vintage

I may still be suffering from a slight turkey stupor, so forgive me if this post is a bit incoherent: I experienced my first American Thanksgiving on Thursday night with a great big hearty dinner in Williamson, New York, just outside of Rochester. It was a good time, and of course my accent got made fun of when I said things like “house”. It’s fun being the only Canadian and trying to explain why we recently had an election for no apparent reason (I don’t know either).

SPEAKING OF WHICH, some absolutely crazy things are going on in our country at present. I will reserve my comment for later, as I just found out about all this today (don’t get much news about Harper and Friends when you’re down south), but perhaps this guy might actually get a turn?! Well, we’ll see.

Enough about that. Three weeks ago, The Bicycles released a terrific sophomore album called Oh No, It’s Love, and then followed that up a few days later with a smash hit CD release party at Lee’s Palace in Toronto. It featured a grab bag of musical guests, including Hooded Fang, $100, Forest City Lovers, Matt Murphy, Brent Randall, Sloan, Sebastien Grainger, and many others, and was probably one of the more joyful nights I have experienced this year.

I can’t comment on the entirety of the show in an unbiased way, since I was involved. The album features a horn section on many of the tracks, and I’m in it; since they wanted to play every song from the record (which they did, excepting one track, “Green Light”) they brought us back too. It was a total blast playing that show, since the Bicycles are an incredibly energetic foursome and are out-cuted by no one. Seriously, the most adorable band ever.

I did get to see a whole lot of awesome stuff that I wasn’t in, though, and it all added up to one terrific night. They backed up all those aforementioned musical guests Last Waltz-style (the Bikes, being their usual sugary selves, labelled it the “Last Schmaltz,” a continuation of the 2006 CD release for their first album, The Good, The Bad and the Cuddly), and seeing Matt Murphy and the Bikes play “10 Lbs” from the Super Friendz’ iconic Mock Up Scale Down was pretty amazing. Sloan playing “I Hate My Generation” was similarly terrific — both of these especially fun because of the excitement spilling off the stage from the four Bicycles. I don’t blame them. I’d be thrilled too.

The album is just as exciting as the show was. There are 19 tracks featured on Oh No, It’s Love — a pretty substantial length, even though all the songs are around 2 minutes long (the longest is 3:22). One of these tracks, though, is a decidedly unfunny comedy/spoken word track – not featuring any of the Bicycles – which really interrupts the flow of the record. It’s a bit like an unexpected shortcut, where you’re driving along a nice paved highway, turn off onto the bumpiest of gravel roads for a minute, and then are back on the highway again. Wouldn’t it be easier and more pleasant to stay on the highway the entire time? Yeah. In terms of the flow of the record, that’s a major flaw, but the only one I’ve noticed.

The whole thing sounds great, though. Like the previous Bicycles record, the vocals are mixed too low — it’s never possible to understand everything that vocalist/guitarist Matt Beckett is saying, but this time they included the lyrics! — but everything all together is a sweet and poppy package that leaves very little out. They try out a lot more musical styles and genres on this album, and bring in a host of guests that include Laura Barrett, Basia Bulat, Bob Egan (Wilco, Blue Rodeo), and Andy Lloyd to round out the cast, and it works really well; the surprising variety combined with the sheer number of tracks means this record can stay in your car CD player for a ridiculously long time before you get sick of it.

Have a listen: End of a Good Thing

I should be blogging reasonably more regularly in the next few weeks (or so I’d like to think, anyway). End-of-year lists are looming, and I’m starting to decide what my ears thought were the best things that happened to them in 2008. Got any suggestions? The comments section is wide open! See you soon.