will NOT appeal to the prog purists out there, it sounds like those Midwestern bands who'd do some sort of crowd pleasing or radio-friendly material next to much more ambitious prog material. Many of these bands had a blue-collar approach to prog (Kansas being rather obvious), and Dillinger likewise, even though they hardly sound like Kansas. I have to tell you many listeners on this particular album seemed put off by the covers and never reach to "Munchkin Men" and side two, so some might write it off as "bargain bin" filler (actually apparently it did end up in the bargain bin, my LP copy features a small punch hole on the lower left hand corner). By the way, "Bumpadiddly" is only on the CD reissue, it was never on the original LP. The CD cover is also in color, while the original LP, while featuring the same artwork, was in black and while.

No, it's not the most mindblowing thing you'll hear all year, but I really like that nice '70s vibe and does have some nice material.