The Organ
"Thieves"
EP
Mint Records
Genre: indie rock, post-punk
Vancouver, Canada
Oct 30, 2008 |
Lean, beaty, focused and bouncy, the Thieves EP is a wonderful
posthumous addition to the sporadic but exemplary discography of
The Organ. It finds them still operating their creative change on
the tired post-punk-revival formula: Katie Sketch running the
gamut from regret to mild annoyance to hope and back again through
lilting melodies delivered earnestly in her ultra-formal choirgirl
voice, backed by sparse, elegant guitar tracks and a considerable
helping of (...) organ. They're like a '60s girl group that got a bit
depressed one day and responded by getting really into (groupthink
comparison oh yeah!) Joy Division, and then resolved to tackle
all their problems head-on through song. Less groupthink comparison?
Tune out the lyrics and they sound a bit like Cadallaca - girl
band, sounds mostly upbeat, has organ, check check check - with
slightly less urgency from the lead vocals. I'd hate to insult
Sketch by name-checking any specific post-punk-revivalist
vocalists (Paul Banks?) to make the comparison more precise,
because most of them are insufferable narcissists and that would be
mean, not to mention inaccurate. So I won't.
According to the band's mythology, they all started out on
instruments they'd never played before. But it's plainly obvious that
they're possessed by the rock'n'roll spirit or an airtight sense of
music theory or something, because they're incredibly adept at
sounding exactly how they mean. Like in "Fire in the Ocean," whose
frequent bursts of bitterness directed at people who should love us oh
like the ocean does are punctuated by relatively thunderous drums and
rough chord changes. Or the most epic track on the EP, "Let the Bells
Ring," which starts out sighing, "That's the way that it is/I lie
under a bell-shaped curve for being average," but ends up about as
triumphant as a post-punk-revival Vengeful Breakup song can, wavering
between longing and righteous mild annoyance with the assistance of
some sneaky counterpoint. And so on. Thieves blows by in 18
minutes and, after five punchy songs, vanishes in a cloud of wistful
acoustic folkieness that conceals a mission-accomplished statement:
"Oh what a strange and miraculous thing/To finally recognize what is
driving me crazy." We should all be so lucky. Way to go team!
the organ's
myspace
86%
youuuuuuuutube!:
fire in the ocean
Rhett Alexander
[Vitals: 6 tracks, distributed by
the
label,
released Oct 14, 2008] |
