Sunday, August 19, 2007

the Lonely Hunters Arrive


Calgary has been in the news frequently in the last few years: oil, money, jobs, environmental issues, oil and money. Sadly the city has largely taken a back seat to Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto (and even Halifax, Winnipeg and Edmonton) when people talk about the revolution in Canadian Indie Music. The Lonely Hunters, the newest Canadian band to watch, just may change all of that. After a few mail mishaps I've finally obtained and heard in it's entirity the Lonely Hunters new CD 'the Chaste are Chased'.

Appropriately "Dome Tower" the first track on their new CD begins with the lines
"Yet There is light in the oil man's heart
yet there is pain
and a candle lit with furrowed brow
in the acid rain"
The 9 song disc "The Chaste are Chased" is throughly listenable throughout. It is both great in the background when you're talking with friends and not thinking about it much and at the same time complex and lyrically poetic enough that you can sit and contemplate it when you're alone and it's pouring from your MP3 Player.

I wish it were possible to introduce a new band without making comparisons to others, but it certainly seems the easiest and most straightforward way to do it. So: Think Belle and Sebastian with the garage band rawness of mid-80's Throwing Muses ("Fat Skier" era). Then throw in the odd bit of Wilco or Niko Case, even a bit of New Pornos - little dashes of alt. country but not enough to throw them into this category.

You can hear and download a few Lonely Hunters tracks at their MySpace http://www.myspace.com/garethsband you can also go ahead and order the whole CD there for a whopping 13.99.

No comments: