Galleries

I didn’t expect much before listening to this new Grapes of Wrath album, High Road. I was forced into learning about the Grapes of Wrath when my sister-in-law gave me a shirt autographed by all four members from the early nineties. My knowledge of them is still cursory at best, but I have a deep appreciation for their album Now and Again. High Road has quite a bit in common with Now and Again. The songs here are strong, have dynamics, but are very overproduced.

General Dome scratches an itch as it pushes, pulls, and intrigues throughout its duration. Inspired by motorcycles, homemade instruments, warehouses and railroads, to call it a “curious ride” seems fitting. The project is somewhat genre defying, but familiar at the same time. Lead vocalist Arone Dyer delivers perfectly sensual and confident melodies that stick to your brain, while the music is equally confident in its spasmodic arrangements, exploding with purpose around every corner.

The term “indie pop” is an awful thing, innit? To me, it brings up connotations of smug twenty to thirty somethings drinking tea and talking about all of those books they were “into” during university. But, once and a while, a band like Veronica Falls comes out and gives the genre a whole new meaning. Replace the tea with whiskey and replace the book talk with a perfect melody/harmony combo and you’ve got Veronica Falls: indie pop for generation-self-aware.

With Valentine's Day only a week away, we've all got that one emotion on our minds whether we're taken or single: Love. Thus it only makes sense that The Shilohs infatuation-filled new indie pop record So Wild is out this week in anticipation of the holiday… whether they planned it or not! So Wild contains that jingle-jangly sound of out-and-out indie rock-ness that is the air that this Vancouver-based band breathes.