2015: A Year in Music - EPs / Singles
Une année en musique / Un año en Música / Um Ano na música
While there are still several deserving albums from 2015 - which didn't quite make the cut or that I didn't get around to writing about (there's a serious mea culpa owed to more than a few artists in this respect) - having previously whistled through the Blog's eclectic and essential albums of 2015, here is the Blog's list of the EPs and singles that helped contribute to 2015 being an absolutely bumper musical year.
And where better to start than with another round of all those wonderful "Jangly guitars and female vocals..."
If there was an award for the most enjoyable EP of the year, "¡Fanzine!" from those lovable Austurians Helena and Nel would win hands down. With their trademark lo-fi fuzzed guitars, metronomic drums and great girl-boy vocal harmonisations - trust me, Los Bonsáis do vocals - that join hand-in-hand with Helena's seriously addictive vocals, the pair gave us their unique interpretations of four shamefully long-forgotten post-punk gems from TV Personalities, The Vaselines, The Pastels and Black Tambourines. With just a little poetic license ("Punks A Tiempo Parcial's" weekend punks were more interested in some choice C86 cuts rather than The Banshees or Swell Maps), the songs were remarkably faithful to the much-loved originals.
Cincinnati's Leggy are one of my "six degrees of Twitter separation" bands and their EP "Nice Try" provided a half-dozen kick-ass and crazily addictive indie-pop songs that were as good as any that were released last year. Every song was crammed to the brim with knock-out hooks that fought to outdo one another. Featuring a riot of 100 mph guitars, rib-crunching bass and metronomic drums, the EP took elements of surf-pop, R&B, garage-rock, a pinch of grunge and lashings of good-old fashion guitar-fuelled indie to create a rather compelling mix. Throw in Véronique Allaer's deceptively sweet - but with the kick of a mule - vocals, not to mention some cool sixties' girl group vibes and "Nice Try" was just the kind of record to make me go weak at the knees...
Chicago's Varsity have already appeared in the Blog's albums of the year, but their digital single "Cult of personality" / "So sad, so sad" pretty much assured they'd be making a repeat appearance. "Cult of personality" was the musical equivalent of a pinball machine, each flick of the flippers sending the tune crashing into another musical genre - psychedelia-inspired keys, nailed-on reverbed indie-guitar, discordant chord changes - and a coda to die for. Meanwhile "So sad, so sad" was a more downbeat affair which took elements of sixties female pop with C86 and Twee that were married to melancholy-tinged vocals that perfectly captured the mood.
Listening to bordelaise quartet Le A's EP "Pale Echo" I found myself hanging onto every chord and pedal change as their lingering shoegazy guitar intros careered head first into walls of pounding percussion upon which ethereal vocals were then expertly layered. Here was a band who - as I've eluded to - took all those classic Shoegaze elements but then added sombre synths and touches of psychedelia. With fusillades of crashing, reverbed guitars alongside Banshee screams, the aural experience at times offered a subdued hue of Black Metal. However, it was also apparent that the band had been trawling through the 4AD back-catalogue as there was an acute focus on the vocalisations - on an EP as powerful as this, vocals tend to get overlooked. Here angelic, honey-dripped and soothing harmonisations really shone through. But what made this EP really stand-out was the fact that the band took what is considered as a very "British" genre (albeit My Bloody Valentine hail from Dublin) and seamless sung it in French...
Another excellent Shoegaze-influenced collection, this time from Montréal's Salsa Cinderella. Their eponymous EP was a mélange that took shoegazy guitars added huge gobs of raw punk energy as well as dreamy synth-pop with gorgeous and ethereal vocals floating above a maelstrom of droning guitars. The EP also threw in a couple of hypnotic instrumentals - clockwork drums, effects-peddled guitars all mixed with synths and piano which resulted in the compositions that had the feel of an orchestral score. All of which proved that music can indeed soothe the savage beast...
The alter and alternative ego of Vivianne Roy - one-third of the Chiac-parlezing Les Hay Babies - Laura Sauvage's debut EP "Americana Submarine" was a compelling mix of Hay Babyish melodic folk through up-tempo indie-pop to straight-up chugging alt-rock. All benefited from lashings of guitar and Vivianne / Laura's distinctively smokey and seductive vocals. Not one to confuse quality with quantity, the EP clocked in at under a quarter of an hour, while the 1'49" of "Dirty ways to make your money" packed more punch than songs twice that length would struggle to achieve.
So when is an EP not an EP? When it's a pair of insanely poppy EPs (the aforementioned "Side A" and "Side B") from Montréal's The Muscadettes that resulted in an album's worth of top-drawer surf-rock meets post-punk and Indie. The band appeared to share the same musical ethos as acts as diverse as California's Bleached and Best Coast, alongside their fellow Canadians The Beverleys and Alvvays (indeed "I'm in love" may just be about the best song that the Cape Breton / Prince Edward Island quintet had never written). And while I could throw around eulogies like confetti, the biggest compliment is probably that despite "Side B" being arguably more expansive and diverse (the result of seven months between the release between the two), the songs are so frighteningly consistent that they could have resulted from one studio session.
And of course there were some excellent electro and synth-pop / synth rock releases, however there were three which really stood-out...
Toronto-based Richard Citroen and Dusseldorf resident Stephanie B - better known as Lola Dutronic - are not only everyone's favourite bilingual transatlantic electronic pop duo, they are also the experts in effortlessly and assuredly straddling pop's past and future. So when the pair dropped their sublime boppy and very poppy electro-pop cover of the Vicky Leandros 1967 Eurovision entry "L'amour est bleu" that was full of sultry synth loops, Noughties trickery and Stephanie's sultry multi-tracked and echoed vocals, I immediately snapped it up.
Bronswick - the Montréal duo of Catherine Coctu and Bertrand Pouyet - released in the shape of "Errances" a quartet of multi-textural synth-pop songs. that were at once dark, mysterious and bittersweet, yet at the same time dreamily seductive and richly orchestral. Mixing hypnotically slow and repetitive beats that wove in and out of dark swirling chords, the pair added R 'n' B, trip-hop and an indelible footprint of 80s and new-wave synth-pop. The end result was an EP full of intelligent and delightfully complex adult electronic pop that was dance music for grown-ups.
2015 saw Laurence Nerbonne - late of Montréal's alt-rockers Hôtel Morphée (a band who broke this blogger's heart of this blogger when they split at the turn of last year) - return with "Rêves d'été" and a song that packed layer upon layer of synths and beats to create a totally uncompromising slice of uptempo electro-pop. Add Laurence's distinctive and disarmingly seductive, rasping vocals, that were given the echoed and multi-tracked treatment, together with the most ridiculous addictive melody and here was a song to both announce and celebrate the arrival of summer.
Pop. Still think it's a dirty word?
Céline Tolsa's "Cover Girl" traversed the Rues between the light, frothy and totally infectious sound of sixties Yé-Yé, the rich musical songwriting heritage of a Legrand or Gainsbourg and tender, poignant chansons that were very much in the vein of Stéphanie Lapointe's achingly beautiful "Les amours parallèles." At times the EP sounded so authentically retro that it should have been driving around in a Citröen DS and smoking Gauloises Caporal; at others there are timeless and intimate - if slightly unnerving - melodies comprising just her honey-dripped vocals accompanied by haunting piano...
I was introduced to the debut EP of Montréal-based 'auteure-compositrice-interprète' Émile Cornut thanks to the influential Québec blog "Le Canal Auditif." Here was another collection that confidently mixed influences and techniques from several genres. Predominantly moody and melancholy chansons were lightened by inspired touches of electronica - broad sweeps of keys and bubbling electro-pop - that allowed for a richly expansive and freshly contemporary sound.
Back in the day, Lysanne Picard made bright, summery - bilingual - folk-tinged pop music as one half of Lizzy & the Orca. Last year she released a stunning solo EP, "Clowds", that comprised a quartet of incredibly enjoyable tunes that fused synth-pop and folk to create a quartet of incredibly radio-friendly, feel-good pop-songs. Featuring songs that were just made to be listened to with the roof down (the bright and breezy "Magic") to sensual folk-tinged numbers. However the standout track was "Girlhood" - an affirmation that #LikeAGirl is indeed a cause for celebration.
And then there were those EPs that can only be considered as Hors Catégorie and which unsurprisingly originated from Québec-based artists...
I should probably disqualify myself from waxing lyrically about the young Québecoise Marianne Bel. She is arguably one of the most talented Auteure-Compositrice-Interprète of her generation and whose EP "Lumière" once again held the listener spellbound with the most delightful poetry and soothing compositions. Following a gentle country-folk chemin mixed with the Latin influences so apparent on her earlier album, "Lumière" introduced us to a new collection of songs - stories - that were not only influenced by her affinity with both nature but also her folklorique roots.
Hailing from Moncton, New Brunswick, the Québec City-based Singer-songwriter Jane Ehrhardt released her first collection of French-language songs last year in the shape of the mightily impressive "Terminus." The EP really demonstrated Jane's confidence and musicianship as she effortlessly moved between haunting and evocative country-rock to dark psychedelic rock that featured rib-crushing bass, wailing guitars and flat - distorted - vocals, and all points in-between. At times sparse and melancholy, others richly orchestral, "Terminus" felt like an intensely personal and almost spiritual collection of songs and was all the better for it.
Let's just say that you can never - ever - own too many records that feature Chantal Archambault. So when Chantal and her partner Michel-Olivier Gasse combined personal and professional lives to form Saratoga, their eponymous EP was - as expected - a collection of the most thoughtful and intelligent - and yes - romantic - country-tinged folk songs that you were ever likely to hear. Every track was beautifully framed - clean and stripped-back - with just a simple accompaniment to Chantal's crystal clear yet heart-warming vocals and Michel's deeply soothing tones. An approach that helped to create the most beautiful collection of incredibly intimate songs that I would defy anybody who claims to listen to music with an open mind not to be totally enamoured by...
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