I’ve had a huge hole in my pop music education. I haven’t really properly listened to The Burning Hell until now. That’s rather criminal especially if you consider the facts that a) I love Canadian music b) they played in my hometown Turku a year or two ago and I managed to miss them. Anyway, for the past two days I’ve been finally listening to The Burning Hell and their 2013 album People (Out on BB Island , Headless Owl Records) and I’ve been smiling like a mad man while doing that. They are probably rather fed up with all the Jonathan Richman comparisons, but he sure does come to mind several times. Travel Writers on the other hand is a bit Lambchop-ish. But enough with the namedropping. This is Mathias Kom’s show and this man is one hell of a songwriter. The Wallflowers has been my favourite song in the world during these past two days.
The reason why I finally remembered that I need to dive into the The Burning Hell back catalogue is actually this new Mathias Kom / The Burning Hell tribute album called My Name Is Mathias. I saw it on my Bandcamp feed a while back and have also come across with it several times during the last week, because some of my favourite Canadians (John K. Samson, Mike O’Neill, Michael Feuerstack etc) are covering Mathias on this album. The tribute is now out on Headless Owl Records. This is Michael Feuerstack’s wonderful version of Like An Anvil.