Best of 2015: 28. The Most Serene Republic - Mediac
1/04/2016 08:53:00 PM
Canadian art rockers The Most Serene Republic have been quietly churning out quality music for over a decade now but are largely overshadowed by their musical peers (Broken Social Scene, Metric, Stars, etc.). I first happened upon them several years ago, when I became briefly obsessed with what is still probably their most successful and best album, 2007's Population (seriously, do yourself a favor and listen to "Why So Looking Back" right now). By happenstance, I was in the process of reacquainting myself with that album when I found out about the release of their first full-length in six years, Mediac. Happily, it picks up where Population left off more so than anything in between, revealing a reinvigorated band who are just as capable of enthralling their listeners as ever.
While not as staggeringly ornate or boldly experimental as their earlier work, Mediac still contains plenty of surprising moments to set it apart from the average indie rock album. The band's greatest skill lies in their ability to craft labyrinthine melodies that seem disparate but somehow end up fitting into each other as snugly as jigsaw pieces. Their compositions are laser-precise, almost mathematical in their construction. Take "Ontario Morning," which is like a scientific experiment in building the perfect pop song, so catchy that even its verses are earworms of the highest order. Of course, it's helped along by sunny horn blasts and Adrian Jewett's affable vocals, which are so naturally resonant they almost come across as digitally enhanced. "Nation of Beds" is just as catchy but shows off the band's weirder side, building up from hushed, off-kilter vocals to a bombastic interlude of strings, horns, and whistling, and, finally, a cut-and-pasted choir of transcendent "I"s and "you"s.
Other tracks are less immediate but just as immaculately crafted, and they often turn out to be more insidious than they initially seem. "Failure of Anger" is a surprisingly understated and folky tune, relying heavily on banjo, light percussion, and whimsical male/female vocal interplay, that, in its final minutes, explodes into a joyous cacophony of sound. "Fingerspelling" and "The Feels" (which is better than any song titled "The Feels" has the right to be) are heavier emotionally, and Jewett's voice has the depth required to successfully carry them off, but it helps that they're just incredibly tightly-written and performed tracks to begin with.
Honestly, Mediac is a very good album that only gets better with repeated listens, and I'm not doing it justice in writing at all. As it turns out, it's extremely hard to explain in words the exact quality that elevates The Most Serene Republic to a higher level than many other indie rock bands. The best thing you can do is just listen to the album for yourself and hopefully understand what I mean.
While not as staggeringly ornate or boldly experimental as their earlier work, Mediac still contains plenty of surprising moments to set it apart from the average indie rock album. The band's greatest skill lies in their ability to craft labyrinthine melodies that seem disparate but somehow end up fitting into each other as snugly as jigsaw pieces. Their compositions are laser-precise, almost mathematical in their construction. Take "Ontario Morning," which is like a scientific experiment in building the perfect pop song, so catchy that even its verses are earworms of the highest order. Of course, it's helped along by sunny horn blasts and Adrian Jewett's affable vocals, which are so naturally resonant they almost come across as digitally enhanced. "Nation of Beds" is just as catchy but shows off the band's weirder side, building up from hushed, off-kilter vocals to a bombastic interlude of strings, horns, and whistling, and, finally, a cut-and-pasted choir of transcendent "I"s and "you"s.
Other tracks are less immediate but just as immaculately crafted, and they often turn out to be more insidious than they initially seem. "Failure of Anger" is a surprisingly understated and folky tune, relying heavily on banjo, light percussion, and whimsical male/female vocal interplay, that, in its final minutes, explodes into a joyous cacophony of sound. "Fingerspelling" and "The Feels" (which is better than any song titled "The Feels" has the right to be) are heavier emotionally, and Jewett's voice has the depth required to successfully carry them off, but it helps that they're just incredibly tightly-written and performed tracks to begin with.
Honestly, Mediac is a very good album that only gets better with repeated listens, and I'm not doing it justice in writing at all. As it turns out, it's extremely hard to explain in words the exact quality that elevates The Most Serene Republic to a higher level than many other indie rock bands. The best thing you can do is just listen to the album for yourself and hopefully understand what I mean.
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