Wild Beasts (September 29 @ The Mod Club) are critical darlings, and it’s no surprise: they've mastered the ancient critic-pleasing formula of being accessibly, cautiously weird, and making it look effortless. These boys from small town England take a fairly standard-issue indie rock superstructure, i.e. guitar sounds and propulsive beats ripped from the Antics-era Interpol blueprint, but gut the whole thing and build it again from the inside-out around exquisite harmonies and Hayden Thorpe's so-good-it-must-be-evil voice. It's not just that voice that makes the Beasts unique, but the voice expresses neither angst nor joy; rather something best described as "a decadent pagan hymn to man, the great beast." If that makes no sense, then we've probably hit as close to home as we're going to get. The Greek God Dionysus would've put his seal of approval on this music for sure.
Eclectic, pretty and just a little bit sleepy, Ohbijou (September 30 @ Trinity-St. Paul's) is a real Toronto indie-folk gem. Their first album seemed intent on smelling like spruce needles, mining sweetly natural sounds and sunset harmonies to lull the listener into a waking punchdrunk dream. Their second glossed the production, but didn't stray too far from the core formula. Yet the appropriately-titled new record Metal Meets examines precisely what happens when you transplant their naturalism into a world of sonic skyscrapers, FM broadcast towers, and radiation-spewing power lines. That video only has 816 views by the way, which is a crying shame.
Oh, Foster the People (October 1 @ Sound Academy). What are we going to do with you? Our frontal lobes tell us that you took the formula that made MGMT's saccharine "Kids" (note: not the official video, but better) the biggest feel-good-hit/psychosis-inducer of 2008 — goofy whiteboy vocals, catchy as hell synths and danceability — and then blew it up into a whole album and called it your own. But our reptilian brains (along with the dozens of friends who have you lurking in their iPods) tell us that you're just trying to make fun music and we should get the musical poles removed from our nether regions. Either way, you now have the funnest-ever song about shooting your friends (runner up: "I Don't Like Mondays") and a music video sitting somewhere at the intersection of Mad Max Road, Saw Street and Lord of the Flies Avenue. Good job…?
Flogging Molly (September 29 @ Sound Academy) are, in our minds, forever associated with this song and its brilliantly out-of-left-field use by Martin Scorsese in The Departed. But as far as Pavlovian reactions go, being linked to one of the greatest living directors ain't half bad, is it? No, but really. You won't earn any street cred in the Annex by admitting you like Flogging Molly, but what if we told you that songs like this stirred in us a deep psychological yearning for the tragic, hardluck anti-patriotism of Ireland's majestic green fields? No? Okay, whatever.
Enrique Iglesias (September 29 @ Air Canada Centre) has carved a career out of his father's long shadow, mining golden pop hooks to… haha, no, we're not really going there. Psych! We had you going for a second there didn't we?
