The Lacking Details

What this band brings to the mainly-instrumental surf guitar disco potluck is exactly what you'd expect a band invited to the MISGDP to bring, but let's be honest for a minute: we don't ever want to run out.

Is it the analog synthesizer flourishes, or the gentle delivery with an aggressive intent, or the seamless shuttling between disparate elements that shouldn't work together? The band sounds perfectly familiar, yet completely its own thing.

Get ready for some uncomfortable oversharing, set to the tune of early grunge, with an occasional jazz or doo-wop idiom thrown in… it’s a bit of uneasy listening but it gets its hooks into you.

In this sterile brushed steel and gleaming plastic environment, underneath the tangles of tubing and wires and chirping electronic devices operating at their own rhythms, below the readouts and blinking lights, beats a mighty analog heart.

On background listening, it’s a charming bedroom pop masterpiece filled with enticing musical details and catchy melodies. If you pay attention though, you’ll notice the lyrics transcend sarcasm and irony and go straight to sardonic, a rare treat.

I am convinced that today’s Canada is much better at this jangly indie pop thing than the US ever was at the height of alternative music. This Toronto outfit will pull you out of your deep American misery faster than any prescription medication.

The best dub music happens when the flow and repetition, the interlocking arrangements, and the roots-heavy vocals all work together to make the time dimension an immeasurable elastic abstraction.

Information on this outfit is scant, but not required to enjoy their lilting melodies and careful close harmonies. These songs are like a cat that has become expert at sneaking onto your lap. Before you know it, they are nestled in and thrumming.

Jagged thunder aplenty, as this band tears through a set of impressively constructed symphonies of hostility. If you like the sort of music that makes you headbang, give this a listen but make a chiropractor appointment first.

Thirty years ago, I witnessed Al Jorgensen chug a bottle of vodka while getting a tattoo and waiting for the acid to kick in. Unrelated, it doesn’t sound like a lot has changed, and fans of this aggressive industrial music outfit should be pleased.