duggup

How can you go past a band that has song titles like “Home as a Romanticized Concept Where Everyone Loves You Always and Forever” or “A Sad Country Ballad for a Tired Superhero” and “In the Battle of Sun Vs. Curtains Sun Wins and We Sleep Until Noon” (and no I am not making this up). I sure as hell couldn’t.

Woodpidgeon creates yummy, bright and shiny pop with gorgeous harmonies drippig in reverb and a selection of instruments including guitar, banjo, truly wicked drums, a glock, piano, melodica and horns. And then there are the arrangements. Absolutely perfect and concealing a serious underside to the songs. One song is about depression and hyper-insomnia. This is what Hitchcock movies would sound like I suspect (if Alfred had been a musician that is).

Pop over to www.myspace.com/woodpigeon and press play on the beautiful “Songbook / The Sound Of Us Playing Together”, there is something about the vocals that hasve kept this on the MP3 player for weeks now. With the ethereal backings when the chorus comes around, the last lines lines of the song “turning back for one last look / I’m tearing pages from the book.” and the horn arrangements that close the song, well let’s face it one listen and you will just surrender, we’ve all been there.

Let’s finish with a quote from the BBC review…

Any album that begins with a song called Home As A Romanticized Concept Where Everyone Loves You Always And Forever, and ends with the deliciously tongue-in-cheek That Was Good But You Can Do Better, was always going to have something to recommend it. What is especially likable is that somehow Woodpigeon, thanks in no small measure to the engaging jangling juxtaposition of Mark Hamilton’s delightfully dour and lovelorn lyrics and sprightly, sweetly mellow music, makes the morose seem wholly palatable.

Morose? Hmmm I’m not so sure, melancholy absolutely and that’s not a bad thing.

Highly Recommended (did I mention they’re from Canada?)

Website at www.myspace.com/woodpigeon and woodpigeon-songbook.com/home.html

thatch is fascinated by guitars, music, guitars, production, silly noises, guitars and used to be a musician. Did I mention the thing about the guitars?
Email this author | All posts by thatch |