Thee Speaking Canaries Songs for the Terrestrially Challenged (Scat)
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For one thing, the Canaries’ music displays all the wrong influences. Alternative rockers periodically rediscover unjustly neglected artists whose music subsequently influences the scene. Fifteen years ago, the music of the Velvet Underground was rediscovered and suddenly influenced innumerable bands. More recent rediscoveries include Big Star and Scott Walker. Currently, early 70s German art rockers like Can, Faust, and Neu are as de rigueur as analog synthesizers. But Songs for the Terrestrially Challenged bears the distinct imprint of some decidedly uncool bands. The Canaries’ loud, bristling guitar rock has little in common with the discordant, distorted power pop of indie-rock peers like Superchunk or the Archers of Loaf. Rather, it’s derived from the classic, tuneful hard rock of early Van Halen and Alice Cooper. In fact, the Canaries lovingly cover the former’s “Secrets” and “Gone Bad.” They’re also fond of stretching their tunes into long kinetic jams that recall Cream in its heyday (one of their medleys quotes the Cream staple “I’m So Glad”). The Canaries’ playing, though, is far more lithe and dynamic than that of their sometimes lumbering 60s forebears.
Another sign of the Canaries’ war on cool is that Songs for the Terrestrially Challenged is devoid of irony, the dominant mode of expression in indie rock. The genre is bloated with graduate-student-turned-guitar-player types who deliberately ridiculed and subverted the whole idea of rock ‘n’ roll with half-assed, tongue-in-cheek performances. But the essence of real rock music eludes them. Real rock music is about simpleminded, rabid, head-banging intensity–not smirking, self-absorbed cleverness. That’s why the Stooges were a great rock band and Pavement isn’t.
The Canaries are something of an anomaly in the indie scene because they dish out straight-ahead rock. Spacey synthesizer burbling, lethargic drones, fractured song structures, and free-form cacophony are absent in their music. Though it’s little more than verse-chorus-verse, A Major power-trio bashing, the Canaries deliver their rock with such over-the-top energy and conviction that it transcends and revitalizes a seemingly depleted style.
