The Tea Party returns in December
The Tea Party is back.
No, not the American political movement, which never left, but the Canadian power trio, which cut a swath through the Canadian rock fields in the mid-1990s, broke up, reformed and have since stuck to their guns and did NOT sell their Internet domain teaparty.com despite rumour of a giant offer from the right-wing lunatics. The band needed it for more important things – like rock ‘n’ roll!
Jeff Martin and the boys will play the Union Hall on Saturday, Dec. 6, touring behind their comeback album The Ocean at the End. It’s their first album since a six-year hiatus ended in 2011, their first album in 10 years, and yet another example of the mysterious 20-year-itch that brings back one favourite 1990s rock band after another. Tickets to the show go ON SALE Friday, Oct. 3
Since they’ve been away, with the spooky Martin going through a number of musical and personal trials (long story), including a marriage, a folk tangent and a move to Ireland, The Tea Party has practically turned into classic rock. The band’s 1993 hit The River still gets regular radio airplay. Other songs that still hold up all these years later include Temptation, Sister Awake and Heaven Coming Down. The aquatically-themed new album has yielded the first official single, Black Sea, which does not seem to be about the body of water in Eastern Europe, but features the same guitar-driven “Moroccan roll” sound that made the Tea Party such a big deal to begin with. Martin, the love child of Jim Morrison and Jimmy Page, intones over a roiling quasi-metallic groove, “Darkness surrounds you. Lost in the night.”
Ah, it’s good to see some things never change.
