This week, I saw an album review on Pitchfork, and before I'd even heard the music, I got a feeling from the writeup that I was really going to like this album. The band of the week is...SUUNS!!!
A young band from Montreal, these prog-rockers recently recorded an album, Zeroes QC, with Besnard Lakes frontman/uberproducer/my idol Jace Lasek. The combination of the two forces couldn't have been more perfect. Lasek gives the record an understated, spacious sound that allows the every little nuance to shine from a distance - like a glint of silver shining from deep under the sea.
So why are Suuns so great, other than because Lasek produced their album? Because the music has depth, it feels thoughtful, studied, measured, meticulous, dark, secretive, seductive, powerful, ponderous, and purposeful. "Arena" rides along a spacey arppegiated synth. As the song expands, it becomes more inviting, more exciting, slowly growing larger, more eerily beautiful, more haunting, until it reveals itself as a sleek pop song, though never too stylish for it's own good, just maintaining itself on the right side of the line be poseur and artful perfection. "Up Past The Nursery" balances between an almost cutesy bassline and Ben Shemie's whispered vocals, all backed up by that persistent, minimalist bloop-y beat.
Zeroes QC as an album holds together wonderfully, its experimental, instrumental passages never distracting one from the fact that Suuns are at heart a pop band. For lovers of albums like Dark Side of the Moon this is...fucking awesome, because, again, there's that *balance* so crucial to the experience, not allowing the experimentalism of the work to ever distract from it's enjoyability.
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