This self-titled release is Island Eyes’ first album, and fans of Janzen’s previous work will be pleased to find that he is still crafting exciting, experimental pop/rock music that incorporates a range of instruments and electronics. An obvious comparison is Spencer Krug’s Moonface output, especially earlier releases like Organ Music and Heartbreaking Bravery, although both acts are distinctive and unusual and probably share less in common than the majority of conventional bands.

The artwork goes some way to describing the themes and atmosphere on offer on Island Eyes, a mystical blend of nature and obscure, mythological imagery packed onto an island surrounded by sea. The narrative across the album has the feel of a classic quest – a pursuit of love, noble or otherwise, which begins on the very opening track:

“There’s a wind in my heart
There’s a sword in the air, on the ocean
I lay down, waiting for someone to love”

The entire album could be interpreted from this perspective, an epic captured in the protagonist’s poetic words or thoughts as he’s propelled across land and life by the voice and hands of his love (“As the morning sun wakes the sleeping wolves / I’ll be in your room; I’ll be in your home” continues ‘Pale Moon’). However, the odyssey is not a Hollywood movie with heroic deeds and happy endings. Instead it’s littered with confusion and menace, ominous imagery invoking random violence of nature and other forces, clear narrative replaced by the intuitive jumble of a dream. ‘Every House Is On Fire’ opens with a drum machine reminiscent of Handsome Furs and dives straight into the aforementioned unsettling imagery:

“I heard your voice inside the room
As all your storming clouds came in for you
I called your name, I called on high
But everybody’s houses are on fire

I won’t run, I won’t hide
In the dark of the night
Now I know, you were right
I’ll remain in the light of the sun”

If the first half of the album channelled a weird fantasy world then the second becomes dreamier still, as titles such as ‘You Had a Dream About Love’ and ‘October Mirage’ suggest. The latter again returns to the imagery of islands and swords, all shrouded in an oneiric fog like some fever dream of a would-be hero:

“To dream of the sea
Where I’m washed to the shore
With the clouds coming in
Like the waters before
I lift up my voice
To the ruinous waves
For the lights that once shone
Are beginning to fade”

The strange thing is that as things get weirder, you get the impression that the album is not really an epic at all. Or rather, it is an epic metaphor, an extended attempt to convey the modern-day feelings of the narrator through grand, legendary means. And the narrator could very well be Janzen himself – maybe the island in question Vancouver Island, the sea the Pacific ocean or the Strait of Georgia? What once seemed an interesting and magical tale becomes something more meaningful and unsettling: ‘Throw My Ashes Off the Pier’ deals with the admittedly morbid yet very real/common musings on how you want your loved ones to continue after your death (“O will you wait for me after I disappear? Or will you throw, will you throw all my ashes off of this pier, O my dear?”), while ‘Over Waves’ ends the release on an uncomfortable but cathartic note. “O I’m afraid of this heart,” Janzen sings, the track relatively bare in comparison to the electronic layers of the others, “I’m afraid of your ghost, I’m afraid of your love”. Here he confronts the uncertainty of every life, admitting his fear about pretty much every possible scenario while finding solace in the fact that this uncertainty binds us all.

Whether you want to listen to a fantasy, or a reality that can only be conveyed through the fantastic, this album will not disappoint. Island Eyes is out now via Legwarmer Records. You can grab a rather fetching cassette (see below) from the Island Eyes Bandcamp page.

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The album will be out sometime this Autumn on Outside Music. We’ll bring you more as and when we get it. In the meantime, Knight featured on this mix of Canadian music we made with the ever-reliable HI54LOFI, so why not give that a spin?

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Regular readers may be familiar with the sounds of Paul Stewart, the Canadian who makes introspective and atmospheric modern folk music (not unlike the Field Medic release we featured recently). Summering is a band from Vancouver of which Stewart is now a member, along with four other musicians with a variety of backgrounds, mostly from the more abrasive end of the musical spectrum such as metal, punk, techno and hardcore. These three tracks are intended as a preview of the bands forthcoming album, due some time this summer.

The album takes the formula of Stewart’s previous releases and stretches it panoramic, bedroom pop on a mountainous scale, a departure from his norms in all the right ways. The band build dense layers of guitar which, paired with rumbling bass and crashing drums, create something imposing, a monolith rising through the fog. I found myself thinking of earlier Wintersleep albums in the way they fuse melancholic indie with the noisy dramatism of post-rock. The tracks were recorded live at Monarch Studios in Vancouver, a decision that sounds to have paid off as the band’s thunderous energy is tangible.

If you want my advice, head over to the Summering Bandcamp page, download the preview on a name your price basis, and then sit patiently for the full album.

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We first came across ACAB Rocky through their split with Kneedlez (a release we featured on our Favourite Free Music of 2014 list), and now the Victoria trio are back with a release on Michigan’s Hacktivism Records.

Truce sounds like a real progression from their previous releases, with a lush mix of lo-fi shoegaze, indie pop and 90s emo creating tracks filled with riffs and vocal hooks. Opener ‘Matches’ plays like The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart fed through a math-y filter, with the refrain “I don’t know what you’re up to or up against” proving maddeningly catchy. ‘Nursery’ slows things down, opening with some admirable guitar work and developing into a laid-back song that dips a toe into psychedelic waters, before ‘Stella’, my current favourite, returns to the pop/shoegaze sound of ‘Matches’. ‘Stella’ typifies everything that makes Truce a success, a summer evening of a track, relaxed and slow and gilded with fading light, sad in a nostalgic sort of way.

This trend is continued across ‘Jane’, fuzzed-out synths providing a more immediate atmosphere, and ‘Backwoods’, where the drums become a little more ramshackle and free, straying toward garage rock territory. This all changes for closing track ‘Don’, the most minimalist on the EP, the focus on guitar and vocals bringing to mind the title tracks from last year’s album Sara.

Truce sounds like the sort of EP you will want to play as darkness falls in the warmer months, just sad enough to satisfy that weird sort of comfortable melancholy that descends with the summer sun. You can grab it now via the Hacktivism Bandcamp page, including on a rather lovely purple cassette.

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The compliation is pleasingly varied, offering a wide range of styles, all linked by the (admittedly subjective) ‘weird’ tag. Some of the songs, such as Goose Lake’s ‘Roses Hallowed’ and Bong Sample’s ‘Wintertime, and the Living is Breezay’, are just plain creepy, but there are other ways in which the collection maintains a sense of foreboding. Camembert’s lo-fi garage rock is immediately followed by Forrest McGregor’s vocal driven folk, the succession from scuzzy guitars to gentle acoustic strumming serving to heighten the sense of strangeness. Similarly Taiwan’s lovely summer jam is followed by the perfectly titled ‘Insane’ by Planet Space; You get that bizarre feeling of reluctance or fear upon seeing or hearing something normal out of place. The non-weird tracks become weird as part of the collective whole, that horror movie effect of placing brightness or happiness completely out of context, the way a stalker wearing a grinning clown mask is weird or the way Clockwork Orange’s ‘Singing in the Rain’ scene is weird. This set of songs is “Lynchian”, they get under your skin, sometimes for inexplicable reasons, and you sense that even when being familiar or ‘normal’ they are probably just pretending.

If sinister or unsettling music isn’t your thing, don’t be put off. After all  this is a compilation from 17 artists and each deserves to be taken on their own merit. Yes, the order creates a sense of strangeness but the Taiwan song really is a great chilled out jam and Wand’s ‘Mt. St. Helens’ is a fast-paced, upbeat folk song. You can take away two things from this release: a damn fine album and a whole host of new bands to explore further.

Weird Pop (?) from the Peace Country is available for free at the Peace Country Diaspora Bandcamp page, and be sure to keep an eye on future releases/shows by PCD on their website.

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Vancouver punk rock outfit Japandroids are back with another album. Fresh off the back of what sounded like a few very impressive SXSW appearances, the duo announced ‘Celebration Rock’ will be released on Polyvinyl Records on 5th June. You can pre-order it here.

You can stream the single from the new record, ‘The House That Heaven Built’, above. It sounds like a continuation of Post-Nothing’s noisy but jubilant sound rather than some of the heavier songs they released on their collection of singles (No Singles). I must say I like both sounds so hopefully there is room on the album for both.

Japandroids are touring in support of the new album (according to Consequence of Sound):
05/17 – Cardiff, UK @ Clwb Ifor Bach
05/18 – Brighton, UK @ The Green Door Store
05/19 – Amsterdam, NL @ Paradiso
05/21 – Bristol, UK @ Cooler
05/22 – London, UK @ Camp Basement
05/23 – Manchester, UK @ Soup Kitchen
05/24 – Glasgow, UK @ King Tuts
05/25 – Leeds, UK @ Cockpit 2
05/26 – Nottingham, UK 2 The Bodega
05/31 – Barcelona, ES @ Primavera Sound
06/11 – Seattle, WA @ Neumo’s
06/12 – Portland, OR @ Doug Fir Lounge
06/14 – San Francisco, CA @ The Independent
06/15 – Los Angeles, CA @ Echoplex
06/16 – San Diego, CA @ The Casbah
06/19 – Denver, CO @ Larimer Lounge
06/21 – Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall
06/22 – Cleveland, OH @ Grog Shop
06/23 – Toronto, ON @ Horseshoe Tavern
06/25 – Montreal, ON @ La Salla Rossa
06/26 – Allston, MA @ Brighton Music Hall
06/27 – New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom
06/29 – Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s
06/30 – Washington, DC @ The Rock and Roll Hotel
07/03 – Minneapolis, MN @ 7th Street Entry
07/07 – Vancouver, BC @ Biltmore Cabaret

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