The Gertrudes: All the Dollar Bills Sing Hallelujah

The Kingston-based supergroup The Gertrudes have been pumping out their brand of theremin-spiced-epic-folk-jams since their 2009 release Hard Water, an EP that introduced the band’s knack for creating textured and patient sonic environments, swirling around emotive sentiments sung in earnest. Years later, the band has completed their fourth release titled, Neighbourhood, set to be released in September, which shows that the multi-instrumental clan is as exploratory and enigmatic as ever. The lead single off the album, “All the Dollar Bills Sing Hallelujah,” which has found its way to the top of the CBC Radio 3 Charts in the past weeks, bursts in with sparsity: a driving drum beat, a locked-in bass line – the back end puts their heads down and barrels forward into the central nervous system of a pecuniary thunderstorm. As though discovering the bits of shredded text on the top floors of the financial district, they sing “We all got out before we got outed, we burned the route before we got routed,” before jumping into the hallucinatory hi-hat-heavy refrain.