Pop Pop Vernac, Oiseaux, and Bell Orchestre
Pop Pop Vernac
Rapid Fire // Self Released
Pop Pop Vernac’s new album Rapid Fire begins in medias res and never slows down. With nine songs and a total length under ten minutes, the band has stripped each song down to its essential elements, bringing ferocity, and an admirable level of variety to this short and spicy set. Pop Pop’s strength lies in their devotion to playing hot potato with the mic from song to song. With a less-talented group this might feel contrived, but Rapid Fire highlights each member’s style, and shows that each of the four songwriters deserves his time at the mic. It’s also impossible to imagine any of the members passing their songs along to one of the other vocalists. The four singers’ voices are incredibly distinct, and yet they’re all powered by the same PPV generator.
On the first listen, Rapid Fire sounds like a carefree punk rock blitz, but upon listening more closely, one realizes that there’s a method to Pop Pop Vernac’s madness. They’ve always been concise, crafting simple and urgent garage punk, but most of the songs in their catalogue breach the two minute mark at least. The brevity of the tracks on this album was part of the plan. Each song had to be about a minute long, and the last line in every song is the opening line of the song that follows it. This structure helps keep the album glued together despite its wealth of contributing songwriters. One minute songs also serve this project well, since the band has released a music video for each song, consisting of found footage clips spliced together. With such short songs, the band’s instagram followers can take in any of the videos in their entirety if they choose to put their scrolling on pause for sixty seconds. The video for each song includes part of the album cover so that all nine songs form the album cover as a grid on Instagram. Fans can experience the entire visual album on Youtube in one clip as well. Making your work seem impetuous while actually putting tremendous care into it is a punk rock secret weapon, and Pop Pop kill it with this project.
One of Pop Pop Vernac’s biggest triumphs is creating a sense of cohesion within Rapid Fire despite the band’s varied modes. They juggle flaming bowling pins of garage punk, new wave, 80s punk and more. While “Biscuits, Ham and Eggs” sounds like the early Elvis Costello/ early Hives mashup we’ve always wanted, “A Jerk” has flustered vocals and groove-defying stops and starts that recall the likes of Dead Kennedys. This album reminds the listener that punk and new wave started blooming in the same garden, and that distinguishing between bands with rigid labeling became a bigger concern later on. Hell, in 1977 Devo shared a bill with Blondie and Germs. Pop Pop Vernac blend various styles with punk rock attitude and new wave ingenuity. From the pummeling spoken word opener (featuring guest poet Micaella Joy), to the early hardcore snarl of the album’s final track, Pop Pop show that they’re willing to take risks as long as they get to play fast.
While some bands suffer from a surplus of cooks in their rock n’ roll kitchen, Pop Pop Vernac thrive because of the diversity of styles that comes from its juxtaposed songwriters. Like the mashup videos of these songs, the members come together to create something special as a unit. However, it’s not just the multiple songwriters that make Rapid Fire so satisfying; this is not a compilation. The album has four vocalists and a guest poet sharing vocal duties, but the level of passion never wanes. There’s an ego-defying understanding that everyone gets to sing and when it’s not your turn at the mic, it’s your job to channel the same passion into your bandmates’ songs. As a result they’ve created a thrilling, well-balanced barn-burner of an album.
- Devon Dozlaw
Oiseaux
A Comedy // Self Released
A Comedy is the first full-length release from Oiseaux, a band that might be fair to describe as a Regina supergroup; the members of Oiseaux are also associated with Surf Dads, The Steves, Mechadroid, and Beach Body, amongst many other excellent projects recently arising from the Queen City’s wonderfully incestuous and fertile music scene. Oiseaux have described themselves aptly as “literate and loud”, and A Comedy is an album coloured with shades of post-punk, noise rock, dance punk, and 90s college rock, with just a touch of mid-2000s CBC 3 indie pop zeal. Don’t misunderstand the title and think that this will be ha-ha funny; rather, this genre-expansive and -explorative record is comedic in its sharp, acerbic, and amusing examination of the human condition as inherently based in imperfection, frailty, and absurdity.
Within their genre-bending approach, Oiseaux takes a frame built on crunchy overdriven guitars (bass, electric, and baritone) and well-placed feedback, filled out by warm keyboard chords and driven along by frenetic drumming, and succeeds in having all of these pieces moving together in gloomy concert, sounding very much like the various lumbering appendages of one boldy grotesque form. While in turn each limb might twitch and tremor more than the others, it always melds into a compelling dance, with just enough of an off-kilter shamble to stay interesting throughout. A variety of accompanying instruments are used selectively but to great effect — a twangy pedal steel solo in “French Champagne”, an emphatic bit of piano chiming out in “A Knock Under the Table”, and a tortured saxophone solo that heralds the unravelling of “A Flea”. While it’s unlikely that during a listen of A Comedy you’d be able to put your finger on any reference point for long, at different points you might catch echoes of the tasty riffs of a garage-bound Blue Album Weezer, the psychedelic noise rock weirdness of Grinderman, or the somber fuzzed-out alternative of Catherine Wheel.
The vocal delivery shifts about as widely as the instrumentation, helping the mood of the album to vary as well — from a lively indie pop singalong on “French Champagne”, to fierce hardcore screams on “Initiate’s Song”, to a tender ballad in closer “Yr Bell/Colleen (Slight Return)”. At times, like on “A Flea”, the lyrics are not quite sung but rather spit urgently like spoken-word poetry, making Nick Cave an easy comparison. Within these variations, the listener never needs to wait long for another catchy melodic hook to emerge. The diversity of vocal sounds, with Oiseaux often layering upon the lead vocals by adding ethereal reverbed-doused harmonies or punchy gang vocals, is one of my favourite textural elements on this record. The approach also works to lend gravitas (or a touch of earnestness, where it might be needed) to certain vocal refrains, such as in the chorus on “In Neon”.
The lyrics of A Comedy are clever and illustrative, being laden with enough metaphor and allegory that it might warrant its own edition of CliffsNotes. In turns both self-satirizing and self-aggrandizing, and poured out with an emo sincerity, there is a lot to unpack, digest, and appreciate here. While emerging from highbrow sources of inspiration that include the classic epic poems of Dante, the Bible, and the writings of occultist Aleister Crowley, Oiseaux manages the tricky balance of being cerebral without falling to pretension. And even if you miss any specific literary reference points (as I’m sure I did), you will no doubt find amusement and draw empathy from the timeless tropes and themes presented on A Comedy. For me, this came especially in the moments that highlighted that shared human trait of erroneous self-importance: “I am a conduit for something too vast to see / Spend our whole lives claiming we can define it / When we’re mere specks on its outline.” Surely there’s a joke in there somewhere.
- Julie Maier
Bell Orchestre
House Music // Erased Tapes, Envision Records
So often, the best moments in music occur naturally during a spontaneous instance of improvisation, but too often those moments are lost before they are written down or recorded. Sometimes those discoveries just can’t be recreated without the organic and raw excitement of live improv. For their first album in over a decade, Bell Orchestre sought out those moments of poetic improvisational magic while the tape was rolling. With Miles Davis and Ennio Morricone in mind, Bell Orchestre made House Music as a celebration of musical exploration. A single improv piece separated into 10 movements, the album is the result of intense closeness and collaboration brought on by isolation as a group.
The album is built around a singular loop repeated throughout. On top of that modest prompt, the group flows together as they follow the path the music leads. When no instinct is wrong, every instinct is celebrated. Many moments of magic are found as their eclectic blend of instruments calls and responds to one another. A mix of horns, keyboards, electronics, strings, and drums creates rich layers of textures that blur the lines between countless genres. Every instrument pulls you in as each member searches the limits of their sound; slowly moving through subtle shifts of tone and inflection and exploring those revelations wherever they lead, ultimately resulting a myriad of sounds, textures, and dispositions often originating from a single note. Uninhibited freedom of sound was their only apparent compass, and every impulse is explored.
The mood shifts as the piece progresses, sometimes with focussed intent, often it’s arrived at gradually as a group, and sometimes they meander aimlessly before finding their footing again. The mood goes anywhere from an intentional driving march, to a gentle swooning ambience – sometimes optimistic, at others, foreboding. In movement “III: Dark Steel” the horns are anguished and strained, but in “VII: Colour Fields” they are gentle, dreamlike, and carefree. Despite its adventurous spirit, it never strays too far from accessibility and always remains remarkably listenable. House Music can’t be pinned down by genres or classifications, nor should it be; it’s a celebration of music that will speak to many who have experienced those same poetic moments in their own art. The rich textures and raw delivery will have you on the edge of your seat wondering where they are headed and what they will discover around each corner. It’s so good to have Bell Orchestre back.
- Clay Geddert
