Tag: Indie Pop

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Best tunes of 2003: #10 The Postal Service “Nothing better”

<< #11    |    #9 >>

If memory serves, it was Jezreel, a former call center colleague and friend, that got me into The Postal Service.

I had, up to then, only just discovered Death Cab for Cutie, Ben Gibbard’s primary outfit, and their recent album “Transatlanticism”. Posters of the telltale crow pulling on a strand of yarn from its cover was, for a time, plastering the windows of ‘Record Runner’, the indie music store I had taken to frequenting after relocating to Ottawa a few years before. The name and the image had piqued my curiousity enough to get me hunting down tracks on the Internet and then borrowing a copy of the CD from the main branch of the public library, which was how I discovered music I couldn’t afford to buy back then. Some time shortly after, Jez handed me a burnt CD* one day at work with the words “Postal Service” and “Give up” chicken-scratch-scrawled on it in blue marker. Taking it home, I recognized the voice but found the sound very different from the Death Cab songs I had been becoming infatuated with. Nonetheless, all ten tracks were ear worms and I was hooked.

The Postal Service was a collaboration between the aforementioned Gibbard and electronic artist Jimmy Tamborello, who also performed under the moniker Dntel. Their work together happened over a period of months during a time when Death Cab were inactive and their future uncertain. The two artists would send ideas back and forth on CDRs through the mail two and three songs at a time, which is where they got the idea for their name. Melodies would be layered on melodies, vocals layered on rhythms. The two really only worked together in the studio during the final mixing stage, the rest being done in isolation, collaboration and communication and conversation done old school but the end result was very futuristic in sound.

“Give up” is the project’s one and only proper album, released on Sub Pop records early on in 2003. They had discussed working together again after the album’s unexpected success and indeed, recorded a handful of tracks a couple of years later, but in the end, it was decided that the one album would have to stand. Its magical moment couldn’t be repeated, no matter how much they forced it, and magical it was. But though there’s been no new material to speak of, Ben and Jimmy have gotten the ‘band’ back together every ten years since and toured to celebrate the anniversary of the album’s release**.

“Would someone please call a surgeon
Who can crack my ribs and repair this broken heart
That you’re deserting for better company?”

“Nothing better” was never released as a single for the album but it grew to become one of my favourites nonetheless, reminding me of Human League’s “Don’t you want me”***, which was evidently a big inspiration for this song. The Postal Service track, much like elsewhere on “Give up”, hearkens back to the synthpop genesis of the late 70s and early 80s but with an ear to modern computer sounds, retro futurism, so to speak. It is distorted church organs echoing through a wind tunnel, rife with blowing snow, and then the twitches begin, computer glitches and erratic rhythms, all conspiring to get the body moving. Then, bass synths with LED spotlights do the rest. All the while, Ben Gibbard is plaintively trying to convince the object of his affection not to leave him, dressing up their relationship in optimism and hope, viewing things through technicolour tinted glass. Of course, like “Don’t you want me”, the vocals are call and response, two sides to every story. Seattle indie rock musician, and close friend to Gibbard, Jen Wood channels Susan Ann Sulley, and explains that there are reasons for her departure and that it really is the only course of action. Beautiful and real endearing stuff.

“You’ve got allure I can’t deny
But you’ve had your chance, so say goodbye
Say goodbye”

*The other way we got and traded music.

**I was lucky enough to get to see them perform the album at the 20th year mark.

***One of my first ever exposures to modern music, more on that another time.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2003 list, click here.

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Best tunes of 2013: #18 Daughter “Still”

<< #19    |    #17 >>

Daughter is a London-based indie pop trio that was formed back in 2010. Vocalist/guitarist Elena Tonra found herself needing a more full sound after starting out as a solo singer/songwriter and found exactly what she was looking for in multi-instrumentalist Igor Haefeli, whom she met in a songwriting course, and they later added drummer Remi Aguilella. A lineup stabilized, the group began recording and releasing music and performing live as word of mouth spread. They’re still a going concern and though their output has been meagre (3 LPs and a handful of EPs in fifteen years), it’s been quality stuff, all of it.

I got into the group shortly after the release of their debut album, “If you leave”, partially because of positive words that I’d read on the Internet and partially because I had seen their name added to the 2013 lineup of Osheaga and my friends and I had already purchased passes to go. That debut was on heavy rotation for me that spring and early summer (along with the other groups I was hoping to see at the festival) and I totally got into the heavy atmospherics and Tonra’s soft touch at the mike. Admittedly, I was a bit concerned seeing their set being scheduled so early in the afternoon on the second day of the festival. “If you leave” definitely has a late night/early morning feel to it, the kind of music that you can wrap yourself up in like a blanket and gulp down the dregs of your last glass of red wine, so I was unsure how it would translate under the bright and hot afternoon summer sun. Of course, any uncertainty was washed away by wave after wave of ethereal guitars and Tonra’s smiles and obvious glee and surprises at the amassed appreciate crowd for their early set.

“Two feet standing on a principle
Two hands digging in each others wounds
Cold smoke seeping out of colder throats
Darkness falling, leaves nowhere to move”

“Still” was released as an advanced promotional single for said debut album, but not quite a proper single. A crying shame, if you asked me because this song is a beast. It kicks off with a lonely guitar played in a vacuous space, a worthy accompaniment for Elena Tonra’s melancholy vocal delivery. Synths eventually wash in with a driving drum machine rhythm and it all feels like it continues to build, echoing crashes abound, an expectant explosion. But this epiphany never is truly realized. Daughter teases and taunts here, leaving you wanting, breathless and unsatiated, the song ending abruptly and forcing you to want to push the repeat button over and over again, just to see if, this time, they will grant that release.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2013 list, click here.

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Best tunes of 2020: #11 The Reds, Pinks and Purples “Forgotten names”

<< #12    |    #10 >>

Memory is a funny thing. And it seems to have gotten an even more bizarre sense of humour over the past half decade or so.

I used to have a great memory, being able to recall the names of every actor and every director of all my favourite films, having the names of all the great musicians and bands I love at my fingertips at the odd chance that someone might ask for my opinion or any music recommendations. It hasn’t been quite as reliable of late, some of that being related to certain medical issues that I’ve been recovering from, but some of it might just be my age, and even just the age we’ve been living in, with all the collective insanity of the last five years. All in all, my relationship with and my thoughts about memory have definitely changed and so when I think about it, see references to it in films and hear raps on the theme in music lyrics, I take note and ponder.

And even though it may not be the case, it feels like Glenn Donaldson, frontman and driving force behind The Reds, Pinks & Purples, also seems to have a complicated relationship with memories and nostalgia. His songs (and there are a lot of them of late) mostly sound like they are ruminations on some memory or other, whether explicitly or implicitly, directly through narrative or hinted at through the dreamlike quality of his music. Whenever I put on his records, I know that my mood is going to be quite nostalgic by the end, whether I started out that way or not.

I got into The Reds, Pinks & Purples with their third release, 2021’s “Uncommon weather“, and immediately went digging for more of their tunes. There was already plenty to find and there’s been no lack of new output every year, given that Donaldson has been quite prolific with this project, releasing over 8 albums and just as many (if not more) EPs since his first release in 2019. And the tunes have been consistently great, and consistent in their dream pop sound that hearkens back to heyday of late 80s John Hughes soundtrack material.

“I always said you were the thief
you’ll be a star
with a red guitar
you took from better bands we used to see”

Track two on “You might be happy someday”, the 2020 mini-album by The Reds, Pinks & Purples, is a spritely three and half minute wistful guitar jangle wonder called “Forgotten names”. It’s held together by a jaunty but cheerful drum beat, seemingly content to just hang out, cool for cats, simply drifting in all the reverb, but it’s there to tempt your toes to tap. Donaldson’s voice is typically plaintive, like a memory of a dream faintly remembered from a lemon-light sunny Sunday afternoon nap, the kind where you dip in and out of consciousness, you’ll never know which was which later on. It feels like a song about those people that have made a mark on us, like it or not, something they said or did coming back to haunt us at random moments, even though they may have only passed through our lives for a short time and though their names are long lost to us.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2020 list, click here.