Chris DeLine

What the deuce, Edwin has a new album? While I’ve been living outside of Canada for the last half-decade I haven’t been updated all that frequently with Canadian semi-celebs such as this rocker. With history smacking me in the face, however, the news that he is releasing a new album came as somewhat of a shock. And for those that don’t have any clue what I’m talking about, allow me to bring you up to speed.

Edwin joined the brothers Tanna in what would become the popular Canadian alt-rock group I Mother Earth in the early 90s. After experiencing varied success at home and abroad (mostly abroad as the band was adopted by its Canadian fan-base, winning the 1994 Juno for Best Hard Rock album) the band released its most popular album in 1996, Scenery & Fish. It was openly greeted by a vast list of media outlets and the band’s new success garnered platinum sales for both of its albums.

Following the release it was made clear that Edwin would no longer be apart of the band, and would be replaced as he was only a disposable singer and was responsible for little to none of the songwriting and musical credits on past works. With that the band took on a new vocalist and Edwin went solo.

With the release of 1999’s Another Spin Around The Sun, his career looked to just be starting as it was a commercially accepted multi-single, platinum selling hit. But then, what happened? With a creative fall-out with his label, Edwin left Sony following the 2002 release of Edwin & The Pressure and fell into obscurity.

It was right around the time of Scenery & Fish that I started my appreciation for the band. Its 1993 release, Dig, was a true hard rock album in a time when mainstream metal was gasping for air and grunge was exploding and was released as something fresh. I was a little put off at the time by Scenery’s first single “One More Astronaut” as its sharp contrasts played down the smooth rhythms of tracks such as “Used to Be Alright.” When Edwin released his solo album I was entirely not a fan. “Alive” was a track that went against the harder edge that I Mother Earth had built and seemed to be catering to an entirely different core. As such it was accepted by pop radio and was my beliefs were proven true.

But over time, the Canadiana aspect of it grew on me, and I accepted his new work. Having not ever heard of the album featuring new backing band The Pressure I was taken back when discovering how poorly it did, selling a mere few thousand copies. Though he seems to have continued his faux-Hollywood look (not a fan) the new tracks take me back to a time when things were easier and I wasn’t always trying to cynically look at the music for what it might truly be. It was, and is, just good mainstream rock, and was good enough for me.

[This post was first published by Culture Bully.]