If ever there were a doubt that bookworms are ready to rock out, Library Voices live to dissolve it.“Reluctant Readers make Reluctant Lovers” brandishes Yeats and Hemingway as symbols of youthful virility superior to, say, a Camaro. The Regina septet have the Besnard Lakes’ Jace Lasek producing a more luminous rhythm on this sophomore album than the debut. The Voices go after philistine politicians (“The Prime Minister’s Daughter”) and drunk texters (“Generation Handclap”) like a novelist to scotch. One quibble is that tempo changes are rare. Their brains may be going too fast to conceive a ballad.
This article appears in Sep 15-21, 2011.