It’s true that one of the phrases you rarely hear whilst going about the activities of daily life is, “Hey, I could just do with some rather earnest Canadian indie rock right now – where dy’a think I could get me some?”
Undaunted however, Les Jupes (That’s The Skirts, for those of you who never did listen much in high school French) are determined to bring you something you didn’t know you wanted until they gave it to you – hence ‘Negative Space‘, a four track EP the contents of which are culled from a portfolio of around 30 new songs written since the 2011 release of their début album ‘Modern Myths‘.
‘Negative Space’ may sound a little…well, negative for your average canuck, given that things like four metres of snow don’t really phase them, and whilst the Winnipegians (?) are on the slightly gloomy side of glass half empty, on this batch at least their brew of slightly baroque post punk has legs that even they probably didn’t realise.
A key part of this is singer Michael P. Falk‘s throaty growl, a voice capable of taking tunes like ‘Save Your Friends‘ into a thing of maudlin gravity. He probably thinks it sounds like Nick Cave, although it’s closer to The Fray, but landing anywhere on that spectrum could be argued as getting something right.
Lyrically this isn’t cars and girls stuff – unless it’s about the former crashing and the latter leaving, as on ‘The Voices‘. The sense of vagueness gives everything a sort of poet laureate/secret agent sheen though, with ‘Hold Me Down‘s, “Bullet boys and their bastard clowns”, prompting an even more enigmatic cry to, “Go out and find a Christian home for things left unsaid”.
Nope, us either.
Closing out with the quartet at their most animated on ‘Interview With a Contract Killer‘, ‘Negative Space’ forms an invitation to a second album, due to be released next year, which Falk says will ‘sprawl’ a lot more. Whether this is a good idea remains to be seen: Les Jupes budget grandeur and earnest literacy are on this showing just enough to get them onto some serious radar.
Intriguing.
