(3.5/5) Beacons is the long-awaited follow-up to Canadian collective Ohbijou’s 2006 debut, Swift Feet For Troubling Times. Clearly they were in no rush to release a second album, and it appears they have used the intervening three years to write and craft superior, multi-layered songs for their latest opus. The lengthy gestation process shows in the quality of their music in ways both good and bad; at times it can appear a little too laboured, at others suddenly fresh and breathtaking. Nonetheless, Beacons is one of those rare albums that needs to be enjoyed in its entirety (no iPod shuffle), and preferably on earphones as it’s rather delicate sensibility slowly effervesces throughout the album into sublime geishas of sound that nestle back down into tranquility.
Being described as an “orchestral folk indie-pop band” creates a niche for Ohbijou, with its seven members playing instruments as diverse as the banjo, glockenspiel, harpsichord, ukulele, mandolin, violin and melodica. And it is this melange of instruments that gives them their sad, wistful, ethereal sound, which wraps itself around frontwoman Casey Mecija’s fragile vocals (think a cross between Joanna Newsom, Nina Persson of The Cardigans, and Sinéad O’Connor). The lush sonic palette they create could be compared with the likes of Arcade Fire and Broken Social Scene, but Ohbijou sound like a band who have painstakingly eked out their own musical architecture. Lyrically, the album is preoccupied with the ‘Big City’ (be it Toronto, London or New York) and the attendant difficulties of living within the urban sprawl, set against the liberation experienced in nature.
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(4.5/5) On listening to electro-pop duo La Roux’s debut album one might be mistaken for thinking that it was 1982 again. There eponymous album is a glossy, almost sonically cold collection of completely electronic music – all clipped programmed beats, walls of synthesisers, tinny bleeps, and Attari-sounding midi effects. It’s as though its creators have lived in a cultural vacuum for the last twenty years, negating every musical trend than has come between then and now in favour of a sound from an era that grows more remote sounding by the day, encompassing sonic bedfellows such as Japan, Blancmange, Yazoo, Eurythmics, Depeche Mode, and David Bowie. But to describe La Roux, comprised of vocalist Elly Jackson and producer Ben Langmaid, as eighties pop pretenders would be reductive, because behind the shimmering beats and synthetic wall of sound are expertly crafted pop songs that marry well-crafted melodies and immediate chorus hooks with well-observed, angsty lyrics. They are not the sum of their production values – they are excellent songwriters too.
The album opens with their biggest hit to date, In For The Kill, which quickly defines the sound that most of the album adopts – clipped, stuttering beats, whirls of synths, echoing bleeps, and Jackson’s soaring falsetto. The brilliant use of ‘oooh-oohs’ that mark the end of each line of the verse make this song instantly recognisable, and the pattern of minor chords in the verse and major chords in the chorus set a template for the majority of the other tracks. The song is about putting one’s heart on the line in order for it to be vanquished or loved back. Tigerlily highlights the fact that Jackson’s voice is not all shrill falsetto, sounding defiant as she berates the eponymous character against a clash of drum machines. One of the standout tracks on here, the chorus suddenly shifts into a different gear with a ska-dub beat, and then the middle-eight drafts in a Vincent Price Thriller-esque monologue about paranoia. Genius. Quicksand ostensibly takes Prince’s When Doves Cry, cranks it up a notch, and soups up the synth and bass. Rather than being a pastiche, it reinvents the sound, as Jackson ruminates on the dangers of unrequited love.
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