By Will McGuirk

Randomly today I was listening to the cock rock of the Zep’s box set and digging the full-on slap fest of “Ramblin’ On” and the delicacy that is “Going to California” and some other tracks similar in vein. And on this eve I get to enjoy the newly released five track EP from Oshawa’s Cock of the Walk rockers, Crown Lands. And you know there’s a similarity.

But its too easy to stuff this duo in with the likes of Zeppelin just because “Wayward Flyers Vol. 1” is a collection of acoustic folk-rockers. Too easy and also wrong because although this two piece may look the part they most certainly do not live the part. No, they take apart the misogyny, the cultural appropriation, the privileged excess of what is the much celebrated and much emulated classic rock iconography.

Crown Lands can bust out the ripped shirt riffs like anyone but on this one, the quietness of it, allows the stories to shine brighter and they are the stories of people who have been pushed aside for far too long. Crown Lands give them room, give them their stage. Crown Lands’s limelight is not for strutting, its for sharing.

Head over to your fave platform to hear the EP, including their cover of Neil Young’s “Birds.”