Smooth grooves, minimalist beats, layers of melodies on the keyboards and a lazy and softly singing voice are the ingredients found on the aptly titled new album by Homeshake, “Fresh Air”. With a tongue-in-cheek musical sense of humour, multi-instrumentist Peter Sagar produces a cool record that will chill the end of our summer and occupy colder nights. It’s light and somehow a bit silly, but can also feel as boring if you are not in the mood for lazy and minimalist synth indie pop. If solos on a kid’s xylophone (like he does on the title track) isn’t your kind of musical joke, avoid this album like leprosy. I have smiled throughout the album, even after a few listening sessions. Whenever one of Homeshake’s song in a mix with a bunch of recent releases, I felt the breath of fresh air Sagar threw in the room. Songs like Every Single Thing could have been released in the years lounge was king. It’s cool and groovy. This being said, Homeshake’s music is very modern. The minimalism expressed on these 14 tracks are very well anchored in today’s style of indie electro pop that could be somehow located right in the middle of James Blake and Chromeo’s music. Warmer than the Brit and less fluo pop than fellow Montrealers. You can sense Sagar’s sense of humour when he picks up his guitar and plays cheesy chords first to open the album on Hello Welcome and again later, on Getting Down Pt II (He’s Cooling Down). On tracks like TV Volume, Sagar follows the same esthetics adding an ingenious guitar riff over almost bored light-drum playing. Otherwise, the album is filled with minimalistic synth-pop on which silence is almost as important than actual notes being played. Homeshake is the name of the project fully orchestrated by Peter Sagar, former guitarist in Mac DeMarco’s band. The Montreal-based musician has now released 3 solo albums since he left DeMarco’s stage band in 2013 and two cassettes. Of all the musicians around the popular millennial hero, Pitchfork’s Kevin Lozano evaluates Sagar as “always seemed poised to be the one to breakout.” Homeshake will definitively please the ears and minds of Mac DeMarco fans, as well as those who appreciate Beck, James Blake, Chromeo… HOMESHAKE Fresh Air (Synderlyn, 2017) -Genre: indie electro pop -In the same esthetics of Beck, Mac DeMarco, Seoul Buy the album on the band’s BandCamp page Follow the band via their Facebook page Listen to videos on the label’s YouTube channel Réagissez à cet article / Comment this article commentaires / comments
