Album Review: Philadelphia by Joseph Shabason

Joseph Shabason, Nicholas Krgovich, and Chris Harris' Philadelphia owes less to the American metropolis than to a song about it. To complement the ethereal soft rock they recorded together over three days in Toronto last fall, the Canadian trio opted to cover Neil Young's 1993 hymn "Philadelphia," which originally appeared on the soundtrack for Jonathan Demme's namesake AIDS-themed drama, but was largely overshadowed by Bruce Springsteen's Grammy-winning "Streets of Philadelphia" single from the same film. The song is a classic Neil alone-at-the-microphone tearjerker, a private prayer for the City of Brotherly Love to live up to its nickname during a moment of weakness and loneliness.

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Philadelphia by Shabason, Krgovich & Harris Philadelphia, the first recording from the trio of Joseph Shabason, Nicholas Krgovich and Chris Harris, gleans tendencies from different spheres of close ensemble music. Extracting the sensual, slow-moving movements of the Blue Nile or Talk Talk, lifting and updating the mild crooner feel from those outfits, and finding inspiration from the tonal make-up and continuously fermenting state of fourth world, ambient, and new age music, particularly Japanese new age, Philadelphia has its own highly relaxing character. It is a hazy and misty record, delightfully ambiguous to an extent, pulled together by meandering but highly competent playing tied down by small grooves, at times reminiscent of Sandro Perri.

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