Kiss Me Deadly

Misty Medley

(Alien8)

Record Review by Michael Byrne

There are two things to get over before this album is able to hit its mark.  The first one is Emily Elizabeth’s very odd set of vocal chords that, at first, sound something like a male falsetto, and then materialize into something like Blonde Redhead's Kazu Makino.  At both points, the result is strange verging on alien.  And they're an apt fit.  A certain friend pinned down this album almost perfectly: space disco.  On the track "Misty Medley," Kiss Me Deadly touch the best post-rock work of Montreal peers Le Fly Pan Am and Set Fire to Flames, where they all manage to ditch earth music entirely, if only for a moment, and drift minus the gravity of time signature and float in unrestrained melody.  This is one extremity, however.  The other is found on Dances 1, 2, 3 and 4, where the beat sneaks back in and reclaims all of those musical particles, and, without chucking that space sound, appropriates it into music that's guaranteed to pull your feet back to the floor.  The power of a strong independent bass line never ceases to amaze, and a band that knows how to use it as well as Kiss Me Deadly is rare and welcome in an indie field still populated by post-punk revivalists.  On "Groove" we get an unexpected treat: that dancy bass line complemented by the violin of Sophie Trudeau of Godspeed You Black Emperor! fame.

This is the second thing then: your presuppositions about Montreal music.  About the poppiest thing to come out of that (former) freezer has been The Arcade Fire, and Misty Medley is likely even more accessible and certainly more fun than Funeral.  Global warming's hitting eastern Canada hard this fall (it hit Western Canada quite a while ago: Young and Sexy, New Pornographers, the Buttless Chaps.  So very friendly.)  In the east, witness the evolutions of Broken Social Scene and Le Fly Pan Am, both bands putting out perhaps their best, warmest, and most accessible albums.  It's hitting what should be Montreal's most impenetrable scene, the bastion of post-rock pretense and chilly moods, Casa Del Popolo, launching pad of every band mentioned above and many others like them.  And now launching pad of Kiss Me Deadly.