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Breakfast In Suburbia
The Telepathic Butterflies
Rainbow Quartz
Winnipeg’s Telepathic Butterflies, led by singer/lead guitarist Réjean Ricard, perform guitar pop so pure that it is hard to believe they exist in this century. The music on their third album Breakfast In Suburbia brings to mind some of the great UK bands of the sixties such as The Beatles and The Zombies without imitating them or turning to empty nastalgia, rather using the sound of that era as a launching pad for the band’s own unique vision. The melodies are consistently strong and the guitar leads avoid clichéd patterns and challenge the listener in a pleasant fashion such as on album standout “Telescope”. Far from being a one-man-show however, Ricard is backed by an able band; specifically drummer Jacques Dubois who brings a fresh, simple approach to his instrument that propels the music especially on songs such as “The Trouble With Keeping Up With The Joneses” and “Mr. Dysfuntionality”.
As hinted in the title, the album is about suburban living in the 21st century - finding beauty in the minutiae of neighbourhood gossip and the shattered dreams of a man going through a midlife crisis, elevating its subject matter through the beauty of the music. This brings us to the major issue with Breakfast in Suburbia: The vinyl LP version of this record is a concept album with 8 more songs and a completely different sequencing. Considering that double LP version is on a limited run of 500 copies there is a good chance many may never hear it in its full form with the original story arc intact.
Still, even though most of us will never even hear the full album, the shorter CD version still qualifies as one of the best records to have come out this year, and is a definite must-listen for anyone who likes music, period.
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Plutonium Blonde
The Legendary Pink Dots
Roir
The Legendary Pink Dots recorded at the pace of about two albums a year from 1980 to 2002. Since then the rate has understandably dropped to one every two years but not, as one might imagine, because lead songwriter Edward Ka-Spel has run low on ideas for awe-inspiring soundscapes. In fact the band’s latest offering Plutonium Blonde is a completely essential modern record, not merely a passable latter day offering from a classic group.
The sound that permeates the majority of the songs is a cinematic minimalist industrial beat that could be referred to as trance if that name were not already used (perhaps erroneously) for a completely different brand of music. The simple beats complement slowly morphing aural scenery consisting of keyboards, guitars, Theremin, found sounds, and many other elements that are harder to pin down such as the underwater church organ of doom heard on “Faded Photograph”. Relief from this claustrophobia comes in the form of a few forays into pop territory - the downright pretty “World Without Mirrors”, which glides along on little more than light acoustic strumming and flute; “My First Zonee”, an 80’s leaning synth pop update to Tom Waits’ “Step Right Up”; and the creepy but playful banjo-led “Mailman”.
It is difficult to convey the variety of sounds and ideas found on Plutonium Blonde – no song sits in one place for long, and no ideas are recycled. Even the strange sequencing that has the record starting with two of its longest songs only adds to its enigmatic nature. This is required listening for anyone who fancies them self a fan of modern psychedelia.
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All Together
Pattern Is Movement
Home Tapes
The latest offering from Philadelphia’s Pattern Is Movement shows how sometimes a record can completely fall on its face after a rather promising start. This classically trained group boasts a fractured songwriting style that works as long as they try to ground the oddball arrangements by actually thinking the songs through and not just jamming one idea after the other. The first two tracks are successful – “Bird” has a tripped out vocal that leads the song through a remarkable amount of different melodic ideas in under three minutes, giving it an urgent feel that doesn’t outstay its welcome. “Peach Trees” boasts an infectiously noisy two-note violin riff in the choruses juxtaposing the pretty piano-led verses. From then on, cracks begin to show in the songwriting (starting with the forced and uninspired vocal refrain in “Trolley Friend”) that seems to get worse with each track.
Far from an abject failure, All Together has few songs that don’t at least have some interesting ideas, and in the latter half of the album where low points “Jenny Ono” and “Tragedy” are found, the song lengths are kept forgivingly short. The problem is that the adventurous nature present in even many of their mistakes along with their obvious virtuosic chops seem to add up to a product that is at its best somewhat uneven, and at its worse inane and unlistenable.
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Vernacular Violence
Slim Twig
Paper Bag Records
Vernacular Violence, the new 5 song EP from Toronto artist Slim Twig (who in true eccentric fashion writes and plays all the music himself) shows a lot of potential and many possible direction he could take in the future. A sense of high drama, along with insistently lo-fi drum machine patterns are the common threads that tie these brilliantly dark melodic pieces together. “White Fantaseee” is the strongest and longest track, and in particular brings to mind Bauhaus in more ways than just Slim Twig’s Peter Murphy-esque voice, and reinforces the notion that reverb is for sad people. Another stand out on this exceptional but brief offering is “Tormen”, making use of plucked violins, surf noise guitar and a fun little demented organ that that perfectly suits his unique vocalizations and dark lyricism.
Slim Twig is a singular artist making unique music, and this EP sets the bar very high for any future foray into recording that he may make.
http://www.myspace.com/slimtwig
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