There's so much going on. If you listen closely between the call-and-response vocals, you can pick out the glockenspiel, tube bells, hammered dulcimer, washboard, vibraphone, timbale, marimba or even the karimba.
And just when you think you've got this 11-piece Toronto-based band pegged as some bizarre tribute to old time delta blues, the two guitars, bass player and drummer fly off on a proggy tangent that wouldn't be out of place on an old Jethro Tull record.
At the front of Bruce Peninsula is a hulking Hamiltonian by the name of Neil Haverty. He possesses a gravelly growl powerful enough to cement the band's diverse elements together. Haverty grew up in Westdale, playing in local bands and performing as a lone singer-songwriter at downtown clubs.
Things changed when he moved to Toronto to study music and befriended Matt Cully and Misha Bower, two music fans fully immersed in the Appalachian Folkway recordings of Alan Lomax. They started experimenting old gospel and chain gang songs. Friends were called in to provide extra voices.
"I started to get more comfortable singing more powerfully," explains Haverty. "You don't really sing that way if it's just you and a guitar, but at one point I realized I can sing this way. In those chain-gang songs, it's very clear that the call has to be strong if you've got all those voices coming back to you., You'd better be calling pretty strongly if you want a decent response."
Haverty, who is often joined by backed by Bower on lead vocals, stresses that Bruce Peninsula is a collective.
"The truth is that there are five of us who actively contribute to the songwriting in the band," he says. "Sometimes I do step up to the plate and I'm running around the stage. I used to do an electronic project where I just rammed into people while singing karaoke so I use some of that energy for Bruce Peninsula. If I am supposed to be the frontman, I'm going to step up to the plate and do it."
The proggy elements came to fruition when Haverty introduced his old Westdale friend, Steve McKay, to the band. McKay had completed his classical music studies at Queen's University in Kingston where he had also developed a strong reputation as a rock drummer. When Bruce Peninsula needed a new drummer, he answered the call, bringing with him a love for '70s British prog rock.
"The prog stuff was going to happen anyways," McKay says. "I was always a fan of Jethro Tull, King Crimson and Yes."
Yes, it is an unlikely mix. But it's a mix that had the critics frothing more than a month before the official release of Bruce Peninsula's debut album, A Mountain Is A Mouth.
"The buzz is like nothing I've experienced in my life," McKay says about the over-the-top reviews. "It's kind of overwhelming."
On Tuesday, the CD finally is being released to record stores after being available for download off the band's website (bruce-peninsula.com) since mid-December.
The band will perform a CD release concert at the Pepper Jack Cafe in Hamilton Thursday, Feb. 5, followed by several more in Ontario and Quebec, culminating with a show at Toronto's Polish Combatants' Hall on Feb. 22.