Cheticamp
Coincidence
Cinnamon Toast
It looks like vinyl. It smells like vinyl. It even tastes like vinyl—Holy Shit—It is vinyl! Although vinyl sales represent less than 1% of all music sales, some record companies make it a staple to release singles on wax. Cinnamon Toast Records of Halifax Nova Scotia prides itself on pressing multi-coloured plastic and flexis (remember flexis? They were thin slips of vinyl often inserted in magazines and books). Vinyl is cool again! But remember: even when vinyl was popular, not all vinyl contained quality recordings. With the resurgence of vinyl must be the resurrection of bands that find vinyl a cheap medium to pump out absolute crap. Enter Cheticamp.
Cheticamp’s new release Coincidence/Kiss Me is a disgrace to the slow comeback of vinyl as well as to Cinnamon Toast. The band is made up of six members, two of which play on both songs (the others probably realized the shit Cheticamp wanted to produce and split after their first songs). The problem with Cheticamp is that they sound like nobody but everybody else including Neil Young, Dino Jr, Lush. The cool thing about listening to shit like this on vinyl is that you can be your own scratchmaster by ding as the Beastie Boys say “Cut the record back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, makin’ it scratch…but only under hip hop supervision.”
– Greg Andrusczenko
The Odds
Good Weird Feeling
Warner
For a Canadian band from the West Coast, The Odds are better-than-average. They like tp play, but not too hard, they like to groove, but not too intensely, and they love putting melodic hooks in all their songs.
Good Weird Feeling is The Odds’ third album, and it shows. They play together solidly and have an excellent sense of dynamics—essentially, they sound good. Their songs, however, need to cover a wider spectrum.
Most of the songs seem to be written using a formula. It works, but the arrangements get tiresome after a while. How many times can a listener be subjected to the same song at a different tempo and in a different key? The lyrics are different and the licks change a bit, but few of the thirteen songs on this album stand out.
It wouldn’t be fare to say that the album is bad. Some songs, like “Smokescreen.” “I Would Be Your Man,” and their live recording of “Leave It There,” are excellent. The Odds can definitely play. They can even rock. They just have to have a higher standard and get rid of the filler between the good songs.
– Jeff Haas
Otis
Paid to Suffer
Independent
Set your guitars on Medium Grind! Local band Otis drag us through the dank catacombs of ‘core on their first indie disc.
Local indie, you say? Can’t be good, you say? Fuck yerself and shelve the prozac baby: Otis is solid. Gives me the same feeling as an action sequence from a ’60s Godzilla flick—Mothra guitar grind and dread-soaked lyrics. Vocals skirt between the no-zones of growly and whiny. The songs are good (if mildly uninspired) sessions of rolling guitars and feedback. The louder you play it, the better it sounds.
It’ll be interesting to see where Otis goes from here. Like local industrialists Dasein, Otis should be one of the frontrunners in the next wave of Toronto bands.
– Frank Edible
Portishead
Dummy
Polygram
Pick up the CD and read a sticker on it that says the lyrics make Joy Division look like Mr. Rogers or somesuch nonsense, think “this could be interesting.” Next thing I know, somebody beside me is shrieking “oooh! They play that on CFNY after Nine Inch Nails!” and the alarm bells are going off. Bring disc home, grit teeth, put it on.
Not bad. Sort of Addams Family vs. The Jackson Five, sparse creepy music and drumsnyth (or a live drummer TRYING to sound like drumsynth) and some neato wailing from Beth Gibbons. Nifty. Second track (“Sour Times”) is similarly good. By the third track, the appeal is starting to wear. Spare eerie synth/groove and torch song vocals. Thennnk you.
That’s pretty much it. Geoff Barrow’s minimal music is weird enough to be engaging and poppy enough to groove to, but Beth Gibbons is a one-trick pony. If you like “Sour Times” a lot, and want to get Portishead’s Dummy, I suggest you tape “Sour Times” on a five-minute cassette. And flip it. And flip it. And flip it…
– Matthew Shepherd
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