Deep Cuts #07: Alexisonfire – 'Old Crows/ Young Cardinals'
Sifting through the sleeper record from post-hardcore's kings of Canadian croon.
Artist: Alexisonfire
Title: Old Crows/ Young Cardinals
Release: June 23rd, 2009
Label: Dine Alone
Listen here: Bandcamp | Spotify | YouTube
It’s strange to think that the last Alexisonfire album came out twelve years ago. From our dizzyingly surreal vantage point, the naive, proto-always online world of 2009 feels like a lifetime ago.
That said, the band continue to be one of the most loved and well-respected outfits of the mid-00’s post-hardcore boom. Go to a show (if they still do those things in your arena of the post-COVID hellscape), pick a person at random, and chances are they’ll at least know the words to “This Could Be Anywhere In The World,” and/or adore records like 2006’s Crisis and 2004’s Watch Out!.
Even after their huge farewell tour and short-lived hiatus from 2011 to 2015, followed only by a smattering of singles, live compilations and EP’s as drip-fed new material, it’s not like Alexisonfire have wained in popularity or cultural purchase over time. The band are still cited as a direct influence for acts like Cancer Bats, Silverstein, and Four Year Strong, and their ever-expanding roster of member side projects is extensive and prolific.
At this point, Dallas Green has a larger discography than the rest of the band put together, including six albums with City and Colour and a full-length album with Pink under the moniker You+Me. Frontman George Pettit’s current heavy outfit Dead Tired continue to churn out rowdy bangers, with a live performance featured in season two of the Amazon Prime series, The Boys. Wade MacNeil is the vocalist for UK hardcore outfit Gallows, following Frank Carter’s exit in 2011, has solo efforts with his long-running punk band Black Lungs, new project Doom’s Children, and even a recent turn towards composing film scores.
All of this makes the conversation—or lack thereof—surrounding the band’s fourth LP, Old Crows/ Young Cardinals, all the more curious.
I was 21 when Old Crows/ Young Cardinals came out and I was, admittedly, still very much in my ‘I Only Listen to Hardcore and Metal’ phase of musical discovery. Accordingly, my most vivid memory of listening to this album at that time is one of casual indifference. I certainly didn’t hate the record outright but I wasn’t immediately sold on it either.
If you had pressed me then to explain exactly why that was, or what perceived inadequacies the record contained as compared to my idealised version of the perfect Alexisonfire album, I would have likely drawn a blank. Even twelve years distant, my thoughts remain just as vague.
While it’s hardly an original take, I do think certain albums work as time capsules—intentionally or otherwise. Some records are forever locked in your mind as a victim of spatio-temporal circumstance, linked to break-ups and exes, traumatic episodes or pivotal moments in your life no matter what happens along the way. They’re forms of subconscious nostalgia: feel good (or bad) slices of the past that can hurl you back into a different mood in the space of a 4/4 beat.
Others, however, are more of a mature slow-burn. The elusive “growers” of a band’s discography that requiring changes in you as the listener in order to be unlocked, before the album is able to truly resonate and stick with you.
To me, Old Crows/Young Cardinals easily falls into that latter category. I can’t pinpoint exactly when it happened, but somewhere along the way, I decided that I actually really like this album and that it might just be the underrated, sleeper hit of the band’s back catalogue.
Objectively, it’s their most commercially successful album too, charting well across the US, UK, Australia, and in their native Canada, where the band enjoy pseudo-rockstar levels of fame and platinum sales. And while it might not have the streaming numbers of something as universally loved as Crisis, it’s still a regular feature on playlists for devoted fans across the world.
The one-two punch of the album’s title track opening salvo makes it clear how far the band had come from their humble beginnings in the potent punk and metal scene of Southern Ontario.
“Old Crows” crawls with a mid-tempo bass thrum and the band’s now-iconic, honey & vinegar vocal interplay, before erupting into an anthemic chorus lead not by guitarist and angelic vocalist Green, or larynx-shredder Petitt, but by gravel-throated MacNeil. It may have taken four full-length albums, but the band’s realisation of their triumvirate vocal talent allows this record to careen from gruff punk to coarse screamo and soaring alt-pop with a level of cohesion unrivalled by the majority of their peers.
Similarly, “Young Cardinals” takes the stadium-ready chorus formula featured on much of Crisis and wields it like a superweapon. Green’s soaring hook here—along with the subtle background harmonies that bolster it—is absolutely gargantuan and borderline transcendent. The track is at once recognisable as uniquely Alexis and utterly infectious, remaining one of their greatest tunes and an instant post-hardcore classic.
Continuing Side A’s impressive run, “Born and Raised” highlights the scope of the band’s vision, pairing call-and-response bangers with Green and MacNeil’s stellar guitar work. The rollicking rhythm section workout from “No Rest” finds Alexis at their most propulsive, throwing back to the urgency and kinetic thrill of their earlier records. Meanwhile, switching back to a mid-tempo atmosphere, “The Northern” hits like a cross between Planes Mistaken For Stars and The Gaslight Anthem, with Petitt’s organ in the verses adding delicate hints of folk and ritualistic undertones.
And yet, the more I listen to Old Crows/ Young Cardinals, the more the record’s track sequencing becomes both a surprise and a treasure. Side B might not rack up the impressive streaming numbers of its other half, but the songwriting leaves little to suggest a drop in quality. “Midnight Regulations” and “Heading For The Sun” are just as catchy and dynamic as any of the record’s singles or smash hits from Crisis, with Green, MacNeil and Pettit wrapping their vocal lines around one another in a way that feels effortlessly natural and powerful.
I’ve been listening to Alexisonfire now for over half of my entire life. The band’s self-titled album and 2004’s Watch Out! soundtracked my burgeoning adolescence with molten screamo and pop-adjacent hooks. Crisis aligns with leaving home and the burden of young adulthood, recalling shitty bar jobs, house parties, getting day drunk and dating people I haven’t seen or spoken to in years.
It’s fitting then that if Old Crows/ Young Cardinals has any lasting legacy, it’s in reminding me that nothing in life is static. Everything—including ourselves—is capable of change, always and forever. As Green croons in “Born and Raised”:
“We were born and raised/
To live beyond/
The heft and weight of a world undone.
Like a bird from the north/
Our hearts will roam in search of warmth.”