I've Become a Budgie Believer: Duchess Says

I'll admit that I often get too wrapped up in keeping up with the UK and European music scenes to the neglect of my own country's music. This realization truly hit me last year when I was shopping in Spillers, the oldest record shop in the world, which is located in Cardiff. I started talking with the girl behind the counter, and like all passionate music fans, she wanted to recommend her favourites to me. When she discovered I was from Canada, she began gushing about a Canadian band called The Sadies, who she had seen several times in concert. I had never heard of The Sadies, let alone seen them even once. She looked a bit puzzled and disappointed, and I felt a bit sheepish. Ultimately, the style of music The Sadies played wasn't really my thing anyway, but it made me quite aware of how little attention I give to music made in my own backyard, and how I can very well miss bands and artists that I would love. And my recent discovery of Duchess Says, a band from Montreal, has proven this point to me all over again.

Self-described as "moog rock," the music Duchess Says creates falls somewhere between Sonic Youth, Robots in Disguise and Siouxsie and the Banshees, full of distortion, synths, and punky guitars. They've been releasing music since 2005, including the EP Noviciat Mere-Perruche, but I only just noticed them now via other music blogs where their debut album, Anthologie des 3 Perchoirs, is being lauded. Having listened to it (you can stream it and buy it at Alien8 Recordings), I'm going to join the chorus of praise. The album squawks and squeals with feedback while swaying to sleazy disco and new wave synths - at times, it reminds me of Descartes a Kant without the waltzy respites. One of the tracks making its rounds on the blogs is Cut Up, which is a blistering aural attack that leaves you torn between wanting to dance both the robot and the pogo. This duality of synthpop and punk continues through tracks like La Friche, which is awash with reverb as it alternates between something that could have been a Glass Candy track and unhinged banshee-like howls. The level of crazy hits new piercing levels on songs like CH.OB and Les Residents. A Century Old, is Duchess Says probably at their most calm, but then it picks up speed like a cyclone, grabbing more elements as it continues to build electronic layer upon electronic layer. Released single, Black Flag, which has also been remixed by Juan Maclean, is the most synthpop track on the album with a catchy chorus and a strong synth line. Like much of my favourite music, Duchess Says makes you feel like you're listening to someone completely losing their mind and not caring whether they find it again or not. In effect, you can dance your brains out to it.

To add to their quirky appeal, Duchess Says claim to belong to the Church of Budgerigars, which appears to be a budgie-worshipping sect. Perhaps the world would be a better place if we all believed budgies had the answers. Or at the very least, we could all just absorb ourselves with bopping our heads against mirrors. I would love to see our world leaders leaping into mirrors like a volleyball player heading a ball.

Duchess Says is one of those reminders that I should never give up on my own country's music. Looking no farther than the mirror can be wisdom.

Cut Up - Duchess Says

Black Flag - Duchess Says

More Than They Appear En Papier: These New Puritans' Beat Pyramid

Although These New Puritans have been getting attention for over a year in the blogosphere, I figured I would weigh in on their debut album Beat Pyramid, which will release in North America on March 18 on Domino (the Brits have already had the album for a month via Angular Records, which brought us the likes of Bloc Party, Art Brut and The Long Blondes - an impressive roster). On paper, These New Puritans seem inevitably like a post-punk band. Named after a song by The Fall and having their debut album produced by Gareth Jones of Wire, this band from Southend-on-Sea has been aptly compared to both bands. After listening to them, I will even add Gang of Four to this list of post-punk influences. However, TNP - who are twin brothers, Jack and George Barnett, Thomas Hein and Sophie Sleigh-Johnson - don't quite fold up neatly into a post-punk paper crane either.

TNP released a self-distributed EP in 2006 called Now Pluvial, which featured three tracks - Elvis, C 16th, and En Papier - that are now included in a modified form on Beat Pyramid. They were also involved in making a soundtrack for Hedi Slimane and the 2007 Dior Homme Show (as every music magazine has made particular mention of, attempting to link the band with some sort of fashion aesthetic). The hypnotic fifteen-minute track for this particular fashion show, Navigate, Navigate, along with a DFA remix b-side, has been released as a single in North America, preceding Beat Pyramid.

Beat Pyramid features a stunning total of sixteen tracks - of course in Pink Flag fashion, most of the tracks are less than three minutes long. In fact, several tracks clock in at less than a minute and serve more as transitions between tracks. No matter - there's always room for pretentious arty 30-second tracks of background noise. Not to mention the first and final tracks, ..ce I Will Say This Twice and I Will Say This Twi.., respectively, cleverly tie the whole album into a giant loop. While TNP have terrific minimalist/primal drumbeats, angular guitars, ticking-away hi-hats, and barking, often repetitive vocals reminiscent of Gang of Four, The Fall, and Wire, they also have synthesizer distortion filling in gaps and a more dance-punk feel than their post-punk predecessors. The frenetic track Elvis actually leans so far into this dance-punk direction, it could be a track by The Rapture. Other tracks like Doppelganger, a purely instrumental track, and Costume, which alternately plods and hovers behind a wall of sound, are slower and more shoegaze than jerky post-punk. En Papier, which begins in a jagged, minimalist manner but ultimately trails off into a spacey, distortion-filled jam, fuses both extremes of the TNP sound. To add further to TNP's eclectic sound, Infinity ytinifnI reminds me of TV on the Radio with its echoey drums and its surging, buzzing washes of sound.

As far as lyrics go, well...varied lyrics aren't exactly part of the TNP formula for me - they tend to stick to one main phrase and repeat it until it has firmly drilled through your forehead and taken up lodgings in the folds of your brain matter (example: "What's your favourite number and what does it mean?" from Numerology (AKA Numbers) and "Four of your pounds, cha, cha, cha, cha" from £4). I read somewhere that their lyrics are abstract and literary, but I think they're abstract like a calculus textbook. Not necessarily a bad thing - calculus can be crazy.

Are they worthy of all the buzz? I think they're worthy of at least two thirds of it. I look forward to hear how they develop over time (they're young yet) because they obviously don't fit into a neat trendy category like New Rave, nor have they taken the path of zero resistance (AKA the post-Libertines path). Their music is a cacophony of genres and more experimental than many of their peers. At the very least, you have to give them credit for having the credible influences they do. They are spawned from the same scene as The Horrors, but while The Horrors are a string of goth paper dolls, These New Puritans are like one of those paper fortune tellers you make as a child - you never quite know what you're going to get.

Elvis - These New Puritans

En Papier - These New Puritans

Costume - These New Puritans