NOVELS

NOVELS is a project conceived by several Canadian dudes who range in popularity in the indie music scene. Personally, I only recognized the names Graham Wright and Luke LaLonde. The other three guys are Will Currie, Dean Marino, and Jay Sadlowski. In January 2009, these lads and some other musically-inclined people got together in Toronto and recorded an EP in one recording session. The end result, which is now available, is NOVELS.

Consisting of five songs, NOVELS clocks in at under 12 minutes.

-The first song, "This Wouldn't Be The Last Time," is two minutes of bouncy, jangly pop music. Very catchy, this opening song is probably my favorite of the bunch.

-The next track, "Mr. Foster's Teenage Daughter," reminds me of 50's pop and is a song you might hear for a slow-dance at a prom. Great piano intro and I love the harmonies ("ooh-wah-ooh") on this song.

-"Big Run" is the third track and I'm certain this is sung by Luke LaLonde of Born Ruffians. I'd recommend this track for people who loved Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's first album.

-"Record in Hand" is much slower, tempo-wise, than the previous tracks. Laid-back lounge indie-pop.

-The EP closes with "No Hard Feelings," which is sung by Tokyo Police Club's keyboardist, Graham Wright (I've just discovered that Graham has some solo music out which I hope to review on here in a future post). This last song is similar to the other four songs: jangly pop that goes by so quickly that even the track's runtime of 1 minute, 44 seconds, seems exaggerated.

My overall impression of these five songs is that it is a cohesive set of indie pop which everyone should listen to at least once. The good news is that NOVELS is available as a free download from the guys who made it. They are interested in having people burn copies of the music and give them away to other people so that their music may be heard. They also had a small number of limited-edition NOVELS notebooks with cd's included made up which they will give away for free. It's a great way to promote not just the music on NOVELS, but also their respective bands, and I wish them well in doing so. Now go download the EP and give it a listen.

www.okaynovels.com