If these records could be aware they are competing for our admiration, July would be considered a hard fought month deserving of the athlete's axiom “they left it on the field.” Though it was the words of Week In Pop's Sjimon Gompers that ultimately helped us decide on the Best Album of July 2013. Gompers wrote, “cause hell, if you're gonna disband you go out with something that will keep 'em talking.”
He's right. The Mallard's Finding Meaning In Deference brought great sorrow. With its release a band hung the jersey into the rafters when it should have been the record that lifted them well beyond the hilly East Bay terrain and into international tours and festivals. Now we've got a pocket full of what ifs to dump out. And while, it stings now to hear such promise deferred, the legacy is in place for Greer McGettrick. If we don't praise it now, we're screwing ourselves out of a future in reunions and re-issues with b-sides, demos, live tapes, and bootlegs. McGettrick is denying the possibility of a reunion, but our hope is that it's much like a rapper's retirement or Jordan's decision to play baseball. Eventually she'll miss The Mallard enough, as time heals, to embrace the legend. Lofty predictions typically aren't our steez, but when the Castle Face Records store reads “out of print” beneath Finding Meaning In Deference, that's when the waiting game begins. It's up to us and you from there.
The Best Album of July 2013:
The Mallard are at their best on the tracks on which the darkness of the album collides with the contagious energy that marked the band’s live show. Namely, the fasterpaced “Decade” and the album’s noisy, hypnotic closer, “Iceberg.” With the sonic decay at the end of the album, The Mallard throws down the microphone and storms offstage. McGettrick says she doesn’t see a reunion in the future, but as this album gets around, maybe it becomes a case of Tom Sawyer attending his own funeral.
Read the full review here.
