Good video for the season…although as I am sure everyone would agree, the whole concept of a band playing in a field, with the camera circling around is a bit played out. The cynics like me can’t help but think about how much they’re faking…I mean they are being filmed pretending to sing and play their instruments. It’s kinda weird….contrived…But the band is good and it’s seasonal so it plays on Foxtrott. I like the pumpkins…nice touch…
Archive for the ‘Great Bloomers’ Category
Great Bloomers to Release Full Length
March 24, 2009
Great Bloomers- The Young Ones Slept
This track from Great Bloomers’ forthcoming full length is well worth a listen. The track is called The Young Ones Slept and the new LP has been named Speak of Trouble. It is being released on Maple Music Recordings, a tip of the hat to Canada’s burgeoning music scene. The recording and production of their new material is much more polished, possibly a sign that they have left behind some of the more Pavement-esque song structures that require a calculated measure of unevenness and low fidelity. Of course we will have to wait and see when the record is released in April. If The Young Ones Slept is any indication, we eagerly anticipate another taste of this indie-pop confection.
-FF
Great Bloomers- Great Bloomers (EP)
May 11, 2008
Great Bloomers
Great Bloomers (EP)
May 27th 2008 (iTunes)
Grifter Records
Canada has yet again dipped into the time tested tradition of folk rock. It is a beautiful sight to behold. The blank and too often standard canvass that the folk genre has become has allowed for heaps of redundancy, monotony, and predictability to seep onto record shop shelves everywhere. In the past as now, folk rock shines when musicians recognize this tendency and confront it head on, sometimes resulting, through experimentation, in music that on its face has little resemblance to its initial root. Acts like Pavement, Broken Social Scene, Eagle Seagull, Modest Mouse, The National, and Wilco all share this readiness to experiment beyond the initial structure of verse/chorus. Toronto’s Great Bloomers have endeavored to contribute to this style with the same reflexive perspective.
In less than 20 minutes, the Great Bloomers’ new self titled EP smears their biography thickly. Lyrically this EP serves as a collection of letters, never annoyingly saccharin, yet caught up in nostalgia and idealism. Catching Up opens the disc with an upbeat, high spirited pop track dressed in a symphony of feedback and speckles of unimposing harmonica. Black Rising Fire continues the EP with an awkward melody that seems lifted directly from early 1990’s pop rock, but as the song teeters it transforms into a bass walking Americana jig, which then descends into a choir of feathered voices.
The energy and musicianship of the Great Bloomers is to be commended. A criticism they may have to overcome would involve their flirtation with sing-song simplicity as in the intro to Market of the Night. However every time a song approaches catastrophe they pull it out of the water. The changeups are not schizophrenic; rather they are subtle shifts in pop sensibilities from banality to the road less traveled. This modal awareness is what makes the Great Bloomers a promising troupe. Look for their full length LP coming soon.
-FF
