People For Audio The New Ancients

The New Ancients, an album by Montreal's People For Audio, is pretty perfect for a very specific mood that lies in a different place within everyone. The mood where you want to listen to rock instruments glacially pick away at languid, repetitive phases with high quality texture, creating suspense as to whether they will build or laterally linger. The sticker recommends People For Audio for fans of Besnard Lakes, Do Make Say Think, and Pink Floyd, and this is basically accurate in descending order (the Floyd recommendation should be clarified to refer to pre-Dark Side folk damaged work). The same sticker hails The New Ancients as "another welcomed addition to Montreal's on-going epic art-rock legacy...ranging from humble back porch sing-along jams to grandiose psych rock masterpieces". This is also generally accurate, although I would strike the last word.

I have no doubt that devotees of the monumental instrumental rock scene Canada has gestated for the last decade or so will lap up every second of The New Ancients. The audience for this kind of patient, carefully crafted post-rock always impressed me at the record store, eagerly lining up to buy music unpublicized on a mass scale by artists like Red Sparrowes and Gregor Samsa, while I could only (much like much of my response to jazz) listen and admire the craft and musicianship while conceding that I lacked the attention span to fully appreciate it. This failing may color my response to People For Audio's music, but however fine it is (the whole album has a delectable sound, showing great care about creating its weary, exhausted pieces), I can't help but feel it is minor, fully immersing itself in the mood without hitting the transcendent heights of comparable artists. This is a welcome addition, but it seems more to enrich the textures of its genre than strive for something grand or new.

There is power to the music, and that is evident by the amount it sinks whenever a voice appears (not very much). The pleading, whiny male vocals make deeply felt music seem rather more generic and simpering. While they may reflect the same tones as the slowly twanging electric guitar plucking that dominates, they seem to sink the music into a much more generic realm. The instrumentals are all lovingly rendered and impeccably produced, but the refusal to explode over time goes from creating a sustained mood to an atmosphere of glum sameness. According to the referents above, one should know if they are likely to enjoy this. Otherwise, The New Ancients expertly plinks around the sonic territory mapped by other artists without truly distinguishing itself.