Canasta: "Slow Down Chicago"
Earlier today when perusing Bound Stems' MySpace I decided to check out some of their "Top 8" friends and the first one I clicked was Canasta. Turns out, clicking on Canasta's picture was probably the best decision I've made all weekend. It seems to me that Chicago has been pumping out nothing but great pizza and great indie rock bands for the past couple years. Like their pals Bound Stems, Canasta embody a very thick lush sound, using many different instruments such as: violin, clarinet, piano and trombone to flesh out very catchy, yet surprisingly intricate melodies.
Their self released debut album We Were Set Up, released last year, garnered heaps of acclaim from publications like PopMatters, Splendid and The Onion, but never really made an impact on the blogosphere, which I found to be very strange because I am eating this stuff up. Lead vocalist Matt Priest has an incredible range and I can't seem to pin down whether I think he sounds like Colin Meloy, Sufjan Stevens, or Freddy Mercury because he adapts his voice so uniquely to each song that it seems to always be changing. This song, from last year's We Were Set Up, has been described as "pure chamber-pop bliss." I'm gonna have to go ahead and second that.
[MP3]: Canasta :: Slow Down Chicago (Highly Rec'd!)
I was hooked by this song after just a few seconds of that opening organ line. Like I've said before (and who could really disagree?), a solid infectious keyboard or organ line can take even a barely average song and turn it into something great. Lucky for us, this song would be great even without the humming background keyboard, so it's just like the cherry on the top. Funny thing, I didn't even notice the horns in the chorus until about my fourth listen to this song. The fact that there's just so much going on that you're still hearing something new on the fourth listen is really impressive to me.
BONUS [MP3]: Canasta :: The Model (Kraftwerk cover) (Highly Rec'd!)
Buy Canasta records here
Canasata on MySpace
These guys are unsigned by the way, so to any labels reading this: What are you waiting for?!
Stumble It!
posted by Matt at 1:46 PM
5 Comments:
I've been listening to these tracks and the EP off their site all day. Great stuff. Some of the melodies remind me of James or early Radiohead, but way more variety in instruments. Thanks for the tip. I'm picking up their full-length.
awesome! glad you're digging them, i can believe theyre not more popular!
I discovered this band a while back on some other music blog.. first time I've listened to them in ages though; which is what your post made me do - rediscover :)
Shadowcat is my favourite i think.. the lyrics are just stunning...
"Jesus talks in red to separate the things he said"
...obviously referring to the editions of the Bible where Jesus' actual words are in red, with the rest of the Bible in black.
i love that song too, i hadnt noticed that reference though, thats pretty cool. i love the singer's voice so much.
i wrote about em when the record came out but with so many blogs it's harder for bands to get any tracvtion and make a dent in the ol blogosphere. slow down chicago was my anthem for awile (I'm right outside of chi-town)
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