Thursday, August 13, 2009

I Count Them All Each Day



The other day I got an e-mail (and it looks like CT Indie got the same e-mail, too) from a guy pitching his new band, Canopy. Now, I get a ton of similar e-mails every day-- your e-mail address becomes worthless once the PR companies get ahold of it and start passing it around-- but this guy was from Connecticut, plus he said he liked Brava Spectre and Estrogen Highs, so I figured that made him more than worth a shot.

When I clicked the "play" button on the first of the mp3s, a ghostly acoustic guitar riff drifted out with a Neil Young-like voice singing over it. Not bad for starters, but hold on; a distorted guitar/bass track kicks in, and now I'm thinking, "Hey, this is actually pretty good." The next song starts, "Underneath", and it's a dead ringer for Magnetic Fields-- not that I'm into Magnetic Fields all that much (okay, I own one CD), but it's good enough to make me want to keep clicking on the buttons. The fourth and last song, "Know", sounds like a laid back John Howie/Two Dollar Pistols track, or maybe something that would be on a Pete Yorn CD (okay, I own a Pete Yorn CD too, fuckit). I mean, none of this is lo-fi (a fact the guy freely admits to) or Home Blitz even, but it ain't bad either.

The hook to all of this is that the guy behind Canopy won't reveal who he is-- maybe he's in another band already and doesn't want to piss anyone off, who knows-- but he does all the recording and mastering and plays every instrument himself. Maybe someone else can figure out who he is from the cryptic photos and singing voice, but for now I can't. In any case, he says he wants to continue releasing new songs every couple of weeks or so, and in fact he's already got another new one up ("He Didn't Hide", which has a great distorted bass line, reminding me of "Holland, 1945" almost-- see the very bottom of this post).

If you want to hear some of these Canopy songs for yourself, you can either click on the individual song titles below, or download the whole thing at his web site here.




Canopy -

"Cheated Again"

"Underneath"

"Know"

"He Didn't Hide"


6 comments:

Chris said...

This isn't bad. You're right about the PR companies. I get rap and hip-hop promo ones. One of 'em keeps changing their email address as I've blocked them at least five times.

Brushback said...

I've never tried blocking any of the PR companies, though one of them sent out an e-mail last week "updating their database", asking who I was working for (??), if I've changed my address, and things like that. I ignored it, so maybe they'll just go away.

Not that the Canopy guy was PR spam-- he'd actually read my blog, and so forth. Don't wanna give the wrong impression of him.

Jere said...

I'm still trying to figure out who Klonez UK are!

Jere said...

Oh, and here are the two latest classic Danbury scene circa 8 years ago vids:

A young Tom, later of Guilty faces, interviews Malcolm Tent.

Jere's band covers Bruce's band.

Brushback said...

Fuck! Jere, I think you meant to put these on the "Disregard The Things I Said" post.

Not that they're bad here... but you can also put them over there.

Brushback said...

Canopy also sounds a lot like Woods, I think.