Corridor - Junior

By Phillipe Roberts

Thrilling down to its triumphant final fadeout, Junior is the brilliant finale of Corridor’s ascent from ragtag Montreal punks to SubPop’s first ever Francophone signing. Listening to their previous album–the shimmering, shape-shifting Supermercado–it’s hard to imagine Corridor taking their grounded, elemental rock and roll sound any further. An uncompromising stunner, Supermercado’s carefully-crafted eleven tracks formed a distinct, ornately-detailed sonic universe, dense with the kind of golden melodies that could make any one of them a hit. With Junior, Corridor have achieved a bold new evolution of their style and produced a cohesive, invigorating album that’s far too energizing to listen to sitting down. This is the one you dance to.

Junior’s laser-focused continuity could be boiled down to the duress under which it was created; a week was all the band had to produce the masters in time for a 2019 release. That urgency translates directly into the grooves on the record, as Corridor have never made an album that sounds so focused right out of the gate. Trading Supermercado’s winding elegance for suckerpunch immediacy, the band dives decisively into opener “Topographe,” laying down a lush thicket of guitars as vocalists Dominic Berthiaum (also bass) and Jonathan Robert (also guitar) spar in reverb-drenched call and response. Drummer Julien Bakvis blasts through the wall of sound with a melodic drum part–if Animal Collective ditched their samples for guitars once again for a louder Sung Tongs, this might be where they’d land. 

The next three tracks conjure up more familiar sounds for Corridor, as they dig down into the hook-laden, dreamy indie rock that they know best with a new vigor. It’s a breathless sprint: the mysterious riffing of “Junior,” the gritty krautrock pulse of “Domino,” and the rambunctious, seasick “Goldie” with its heavenly synthesizer jam and detuned, ambient outro. Guitars are everything in a Corridor song, and these three tracks are as much an exhibition for Robert and second guitarist Julian Perreault’s deft interplay as they are expertly crafted rock tunes. The pair have never sounded better, and they push each other to symphonic levels of bombast. “Agent double” is especially bombastic, the duo playing off Berthiaum’s bass for a climbing post-punk outro that suggests danger around every corner. 

True to the spirit of their rousing live shows, Corridor earns every second of these delirious jam-outs. “Domino” in particular feels like it could stretch out even further, invoking the measured lullaby of Deerhunter’s “Desire Lines,” while piling on the feedback at the pace of Parquet Courts’ Velvet Underground-worshipping best. You’re left with the sense that the band had to be reigned in just before disappearing completely over the event horizon.

Synthesizer additions and the gentle balladry of “Grand Cheval” aside, Corridor sticks to their guns throughout Junior, preferring to augment their guitar-driven sound with effects when necessary, rather than bow to the impulse to burn it all down. These experiments, like the race car crashing into the opening drum hits on “Milan,” or the arena rock drum fills and skronking sampler solo that kicks “Pow” into the great beyond, feel necessary. They never crowd the band out of existence, or suggest any hesitancy. On Junior, everything lands on sure-footed instinct, precisely on cue.

As the instrumental fireworks crest on appropriately-titled album closer “Bang,” sending the band off into the sunset with Spaghetti Western guitars and a positively tear-jerking synthesizer solo, I find myself reflecting on the first time I saw Corridor live. Packed beneath the hardly eight-foot high ceilings at L’Escogriffe in Corridor’s hometown of Montreal, the four-piece whipped our swirling mass of bodies into a frenzy, song after song. Now, as they soundtrack their own curtain call, fading steadily for over 30 seconds, it feels like the end credits to this chapter of a whirlwind underdog story. Here’s hoping that this release–and the next–launches them into an even brighter future, bringing new crowds to their feet and into the air for years to come.

REVIEW: Alvvays - Antisocialites

Laura Kerry

“Drain the pool, the summer’s over,” Molly Rankin sings on the dreamy and delicate “Already Gone” on Alvvays’ sophomore album. If Alvvays' first LP—which contained the exuberant pop hit, “Archie, Marry Me”—was a jangly pool party, Antisocialites is the reflective daze that comes when clouds move in and all that’s left are popped pastel balloons in the grass.

Antisocialites is a breakup album. Three years after the band's first release, however, it simply represents a different side of the exact same coin. While their last work celebrated love with the specificity of fiction, the dreaminess of fantasy, and a touch of acerbic wit, Antisocialites borrows the same palette to mourn love (“Did you want to forget about life / With me tonight / Underneath condominium signs,” they ask hopefully with equal parts sharpness and haziness in the final song, “Forget About Life”). Through shoegazey guitars, bright ‘80s synths, and Rankin’s expressive vocals, Alvvays channel their characteristic romanticism into music for the start of fall.

In general, the theme reflects in compositions that are subtler and more subdued than in the last album. “In Undertow” drowns its sparkling synth intro in fuzzy guitars; “Not My Baby” is lofty but distant and melancholic; Rankin’s voice fades backward in “Saved By A Waif,” blending with guitars, layered voices, and a crisp beat; and the closer, “Forget About Life,” is a hazy anthem. “Hey” swirls with surprising turns of guitars, sound effects, and keys as Rankin’s voice floats and leaps. Throughout Antisocialites, Alvvays favor understated complexity over grand and easily gratifying gestures, weaving indie-pop textures out of calculated compositions.

Though more subdued, the sophomore album contains its fair share of what Alvvays does best: cathartic, hooky choruses. Soft and meditative, “Dreams Tonite” rises to a romantic refrain, asking, “If I saw you on the street / Would I have you in my dreams tonight?” “Your Type,” an uptempo pop song with surf-rock undertones, serves its chorus quickly but still makes an impression. And though “Plimsoll Punks” alternates between jangly and distorted guitars, or between a hint of punkish vocals and gentler, lusher ones, it ultimately finds its strength by hammering in on a true earworm: “You're getting me down.”

But Antisocialites itself is nowhere near a downer. Laced with stories—true or false—of getting kicked out of the Louvre for taking a picture of the Mona Lisa, pithy musings about seeking answers, and somber reflections about feeling disoriented at the end of a relationship, the album feels concrete enough to emotionally resonate and fantastical enough to sweep you off your feet. While summer may effectively be over, Alvvays offers a compelling alternative for the rest of the year.

REVIEW: Pop & Obachan - Misc. Excellence

Laura Kerry

“The city you love / Might even know your name / Or your birthday,” Pop & Obachan sing in the final song on their debut full-length, Misc. Excellence. Awash in the dreamy, upbeat haze of their pop music, the line is an optimistic one. The band—a duo, Emma Tringali and Jake Smisloff —live in Brooklyn, a borough in a city famous for its cool nonchalance and harsh anonymity. “Bad Way” ends the album with a very different portrait of that city, one that not only knows who you are, but celebrates your birthday with you.

The whole album pushes against the vision of New York—or living in the world as an artist—that deals in hip cynicism. The title Misc. Excellence came from the label on a second-hand tape reel that Tringali and Smisloff had started to record on last year, but it also reflects the album’s general ethos, with its dose of sunniness, hint of swagger, and general abundance of earnestness. Lest that description turn you off, though, particularly as the summer days of Real Estate, Alvvays, and the like give way to less jangly tunes, rest assured that Pop & Obachan handle their optimism deftly—and with near equal measures of darker material.

Misc. Excellence contains “Elora’s,” with its bright guitar and bouncy melody that resembles Tennis or Cults, but it also has “Picking Pieces” with ethereal vocals and spacier guitar parts that skirt the border between dream-pop and psychedelic. For every country blues- or Motown-infused chord progression and percussive shuffle on “Baby Greens,” there’s a wistful arpeggio, slide guitar, and gentle cymbal crash on “Take It!” On the upbeat “I Bet High,” Pop & Obachan sing about the confidence in putting all on the line, but here it doesn’t go well (“I bet high on a losing man”). Elsewhere, hopefulness is disguised as sadness; “I know in my heart / That it can’t stay the same,” Tringali sings over warm, somber keys, “But let my love remain.”

Pop & Obachan exhibit the same balance that they show in sentiment in their compositions and production. Part of the joy of Misc. Excellence is the pleasure of the sounds that they employ dexterously. Focus too much on the dazzling, Beach House-like guitar in “Sick as a Dog,” the weaving guitars in “Mononucleosis,” or the infectious melody on “Take It!,” and you might miss the bass, unsung hero of these three songs. Through two EPs and this full-length, the duo has developed a clear and unmistakable sound, but they don’t fear variation—whether it’s the introduction of the dry, tinny electronic percussion at the start of “Bad Way” or the fuzzier guitar solo that builds to the conclusion of “Picking Pieces.” With that kind of music, their optimism is understandable. As the title suggests, Pop & Obachan’s new album is excellent.

REVIEW: Dories - Outside Observer

Kelly Kirwan

Dories have taken '60s-inspired pop melodies and given them an atypical, post-punk edge. The Montreal-based four piece have found their niche in discordant melodies and low-key, if not indifferent, vocals—a sub-genre they've personalized and honed on their latest full-length album, Outside Observer. It's an apt title for a band that teeters between being pondering and blasé—kindred spirits to another prefix-dependent movement, post-modernism, in the way they shrug off convention for a more subversive, experimental bent.

Throughout the eleven tracks on Outside Observer, Dories emit a certain degree of intimacy. It's a plucky, do-it-yourself aesthetic, which makes it seem as if they’re a few feet in front of us in some quirkily-furnished basement, grandparental tchotchkes all around. It's not an amateurish vibe, just a spinoff of punk's underground, unfiltered persona. The vocals are often secondary to the bait-and-switch chord progressions, a hollow drawl rolling listlessly off the tongue, and on certain songs singing is absent entirely. Take the album's opener, "Pitt Hill Mine," which gently unfolds over the course of (roughly) one minute. It's a surprisingly subdued and minimalist track, drawn out in a low timbre. It's evocative of a muted, deep-sea sonar, a 77-second plunge into a vast expanse that feels both desolate and peaceful. It's a soothing springboard for us to begin with, before diving in to the more hurried pinwheel of tempos ahead.

Later on, we encounter "Arms & Legs," which even band member Josef McGuin admitted was difficult to perform at first. It’s a track that hits the ground running, with a repeated guitar twang keeping pace over a buoying drum set. For a song that clocks in at just under three minutes, the melody gives an impression of metamorphosis—it’ll rev up the percussion and then cut it out entirely, giving us a (comparatively) leisurely interlude based around twirling guitar notes. Then the drums come barreling in again, and once more we're propelled forward into a landscape that switches with the ease of a dreamscape. Woven somewhere among the beat, we hear Dories' signature monotone, "You’re talking less about where we are and your parents thoughts," with the later assurance, "You’re OK". These lyrics flutter lightly against the instrumental frenzy, and so they feel somehow subconscious. But they certainly linger.

For all the various genres and barely-subdued cacophony I’ve just described, Dories' songs are impressively succinct (the longest one lasts just over four minutes). They’ve managed to pick apart and repurpose elements of jangle pop, punk, and math rock into their own unique sound, and in the midst of all these references have carved out an identity that leaves a hell of an impression.

REVIEW: The Naenae Express

Laura Kerry

Legend has it that John Lennon wrote “I Am the Walrus” after a student from his former high school sent a letter informing him that the boy’s teacher made the students dissect Beatles’ lyrics. Lennon then set about writing his most opaque lyrics yet, including tidbits from acid trips, a Lewis Carroll poem, and a police siren. One biography says he remarked to a friend while writing it, “Let the fuckers work that one out.”

Sometimes, though, a song about a sea creature is just a song about a sea creature. In the bright opener of The Naenae Express’s eponymous debut, the guitar-pop band sings about a sea anemone. In a line with infectious phrasing, they say, “Sea anemone you’re no enemy of mine / Taking your time just sitting on a rock / Or hitching a ride on a hermit crab.” Repeating “you don’t bother me” and “what a nice way to live,” it might sound like the underwater setting of a children’s book if the music didn’t so readily resemble the sunny daze of so-called slackers such as Mac DeMarco—too easily evoking an image of smoking weed outdoors on a summer day.

And then again, maybe “Sea Anemone” is more than a song about a sea creature. In the same sunny tone, the song’s second verse says, “Since the ‘80s the Americans have been picking you up and putting you in a box…not where you belong.” Could it be a New Zealand-based band’s take on American greed and neglect of the environment? A metaphor for the pressures of modern life? Who knows, but it does seem that we should be at least a little suspicious; on The Naenae Express, nothing is quite as it seems.

Throughout the EP, the band has a habit of building up a contained little world then tearing it down. On “Rain Delay/Save The Bees,” for example, they tell a simple story set over a basic guitar structure about a sports match that is postponed for the weather then begins when the rain clears. As soon as the match starts, however, the narrative shifts to a cat on a fence beside the field that is more interested in watching the bees. All of a sudden, the chorus changes from, “we’re in for some fun” to a fiery round of “save the bees.”

Maybe then, the second song, “Dream State,” is the key to understanding, a meta comment on the starry-eyed world of their music with its sea creatures and buzzing bees. “In a dream state,” they sing, “you just make up the laws as you go along.” And maybe when the music builds in a fuzzy swell and swallows the voice at the end, it’s the real world busting in. And, along those lines, when “Overlander” breaks into that catchy three-note riff from the song “Brazil,” perhaps it’s not just a fun musical quote, but instead a nod to the use of that song in the Terry Gilliam film of the same name, which deals in dystopias and the blur between reality and dreams, and so on and so on…

Then again, maybe The Naenae Express is just a collection of delightful and down-to-earth little stories told in sun-soaked, jangly psych-rock, created not to delve into the mind, but to tune it out. In the words of John Lennon, let the fuckers work that one out.