At the Moment of Our Most Needing, or If Only They Could Turn Around, They Would Know They Weren’t Alone is almost a Marnie Stern-like mouthful but also the follow-up to 2006’s critically lauded Are We Not Horses? Am I the only one that reads that album title and always thinks of the Houyhnhnms from Guillver's Travels? The fantastic concept album was actually told through the eyes of six-legged robotic horses. Sounds strange but it really worked. Taking a cue from the horses, Toronto's Rock Plaza Central trotted to the greener pastures the Canadian indie label Paper Bag Records.
Equine issues aside, RCP can still fashion one mean brass-laden indie-rock album. Neutral Milk Hotel and Will Oldham comparisons abound but RCP remain unique. Unlike its predecessor, At the Moment of Our Most Needing has a strong influence from William Faulkner’s Light In August. Lead singer and accomplished novelist Chris Eaton expounds upon the concept further: “The Faulkner novel is the story of a young woman, eight-and-a-half months pregnant, who leaves home with big dreams and returns in shame, which she wears with pride, as she searches for her lover/her betrayer/the father of her unborn child." Sounds fitfully epic. The new tracks were produced by Dale Morningstar (Godspeed! You Black Emperor) and recorded during the summer of 2008 at the Gas Station on Toronto Island.
