Crown Lands

As Crown Lands guitarist Kevin Comeau sees it, his band is perpetually stuck between a rock and a prog place. “There's always this push-pull between wanting to be a prog-rock band and then realising that, when we pick up our instruments, the blues just comes out much easier,” he tells Apple Music. “So we're always bouncing between thinking and feeling.” Over the course of three EPs, the Oshawa, Ontario, power duo have shown they have the brains to match their brawn, drawing equally from Led Zeppelin’s earthquaking grooves and Rush’s lyrical intellect. But their love of cosmic, laser-show-worthy classic rock is tempered by their desire to address the realities of modern-day Canada. After all, Crown Lands’ very name is a political statement, referring to territories controlled by the Canadian government—or, put another away, seized from its Indigenous people. And though singer/drummer Cody Bowles possesses the sort of arena-ready, glass-shattering voice that makes Robert Plant sound like Barry White, the group’s psych-rock salvos are filtered through Bowles’ Mi'kmaq heritage and two-spirited identity. Recorded in Nashville with Grammy-winning producer Dave Cobb, Crown Lands’ self-titled debut album abounds with the kind of atomic boogie that’s landed them tours with everyone from Jack White to Coheed and Cambria. But they deploy their righteous riffage as a Trojan horse to deliver their most topical songwriting to date—namely, “End of the Road”, a shimmering epic inspired by the Highway of Tears, the infamous freeway in British Columbia where numerous Indigenous women have gone missing or been murdered over the past half century. Yet for all their grandiose sonic and lyrical concepts, Crown Lands are a group that values simplicity—their album clocks in at a lean seven songs and 27 minutes. “Seven is a special number,” Bowles reasons. “All of our favourite records—like A Farewell to Kings and Moving Pictures—seem to have seven songs, so we decided to carry on that tra