Reviews

Artist: Orienteers
Album: Orienteers
Label: Antique Room
Tracks: 10
Website:http://www.antiqueroom.ca

What's in a label? Does it confine a band, or define it? Does it confuse fans, or refine their tastes? Ottawa's Orienteers clearly like to have a place for everything and everything in its place. It's tidier that way, somehow neater for the soul.

Maybe that's why several of their songs seem to be about travelling - going away, coming back, getting stuck, working stuff out. And maybe that's why their music sounds right at home with the Space Rock label the band have attached to it.

This is about as far from Hawkwind, Gong and JP Sunshine as it's possible to get without ending up on X Factor. Think Galaxie 500 with the sound turned down, My Bloody Valentine with practice amps, Mercury Rev with a Chet Baker trumpet solo, Trinity Sessions-era Cowboy Junkies with a fuzz pedal, even the Velvets in the red morning light.

Hushed, hazy melodies so gossamer-thin they would break if subjected to vocal and musical treatments any harder than this sylph-like meandering. Beats shuffle and voices are rarely raised above a mumble, while songwriter Ben Wilson's piano sounds like it's being played in the next room.

In less able hands all this marshmallow musing would simply wash over the listener, but Orienteers' careful composition and engaging production manages to captivate, even hypnotise, with its gentle insinuation of perfectly formed song structures.

Space Rock, Post Rock… how's about plain old Good music?

Nick Churchill

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