"In all honesty probably arrived 15 years too late to be described as fresh."
Road-testing new songs during Canadian Music Week last year, Sweet Jean's Sime Nugent hinted at a different direction that was "more city and less country".
The band's second LP Monday To Friday does have a decidedly more urban sensibility: there's not a banjo in sight — just electric guitars and the odd trippy synth contributing washes of sound upon which float the distinctively doubled vocals of Nugent and Alice Keath. It's reminiscent of early '00s art-rock bands like Gelbison and The Sleepy Jackson, and in all honesty probably arrived 15 years too late to be described as fresh. But it is well executed, and easy to like.