“Trainwreck” Boys Night Out

The story was written, but Jeff Davis isn’t an author - he’s a guitarist in Boys Night Out. He had a foundation laid in paragraphs and phrases, not verses and choruses.

But, Boys Night Out knew it would base its sophomore full-length on this tale.

Davis and vocalist Connor Lovat-Fraser turned the story into lyrics for “Trainwreck,” the third album by the band that calls Burlington, Ontario home, and wrote the music second.

The story surrounds a protagonist who accidentally murders his wife in his sleep. Rather than facing murder charges, he’s committed into a mental hospital. He replays the scene each night, and the medication he’s given isn’t enough to erase the image. He hears his wife’s singing, and he can’t tune it out.

His convinces his doctor he’s fine, that his case can be treated on an outpatient basis. The doctor - who is not able to fill the hollowness with hope - concedes. He finds the patient lying at home, the air filled with women’s perfume. With his final breath, the patient sings the song he heard in his wife’s voice.

“Now, place your ear to my lips. Trace these notes with your fingertips,” he sings. “They dance alone on my last breath. This is the end. This is death.”

The disc is broken into 12 songs, and the only similarity is each title is a single verb, indicating that the song is actually happening when the album is playing.

Musically, it’s not as poppy as “Make Yourself Sick,” the band’s first full length. It isn’t as catchy, but it works because the listener becomes focused on the entire story rather than a three line chorus.

For this album, the band added keyboardist Kara Dupry. As the only female member, it left her to play the roll of the murdered wife. When the album called for a female voice, Dupry was the choice.

It’s a good album, but it needs to be listened to front to back, straight for a full 52 minutes, for it to leave a mark. No song holds its weight independently. That’s the struggle of writing a concept album, and

Boys Night Out hasn’t perfected that yet.

- Lisa Sokolowski Special to the Weekender

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