By Peter Lindblad
Grief and loss have hung around Dallas Green long enough. His 2023 album Love Still Held Me Near – Green’s seventh album under the City and Colour moniker – was a purge of raw emotions stemming from the death of a close friend, producer and engineer Karl Bareham, and his cousin. Additionally, his marriage of 11 years was on the rocks.
Hailed by critics for its poignant elegies and deeply meaningful introspection, crafted while Green was knee deep in a midlife crisis, it’s a lovely, resonant, indie-folk wake that shimmers, sweeps. and soars while tackling age-old questions about the meaning of life and experiencing a well-earned, joyful rebirth.
Green brings his City and Colour project to The Pabst Theater in Milwaukee on Nov. 9 – with Pedro the Lion opening – for what promises to be a soulful, transcendent performance, with songs like the heartbreaking, stunningly beautiful “Meant to Be” hopefully on the set list. It’s a slow-building, ascending climb worthy of Band of Horses’ majesty, while the rest of Love Still Held Me explores vast new sonic territory on a journey of self-discovery that confronts hard truths. Green emerges scarred but hopeful.
Coming from the melodic post-hardcore/emo outfit Alexisonfire, who won a JUNO Award – the Canadian equivalent of a Grammy – for its 2022 LP Otherness and scored four platinum albums over its existence, Green has racked up three JUNOs – two for Songwriter of the Year – on his own. He’s put out seven albums as City and Colour, a darker, gentler affair than the blazing screamo of Alexisonfire.
A Pill for Loneliness debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Canadian Albums Chart in 2019. That made four consecutive chart-toppers for City and Colour in Canada, following up If I Should Go Before You, which initially rocketed up to No. 16 on the U.S. Billboard 200 Chart.
Two years ago, Green received the SOCAN National Achievement Awards at the JUNO Awards, which celebrated his philanthropic endeavors in music education.
Of the Love Still Held Me album, and the tragedies that spawned its existence, Green says, “It’s not specifically about those events. It’s just an overarching theme of loss and the idea of trying to get through it.”
He continues that the record goes about “asking good questions about life and then framing it in a way that anyone can find themselves in it. I know the experience I’m writing about on this album is not singular at all; it’s everything we have to deal with as human beings, trying to live and get through it.”
Such universality makes City and Colour feel understood by so many. No wonder they’re so popular.