Monday, July 29, 2013

MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: FUR TRADE - DON'T GET HEAVY

Smart, very smart electro pop from this new Vancouver duo, featuring Hot Hot Heat's Steve Bays and co-conspirator Parker Bosley.  This is intricately produced, with lots of bits, from 70's smooth top 40 to funky grooves to plenty of synth stabs.  Interestingly, there's always a core of a great little pop song in there, and then on come the studio tricks.

If you stripped away everything, you'd have a cool little retro duo, and the vocals are a big part of that.  Same Temptation, with its chunky, fat rhythm guitar and actual sax, is pure soul at heart, and the boys sing sweetly.  But really, it's more fun this way, because we've already heard lots of great 70's pop/soul, and Bays and Bosley have lots of wonderful ideas to make each track big and beefy.  There are cool breakdowns in the middle of tracks, such as In Between Dreams, with a major tempo change, when things get nice and spacey.  Still though, these are for the most part organic instruments and voices, it's just that Fur Trade manipulate them into brand-new sounds.   There's even a staccato guitar line in Praying To The Lottery Ticket God that will thrill all the six-string fans.  It would take a team of studio engineers and Daft Punk collectors hours to dissect each track, but the end result is an awesome listen.

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