As part of the 1000 Songs project, I'm doing one review a week of new releases from emerging artists. Following up on my recent piece about the band untitled, this week I am spotlighting Massey's Cross.
Hailing from Calgary, Alberta, this duo brews a potent blend of classic rock and blues, laced with jazz and folk sensibilities. Their upcoming EP, "Unbroken After the Storm" (dropping this September), delivers absolutely everything you crave from a classic rock record: heavy grooves, brilliant guitar work, and deeply personal storytelling.
1000 Songs is all about tracks that immediately grab you by the collar, and their opener, "Donner Party and Sadly Forgotten," does exactly that. What I love most is how it captures a massive, Zeppelin-esque swagger while maintaining the gritty, authentic production I obsessed over during my early-2000s blues-rock phase. The energy channels the early days of The Black Keys, that raw, unpolished magic where a duo locks in and conjures an absolute wall of sound.
While the opener might be my personal favorite, you need to stick around for the whole ride. The EP naturally swells into the kind of epic, sprawling soundscapes found on the very best classic rock records, so look no further than the track "Never Odd or Even" for proof.
Whenever I listen to a new release, I want to understand the engine driving it. The band explained to me that, at its core, the EP explores the psychological terrain that follows a life-altering event. It’s not about the event itself, it’s about the aftermath, the trauma, the upheaval, the loss, the reinvention, and the brutal confrontation with the truth, events that, unfortunately, seem to happen more frequently as we get older. The main idea behind the record is that you emerge from the storm neither triumphant nor defeated, but simply changed.
The EP traces this slow, cinematic process of coming to terms with that change. Massey's Cross describes the project not just as a collection of songs, but as a single, dramatic gesture. After listening to it, I wholeheartedly agree.
A great addition to the 1000 Songs radar.