Weaves
There’s two of Toronto’s most winsomely weird new releases and soaring Melbourne alt-pop in this week’s new music round up, uncovered as ever by Getintothis’ Patrick Clarke.
Though it’s something we generally like to avoid here in Unknown Pleasures, our first artist, Slim Twig, already has a precocious discography behind him as he vaults towards his new album. He’s even got a Wikipedia page.
So potent are the early efforts to be cut from Thanks For Stickin’ With Twig, however, his fourth album proper (though among a cascade of albums, split releases, EPs and compilations it’s his 22nd release since 2005), that we just couldn’t pass the release by, the pair we’ve heard thus far – Cannabis and Slippin’ Slidin‘ – that we just couldn’t pass them up.
Released August 7, the record represents a significant twist in approach from the Toronto auteur, a departure of sorts from the lopsided, though completely compelling, art-pop of his earlier material for a detonation of distorted sludge, thumps of bellicose drums forming a bedrock for an elephantine mid-air collision of thick, viscious guitar.
The new outing from his fellow Torontonians Weaves meanwhile, is a lighter proposition, though no less intriguing. Set against the masterful bad-trip soundtrack of earlier efforts like Buttercup it’s arguably the foursome at their most accessible, yet by no means devoid of the group’s now-consistently captivating quirks, winding spirals of squalling guitar and a richly left-of-centre vocal leaving a line well trodden between luscious left-field pop hooks and inviting idiosyncrasy.
A Warm Breeze, cut from last week’s new album from Melbourne’s Mallee Songs, finally, feels decidedly un-Australian, if such a thing exists. In a masterful balancing act of melancholy wist, understated soars of vocal melodics and stirring gusts of propulsive guitar akin most readily for this writer to Scottish UP#10 featuree The Son(s). The rest of the album, Natural Times never quite hits the track’s picturesque standards, though with such determined beauty on show at the singer’s best that’s weak criticism.
