Dump Babes, Opeongo, and Night Court
Dump Babes
niya kîminîcâkan // Self-released
On the heels of their well-received 2020 self-titled debut EP (named to the Cup N Cakes list of best EPs of 2020), Saskatoon “trash-pop” scavengers Dump Babes kick over the cans with their first full-length offering. With frontwoman Aurora Wolfe at the helm as songwriter, niya kîminîcâkan explores themes of colonialism, stereotypes, and Indigenous displacement and identity, alongside sentiments of self-deprecation and unabashed proclamations of dirtbaggery. Picking up on retro elements of folk-rock, glam, and disco, it all comes together as a sassy, unassuming, and groove-packed record that’s not afraid to get a little bit sleazy in pursuit of some fun.
Like other junk artists who forge new meaning from unique assemblages of discarded materials, Dump Babes seems set to prove that one band’s trash is truly another’s treasure. On opening track “Tangled”, they bring a touch of Hollywood western drama to the psych-pop approach, with driving hoofbeat rhythms, acoustic guitar flourishes, and a lonely bass riff that trembles as storm clouds of dark synth gather above. “Talk To Me” takes a bit of a turn with a disco-beat strut, serving up the glitter of glam rock and a complex percussive arrangement that’s sure to put some sway in your hips. On a reworking of a previously-released single, “Victim of a Good Time Redux” leans into hazy and cloud-gazing dream-pop territory, while follow-up “Syntax”, a bittersweet downtempo track with a killer bubblegum-grunge chorus hook, is an album highlight. “Bath With Friends” starts out as a sloshy dance track with a bit of an underwater B-52’s oddball beach party feel – as the title suggests, what starts out as a good squeaky clean frolic eventually takes a bit of a weird turn.
While you might expect a bit of a dog’s breakfast from this mix of genres and sounds, Dump Babes instead dust off some real pop music gems to pile up a whole that is greater than its summed-up parts. From disco-pop to dance-psych and textured acoustic ballads to cocksure junk-glam, like at any good rummage sale you’re sure to find something here that speaks to you.
- Julie Maier
Opeongo
We'll All Go With (The Will-O'-the-Wisp) // Self-Released
Keegan Trumpour is a singer-songwriter. It’s nearly as broad a brush stroke as you can get genre-wise, but the shoe fits for an artist who wants the music to stand for itself. Genre can be a structural/formal burden foisted upon artists for the conveniences of the algorithmic powers that be, and it's a tough pill to swallow for the music of Trumpour’s project Opeongo. Nodding to influences like Eilliot Smith and Neil Young in interviews, there’s certainly an old-timey folksy color to the music, an invitingly warm sepia-toned-velvet-painting-okie-dokie kind of gesture present in the songcraft and instrumentation, but there is also an unmistakable keenness for the textural, the ambient, and the outright experimental. On his most recent album We'll All Go With (The Will-O'-the-Wisp), the songs creak like wooden floorboards, moan and sway like a barn door in the breeze.
What may strike you first, as it did me, on album opener “Antipode,” is Trumpour’s wonderfully singular and expressive voice. It is a distinctive and melancholy sound, and here he sings of losing his sense of self, beset by morbid thoughts, pleading for a cure. Then part way through, a trickle of water sputters and flows from ear to ear, and fluttering synths swathe the soulful, tremolo-laden wurlitzer. It is an unexpected intervention, the natural and the synthetic crossing wires, antipodal worlds crossing over. “Dreadful Sorry Clemency” introduces the deft pedal steel work of Aaron Goldstein, who also produced the album. It's a forlorn tune, haunted by the lonesome spirit of its narrator, but it also throws open the front door of the album, introducing us to the big sound of a wide open sky.
Trumpour spoke in an interview about experiencing a profound loss in recent days, and the album is dedicated to the memory of this person, a close friend. Of the heart-breaking and intimate ballad “Maybe Maybelline,” Trumpour also said it was a personal favorite of this friend. I feel this is important to mention because it highlights something particularly special about the music of Opeongo, and that is the inextinguishable warmness of spirit behind these songs. Trumpour’s previous album, 2019’s Miasma, was released on his grandmother’s birthday as a thank you gesture towards her for imparting some of her musicality and wisdom on to him. The name Opeongo comes from a lake in Ontario that he used to visit with his family, when his grandfather was still alive.
All of this to say that this is music that unquestionably comes from the heart— at times, when playing music in these sorts of American/roots musical traditions, a performer’s style can come across affected, maybe even ironic: a smirk or wink behind a Southern-y drawl, a subversive take on the cowboy hat-toting guitar slinger. But We'll All Go With (The Will-O'-the-Wisp) is anything but self-referential, the furthest thing from contrivance. In fact, it may be one of the most purely, dearly sincere things you’ll hear this year.
For Trumpour, this one is straight from the guts, a deeply felt set of songs that tell stories, exploring a world beyond his own while at the same time reaching into himself. What arises from this alchemical self-excavation is a light piercing the mist, a hovering figure at the boundaries of vision, beckoning weary travelers through the fog. Though the path is uncertain, you would do well to follow the Will-O’-the-Wisp. He won’t lead you astray.
- Harman Burns
Night Court
Nervous Birds Too // Debt Offensive
Thank God for bands that get to the point! Case in point, Vancouver’s Night Court, who are quite content to deliver the goods without ever straying over the pop single-defining run time of two minutes fifty. Full of scrappy guitar noise and hooky tunes, Nervous Birds Too is the left jab of a one two punch that started mid-Covid as a home tape recording project that blossomed into a highly viable buzz band releasing on Debt Offensive and wrapping up their first Western Canada tour (with an Eastern leg coming in June) in support of this second half of their cassette “duology.”
Like my other recent fave from Debt Offensive, the self-titled debut from Toronto’s Motorists, there’s a strong current of 90’s Halifax scene pop running through this album, the combination of Sonic-Youth-ey noise guitar and Beatlesque pop reminding me keenly of Peppermint EP era Sloan, but there’s also a vibe reminiscent of old-school 70’s East Coast bands, particularly the Mass Ave power pop of Boston groups such as The Neighborhoods (“Shitty Confidential”), as well as some of the low-fi sensibilities of early Guided By Voices (“Titanic'' especially feels like it could have been pulled from Vampire on Titus) and shades of the early 2000’s garage rock revival. So, basically all kinds of good shit for people that like no frills, catchy tunes full of great guitar hooks wrapped in a scrappy, lo-fi aesthetic.
Ultimately, it’s hard to review this album without also taking into consideration the earlier volume, which represents the other half of a conjoined pop twin. Taken together, both halves prove a massive introduction to a clearly ambitious project that doesn’t need to pad their output with filler. These guys haven’t bothered to write anything other than “A” material, the proof in the eating being the staggering amount of earworms delivered over the course of the roughly 45 minutes it takes to digest both volumes. There wasn’t a single cut across the 26 tunes comprising both volumes that I couldn’t bop along to. Faves from Too include the ridiculously infectious “Surfin Iona” featuring lead vox from drummer and newest member Emilor (Pet Blessings, Synchromatics) and the trippy post punk freakout “No Can Do.”
The record is chock-a-block with positively deadly guitar riffs and bass lines, and it’s generally impressive how tight this band sounds given their recording project origin and relative newness, and I’m absolutely kicking myself that I was stuck at work during their recent tour date in my town. I get the impression that these guys would be fun as hell in person, their effortlessly catchy tunes being the kind of catnip that would have the crowd singing along in no time. My only complaint is with all these great cassettes being released I’m gonna be forced to trade in my van for something with a tape deck before I take my next road trip.
- Shaun Lee
