The Old Ceremony

Our One Mistake

(sonaBLAST!)

Record Review by Amber Henson

Our One Mistake seems very personal; almost every song was written and sung by Django Haskins (sounds like a Star Wars name to me), and almost every song talks about a ‘we’ or an ‘us’, definitely an ‘I’.  There is a strong sense on this record of a man who has been troubled by love, with lyrics like “My plan is not to be your man, I wanna be your golden retriever, come on, make me a believer,” and “Truer words were never spoken and hearts were made to be broken.”

The rest of the band (James Wallace on piano, Mark Sinonsen on organ, Matt Brandau on bass, Dan Hall on drums, and three oft-used strings players) does not simply back up Haskins’ words (and his guitar), but provides its own voice.  Most songs are a strong mixture of piano and violin, sometimes playing with one another in a ballet/lullaby way, or other times letting the each other shine, like in “Papers in Order,” which starts as a piano rag, or “Hearts Were Made,” where the violins open the song.

The structuring of the songs is what makes The Old Ceremony stand out, along with Haskins’ painfully true lyrics.  The second to last song on the album, “Prove Me Wrong” is almost like a beat poem; most of “Bao Qian” is, not surprisingly, sung in Chinese.  But the song that stood out to me most was “Reservations.”  Here, Haskins sounds almost like Robbie Williams, the music is all loungy and builds periodically to crescendos.  But the lyrics: “Do you have reservations?  You know I do too” and the rest of the song, about a relationship in which neither person is entirely sure, is an impressive feat - Haskins singing about something that must be so hard: “Do you have reservations concerning our love?  Do they whisper beware when I touch your hair and kiss you goodnight?”  This is an album for anyone who is in love or ever has been.