Sharp, witty satire and parody abound in this third LP by the Canadian indie-garage-rock collective, playing with cliches across pop to rock with a striking set of clever, aggressively tuneful, curveball songs led by frontman and Zach Choy. His voice most resembles that of The Clash’s Joe Strummer, especially on The Medium, a meta-number with the snarl at the end of each phrase, such as “P O P and R O C K this is how it goes / It’s these four chords that everybody knows/ Catchy platitudes for the restless mind/ Peppy plastic melodies we hear all the time/ It’s a song about Billy, yeah he’s gone downtown / But to his surprise Sally’s not around”, with catchy and deliberately cliched tuneful pop complete with strings, and Grease-style doo-wop refrain about the shallowness of it all with call-and-response chorus. Blue Kite also has a pop at punk with : “I think that I was born so I could make this song/ And I think you were born so you could prove me wrong/ I think that you will point out how these notes are trite/ And I'll concede because the critic's always right.” Then there’s the piano-saxophone rock opera of Ballad of Billy, or opener Crack of Life’s finger-click, lo-fi reggae shuffle, with more absurdist lyrics: “Come all ye, join us / Let’s all have some fun / From microbe to the Matrix / We’ll outlive our sun!”. Closer Lost on The Red Mile is a slow-build 8-minute, proggy but rather beautiful track with vivid, moving and vivid lines, such as “When I look at fossils/ I feel so accomplished/ Watch how ill join them/ Will you be my apostle. / Recount my experience/ And all that was in between/ From Veda to Science/ Augustine - Mujahideen. / The facts are a matter / Of fiction on platters/ Served to reduce strife/ In this pulsating crack of life.” Filled with surprise turns and oddities, this is a restless, unique release. Out on Jagjaguwar.
New to comment? It is quick and easy. You just need to login to Disqus once. All is explained in About/FAQs ...
Feel free to recommend more new albums and comment below. You can also use the contact page, or find more on social media: Song Bar Twitter, Song Bar Facebook. Song Bar YouTube, and Song Bar Instagram. Please subscribe, follow and share.
Song Bar is non-profit and is simply about sharing great music. We don’t do clickbait or advertisements. Please make any donation to help keep the Bar running: