Kelly Kirwan
Dan Colussi stitched his third solo album together between cities and hotel rooms, traveling throughout Ottawa, Vancouver, Toronto and Winnipeg, with an electric guitar and bare essentials for recording. The former bassist for The Shilohs is no stranger to independent pursuits, assuming the name The Pinc Lincolns once again to deliver his latest single, "My Horse is Blue."
The ninth and final track off his new work, Joy to the World, crinkles with a signature static. It opens with Colussi’s voice, mimicking the staccato guitar to come, a dut-dut-dut-dut that fades into the background as razor-sharp strums come storming in. It’s a song that swings between pensive pools and bouts of white noise that suggest we’ve stumbled onto an abandoned frequency. It’s a flirtation between hard and soft rock, and both elements get their say.
Horses, naturally, serve as the focal point for the song’s video. But before they make their appearance, we’re given a shot of a cerulean ocean and crashing waves. It soon progresses to the grainy footage of a herd running across the plains, and it’s as if we found the reel tucked away in a forgotten archive, the film strip taking on an overexposed look with age. The images of the horses become cloudy, with an almost smoky filter coming into the foreground. Towards the end, we’re left with a single horse, running across the dry landscape, as Colussi’s low-toned vocals ring in your head, “My horse is blue…”
It’s like a ‘70s version of Planet Earth, with Colussi taking us on a trip that’s intermittently relaxing and charged with a scorching electric current. It's a compelling and beautiful dynamic to dive into.