Weekly Spins
Swoon Under City Lights
Slowdance
Light & Color
Cruising calm and clear out of small bars and cliquey venues of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, comes Slowdance –a modest indie-pop band breaking boundaries with their debut EP Light & Color.
First, don’t be put off by their deceiving band name, as I was. These guys aren’t about the tip-toed two-step, saving room for Jesus, or headlining high-school dances.
Slowdance bring an eerie, simplistic, and powerfully original, edgy flare to an otherwise saturated and over-done distinction. Hinting at covert ‘80s punk attitudes (Blondie… there’s Blondie in there somewhere,) while laying on the dark synth-wave vibes, and contagious pop melodies, their sound is almost exotic.
Did I say exotic?
One of the most attractive elements of the band is vocalist Quay Quinn-Settel (apparently a Zappa love child) and her commanding, wildly original vocals. Not to mention her bilingualism, alternating both English and French between songs.
The third track on this short EP, “Spell,” is dark, reverberated, but not droned out or lost behind a wall of sound. Instead Quinn-Settel’s voice pierces through, riding an elevated and menacing melody, while the rest of the band drives a trotting, synth-driven, and emotional machine all the way home.
Light & Color may be four quick tracks, and run less than 15 minutes, but in that small amount of time Slowdance leave their lasting impression. These guys could be a really big deal, really soon.
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Slowdance / Oct. 7 / Club Lambi (4465 St. Laurent Blvd.)
– Corey Pool
We Are the City
High School
Kelowna’s We Are The City have been on a pretty exciting artistic trajectory since releasing 2009’s In A Quiet World. That record stood out among the better, more fully realized artistic statements in contemporary Canadian indie music, offering a unique brand of multi-layered, progressive-tinged pop, with compositional vision and personality to burn.
Line-up changes soon beset the group, however, leaving remaining members Cayne McKenzie and Andrew Huculiak to adapt a new approach, marked by a noticeably streamlined sound, on High School, a follow-up EP originally conceived as a side-project.
New member Blake Enemark elaborates Cayne’s first, unadorned forays into guitarwork without compromising their appealing immediacy. Tempos jump and dance, stop and starting with a fantastic sense of play. It’s one of the great, understudied marvels of physics how Andrew – no imposing figure – inflicts the kind of punishment he does on a kit, and an incredibly fun one to watch in person.
The vocals still come across with earnest warmth and fragility, but Cayne is markedly less precious in his approach. Playing with tone and texture pervasively, he allows himself to get a little unhinged from time to time: shouting with charming faux-bravado, tossing in some bouncing staccato, whimsical melisma or simply trailing off mid-line. He lets his voice break, waver, even fall out of key if it makes sense to the moment. There’s an impressive, but unassuming bravery to the performance, and a genuine sense of humour, and it may be High School’s greatest provenance of growth.
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We Are The City / Oct. 9 / Divan Orange (4234 St. Laurent Blvd.)
– Ian McLeod
