TWO HOURS TRAFFIC – TERRITORY
- Author:
- Aidan Roberts
- Posted:
- Wednesday, 1 December 2010
In the wrong hands, the genre of power-pop can get very exhausting, very quickly. Thankfully the songwriting from this Canadian quartet is sound – and the tunes on this third album leap out of the speakers with defiant glee. Wedged somewhere between the college-fuzz of Weezer to the lyrical octave-hopping of The Shins, their songs are unusually catchy – not just referential retro “woo woos” either; lead singer Liam Corcoran’s melodies wrap around the plain lyrics with a cozy confidence, and it makes it all quite listenable. There’s tinges of the rockier side of Big Star in tracks like Noisemaker and Painted Halo, a hint of the staccato rhythms of 80′s Cure in Lost Boys, and the happy/sad bounce of Frente or The Go-Betweens in Jezebel. What works best here is the sequencing of the songs – we go up and down with these guys, and it’s all highly listenable. We’ll see how long their growing appeal lasts – in the meantime, the songs stand up to many repeat listens, provided you’re in the right frame of mind.
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Story posted on Wednesday, 1 December 2010, filed under CD Reviews. Follow responses via the RSS feed.
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