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Music Picks
Music

Psyched On Strange Magic

Even worn-out music critics are helpless.

Ron Coldham 30 Apr 2009TheTyee.ca

Ron Coldham has been a Vancouver-based music writer since before Nickelback moved to town.
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Behind the scenes at the bubblegum sunshine factory.

Maybe reviewing so much roots music has had an adverse effect on my pop sensibilities. Maybe I really have been ingesting too much singer-songwriter pabulum of late. Maybe listening to all those worn-out Woody Guthrie and Willie Nelson wannabes strumming worn-out strings on their strategically be-decaled acoustic guitars whilst slurring worn-out lyrics with anachronistic overtones has started to, you know, wear me out. Maybe it has all begun to alter my once well-honed musical tastemaker abilities. Maybe that's why it took me so long to realize how good The Strange Magic's new EP, Songs To Burn, is.

Whatever the reason, I feel as though my (admittedly initially reluctant) embrace of an album as progressive, hook-laden and borderline psychedelic as Songs To Burn could very well change all this. The genius of The Strange Magic may actually deter said doomed pop sensibilities -- if even only temporarily -- from beginning a slow, denim-clad descent into a one-sided cultural abyss.

Now don't get me wrong: I still love the folk and country music that I primarily review. I am neither selling my truck nor burning my Storm Rider anytime soon. (Okay, I don't actually own a truck and my Storm Rider no longer fits, but that's not the point.) I think I just needed a bit of a palate cleanser, as it were, and The Strange Magic have, in Songs To Burn, provided my ears with exactly that.

Formed in Vancouver in 2007 by vocalist/guitarist Ray Down, vocalist/keyboardist Kayoko Takahashi, and vocalist/guitarist David Milke (all formerly of The R.A.D.I.O.), and rounded out by bassist John Schubert, guitarist Steve Barmash and drummer Tony Koelwyn of The Awkward Stage, The Strange Magic deliver a rare but familiar goodness with Songs To Burn, exploring the depths of synthesizer-driven prog-pop while always assuring us our feet can still touch the bottom.

Produced by Kurt Dahle (The New Pornographers) and Todd Simko (Pure), Songs To Burn will have even the biggest of hayseed-stuffed hillrods tapping toes and playing air-synth on the dashboard of their rusted-out Ford Rangers while conjuring up audio images that kaleidoscopically slide from Grandaddy and Beck to Star Maps-era Possum Dixon and even Bjork.

When you're good, you can win over even the most jaded and conditioned of music fans. When you're very good, you can even win over the most jaded and conditioned of music critics. The Strange Magic are very good.

The Strange Magic play at The Biltmore (395 Kingsway, in Vancouver), on Friday, May 8, 2009.

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