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.

Janzen has recently released a video for the song ‘October Mirage’. Filmed and directed by himself, it consists of home-movie style VHS footage which cycles through scenes of varying ordinariness. There are pumpkin carvers, band members and light shows, smiles and frowns and empty rooms. The shots sometimes blur or distort or rewind, making it clear you are watching a recording and wrapping the whole thing in a distant anguish, like looking back at places from which you are now locked out, times to which you can never return.

You can buy the album now from Legwarmer Records, on cassette via the Island Eyes Bandcamp page.

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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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Walha is what Wolf Parade would sound like if they traded in their punk influences and played around campfires. There is the rhythmic drumming and the ominous dual vocals and ‘ohhs’ and ‘laas’ of Krug et al., but there is also guitar strumming and piano tinkling and all sorts of clicks and rattles that invoke thoughts of wild spirits wandering ancient spaces.

The experimental flavour isn’t just restricted to the sounds, with the lyrics exploring some pretty weird themes. Soles says the songs are about ‘beach spirits, lakes, the ocean, water and stuff, lethargy, aching bodies, memory, myths, real lives, war, visions, and delusions.’ The lyrics, which are available to read in full on Bandcamp (something i always like), are poetic and dark and encourage not only repeated listens but further reading. Do you know who Bucephalus was? Or what Atrophos is? Neither did I.

You can buy Walha on Bandcamp now on a limited edition CD.

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Eric & Magill – All Those I Know (Actually released 31st Dec 2010. Forgive me).

(RIYL: “Folktronica”, Crescendos, Dirty Projectors)

The Fierce & The Dead – If It Carries On Like This We Are Moving To Morecambe

(RIYL = Post-Rock, Progressive)

First Nations – Black Beach

(RIYL = Folk Rock, Meursault)

Flashing Red Lights – Faster Horses

(RIYL = Indie Pop, Electronic)

Foxes in Fiction – Hospital District/Static Cults 7”

(RIYL = Ambient, Dream Pop, Experimental)

Frederik Teige – Elevate

(RIYL = Folk Pop)

Geotic – Bless the Self

(RIYL = Baths, Experimental, Ambient)

Glass Vaults – Into Clear EP

(RIYL = Ambient, Shoegaze, Dreaming)

HAPPY TRENDY – Die Young

(RIYL = Bedroom Pop, Lo-Fi, Electronic)

Headaches – Spooky Mulder

(RIYL = Electronic, Experimental, Aliens)

In Euphoric Company – People You Remember, People You Forget

(RIYL = Indie Rock, Broken Social Scene, Local Natives)

In Lieu – Fuck Crz

(RIYL = Post-Rock, Sigur Ros, Owen)

James Hoffman – Mill City

(RIYL = Acoustic, Folk, M. Ward)

Jeremy Lee Given – Arapaima

(RIYL = Indie Pop, “Bro-Fi”, Large Fish)

Jessica Jalbert – Paris Green (Single)

(RIYL = Melancholia, Dream Pop, Mirah)

John Statz – The Budapest Sessions

(RIYL = Americana, Alt-Country)

Kalle Mattson –Anchors 

(RIYL = Indie Pop, Folk, Canada)

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