Songs Of The Week #46

Rogue Wave, The Besnard Lakes, Dark Horses, Imaginary Cities, & Alison Rae...

Well hello again, MP3 junkies! Welcome to Songs Of The Week #46!

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the SOTW column, here's the scoop: TCDroogsma has been a devoted fan of The Current's Song Of The Day podcast since its inception back in 2007. He also has an incredible amount of free time. Seeing an opportunity, we've put him to work reviewing the songs he downloads each week.

As always, we strongly suggest that you follow this link and subscribe to the podcast yourself. It's free and it's fun for the whole family!

To that end, we also invite you to vote for your favorite song of the week in the poll to the right side side of this page. The artist with the most votes at the end of the week receives the validation that comes from winning an anonymous internet poll, arguably the loftiest height to which a modern musician can aspire.

So, Droogsy... thoughts?

01. Rogue Wave – College (from the album Nightingale Floors)

TCDroogsma:

     I'll be honest, I spent the first three days listening to "College" and trying to figure out why I didn't like it.  Then I remembered that Rogue Wave and Longwave are different bands and I should probably recalibrate my expectations.

    
     Spending the next four days with my new expectations my opinion of "College" changed from, "this is no good" (which it isn't if you think it's supposed to be a Longwave song) to "relentlessly average."  Lead singer & songwriter Zach Schwartz has built whole verses out of lyrics seemingly designed to be cryptic & deep but come off like nonsensical indie Mad Libs.  This is the first verse:

     When we go home keep to ourselves
     From all those gutter eyes
     Ending down in the ground because it always was
     And it always is
     The shadow we come out and it helps with our outside

     The fuck am I supposed to make of this?  It's utter gibberish.

     For better or worse, this Mad Libs approach is adopted for the music & hooks too, which standup pretty well, but offer nothing that hasn't been heard hundreds of times before.  Everything from the stuttering chorus to the quiet breakdown-slow buildup-last chorus is entirely predictable, which makes "College" the perfect fit for a radio station that claims to be open minded but understands that selling people the same thing repeatedly one of the first rules of business. 

Final Score: 1/5

02. The Besnard Lakes – People Of The Sticks (from the album Until In Excess, Imperceptible UFO)

TCDroogsma:

     Back in Songs Of The Week #42 I fell into the trap of judging the Gold & Youth single "Jewel" partly through the lens that they're a Canadian band and they sound very much like tons of other Canadian bands:  Clean sounds, hooks, keyboards, lyrics that are sharp like a pillow...

    
     Obviously, this isn't a totally fair thing to say as plenty of Canadian bands do not sound like this.  And hell, I'm from a city that leads the nation in synth-pop bands per capita (take that Brooklyn!).  Still, I think that statement contains some validity because, as I explained in that review, my opinion that they sounded "Canadian" came organically, as I drew that conclusion before finding out that they are, in fact, Canadian.

     Why do I bring all this up?  Well, The Besnard Lakes are from Montreal.  They play indie-pop that's soaked in keyboards, has a sneaky good hook, male-female vocals song by a husband/wife duo, and fails to linger in my head once the song ends.  I'm no longer capable of judging whether any of these songs is better or worse than the others, so I'm just going to give it a 2..5 out of 5 and move on.

Final Score: 2.5/5

03. Dark Horses – Alone (from the album Black Music)

TCDroogsma:

     I had never heard of Dark Horses before spending the week with "Alone."  After failing to see its appeal for a couple of days, it finally hit like a flash flood.

     Sharing the same synth-dance roots with bands like The Rapture & The Shout Out Louds (but with a slightly menacing edge ala that recent Savages track), "Alone" is a grower in the best sense of the words.  The hooks are more subtle than those aforementioned bands, but the songs rising and falling waves are more rewarding than most sugar-rush hooks.  Unfortunately, the song seems to suffer somewhat from poor production.  With a cleaner sound and a bit more dynamic between the highs and the lows this could have been a really great single.

Final Score: 3/5

04. Imaginary Cities – Bells Of Cologne (from the album Fall Of Romance)

TCDroogsma:

     A bouncy indie-pop song that leans on a great hook, some girl/boy vocals (though, admittedly, the male vocals are resigned to background status), some keyboard work, a nice clean sound... I wonder where Imaginary Cities is from?

   
     Oh, they're from Winnipeg!  Surprising!

    Alright, look, I'm not trying to be an asshole with this.  I have no desire to pick a fight with Canada.  I love Canada!  I love your peameal bacon! I love your pea soup! Your real maple syrup!  Your Mounties! Your Ukranian dancers! Your fiddlers! Your fiddleheads!  I love your moose, and your trappers, and your courer-de-bois! I love those funny little woodland creatures and your hockey players!  Like Wayne Gretzky!  Wayne Gretzky takes Pierre Trudeau into the boards... Trudeau's down... Good!  But I digress...

     I actually like most of these songs too.  "Bells Of Cologne" is actually good enough that I can distinguish it from that Besnard Lakes song.  Though, if I'm being completely honest, if somebody had told me this was a New Pornographers or Stars single I wouldn't have any reason to doubt them.

Final Score: 2.5/5

05. Alison Rae – Hide And Seek (from the EP Hide And Seek)

TCDroogsma:

      Alison Rae's "Hide And Seek" suffers from the misfortune of arriving in my iPod just a week after the stellar From Gods To Gamma Rays song "Burn Me Through."  Both songs linger in atmospheric acoustic guitar and lyrics of longing sung with convincing desperation by a talented female singer.

     "Hide And Seek" actually serves to prove the point I was driving toward in my review of "Burn Me Through."  I commended the production work on that song as it was transformed from a touching-but-average song via murky sounds that burst with clarity when the lyrics & chorus demanded it.  Conversely, "Hide And Seek" is the touching-but-average song that "Burn Me Through" could have been.

     "Hide And Seek" isn't a bad song by any means.  Rae's vocal performance is great, with double-tracked takes used in service of selling the hook and some nice Kim-Deal-Where-Is-My-Mind echoes thrown into the mix.  Combining that performance with a straight-forward guitar strum and some strings for window dressing leaves "Hide And Seek" as a lovely tune with an unfortunate release date.

Final Score: 3/5

There you have it, music fans! Another week's worth of songs downloaded, reviewed, and filed away.

As always, please keep in mind that neither Newest Industry nor its contributors is in any way affiliated with the artists above, The Current, or MPR. We're just music fans with laptops and a little too much free time.

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