Post-Rock Survivors
A Double Review
By Sal Hassanpour
A Northern Chorus
The Millions Too Many
Sonic Unyon, 2007
Do Make Say Think
You, You’re a History in Rust
Constellation, 2007
The new millennium proved to be an auspicious time for the Canadian independent music scene. A few years from the breakthrough successes of Broken Social Scene, Wolf Parade, and Arcade Fire (and so on), it was the alternatively-punctuated godspeed you black emperor! — and the post-rock movement in general — that was our nation’s calling card the better part of a decade ago.
It’s also the case that when a genre label is minted and then stamped onto a country, critics tend to want to brand groups with the same mark — everyone wants to call a movement, after all. Two groups that benefited from the music scene’s sudden penchant for anything that was instrumental rock were Hamilton’s A Northern Chorus and Toronto’s Do Make Say Think.
Both bands have released new material in 2007 and in both cases, it is their best work to date. Both have also ditched some of what got them attention in the first place in favour of more concise tracks that are, by instrumental rock standards, more pop-oriented — particularly in terms of more vocals.
Emerging in 2001, A Northern Chorus is a throwback to the kind of sound Sonic Unyon had built a solid reputation on by the late 1990s: epic Canadian dream-rock that effectively conveyed the nation’s sublime vistas and landscapes through long and largely instrumental tracks.
Starting with only a stuttered beat straight out of Hot Chip’s “Colours” and Stu Livingstone’s voice, opening track “Carpenter” makes it clear that The Millions Too Many is the band’s most lyric-focused effort. Soon after, ratatat snare-fills accompany the expected guitar explosion, held together by layers of deep bass and cello rumbles. On the following “Skeleton Keys,” Livingstone’s voice glides gently over a violin-and-cello riff not unlike the one that pulsed underneath The Smashing Pumpkins’ “Disarm.” Later on the same track, a guitar squall the size of the Rockies and one of the most cymbal-heavy percussion passages ever still can’t drown Livingstone’s soaring vocals. Played loud, it’s one of Canadian dream-rock’s best moments, and that’s saying a lot.
Lyrics are still the band’s biggest problem: “I guess we both need light to pass through the crack just to be seen” is just mysterious and well-worded enough to pass for existential without falling into solipsism (the airy delivery helps), but at the cost of not having anything rooted or substantial to say. Meanwhile, the title track’s acoustic strum and guitar-FX recalls Pulp’s underappreciated We Love Life and is the closest A Northern Chorus has come to indie-pop. Finally, the album’s standout is “Ethic of the Pioneer,” a middle-fingered giant-boss battle of a tune, although you’d hardly expect that if the quiet bass and echoed guitar hums that begin it were any indication; but by the time the hard-rock riff (a dream-rock “no-no”) reappears, supplemented with stratospheric brass, as the guitars hum the planetary spheres into perfect alignment, the listener knows The Millions Too Many is a keeper.
Do Make Say Think have released albums since 1998, and apart from being on Constellation (Canada’s post-rock epicentre), the tag has always stuck to them more naturally than with most. What has marked the band in the post-rock world is the specific way they introduce seemingly incongruent sounds that, through lengthy negotiation, later solidify into dynamic passages. It is this approach — literally playing a song into existence each time — which explains why the word “jazz” and “improvisation” have been assigned to descriptions of their music.
On their latest album, the band’s tactics haven’t completely changed (see album-opener “Bound To Be That Way”), but the new ones introduced on You, You’re A History In Rust share stylistic similarities with A Northern Chorus’ latest release. For example, the best track here also features a hard-rock riff. In fact, what makes “The Universe!” so exciting is its brutal simplicity: a single rusted-guitar churn (with some juicy sax) for five minutes. “A Tender History in Rust,” meanwhile, is the album’s acoustic-pop charmer.
Of course, the hubbub that surrounds You, You’re A History In Rust has to do with the first-time inclusion of lyrics, and the hired help of prominent Toronto singers like Deep Dark United’s Alex Lukashevsky and Great Lake Swimmers’ Tony Dekker. What’s great about the two vocal tracks on You, You’re A History In Rust are the way Do Make Say Think seamlessly blends the sung lyrics into their dense sonic palate, so that when the male chorus appears on “A With Living,” the track shifts into an impassioned hymnal. I was going to name-drop New York’s avant-folk Akron/Family’s penchant for dense folk harmonies as a reference here, but they’re already part of the track’s ghost-gospel. “In Mind” is a bit of a cop-out, though. This time, it’s the band’s voices but doing a walk-on cameo, and buried under the kind of sweetly-soft distortion that gets Sparklehorse fans wet for all that.
Despite that one moment of hesitancy — something that Do Make Say Think has never suffered from before — You, You’re A History of Rust remains the band’s most diverse album. What comes through more than anything else is the band admirably overcoming the challenges they set out for themselves.
So, while labels such as Temporary Residence and Constellation continue providing the world with post-rock, it’s good to see bands that were initially labeled as part of that movement — like Do Make Say Think and A Northern Chorus — grow in new directions, and do so by resisting the tag.
