Listen To: Chairlift, Does You Inspire You
Make sure you’re wearing a button down shirt. Put on Planet Health. Stand approximately eight feet from your significant other or an easy going friend. Summon up every memory of teen nervousness, insecurity, desire, and still innocent wonderment. Stare into your significant other’s eyes, smile slightly and wait for the same nervous smile shining back. Begin to unbutton your shirt and hope the action is reciprocated.
The rest is up to you, but if you’re doing it right you should feel like you’re in the penultimate scene of a John Hughes movie.
The rest of Does You Inspire You plays out in a similar manner that creates a sound that is definitely nostalgic, but without being pretentious. This point is crucial to the album’s success because if the music felt as if it was somehow making fun of The Thompson Twins, or Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark it would be funny, but easily dismissed.
Of course, if the album was a strict homage to some of the bands influences it would also fail. But it’s not. Rather, Chairlift has created an 11 song set of music that easily moves from up tempo innocence to down tempo dreamy pieces to a country influenced Don’t Give A Damn to a curious, but entertaining horn driven instrumental questioning (Cactus Palace). The album closes on the most solemn song of the album in Ceiling Wax. It’s slightly haunting feel and echoing vocals that ponder the decision to leave a place, or person, or anything forever. It is quite a departure from the thick metronome like ticks that open the album, which is a reminder of the range this album really possesses.
In the end Does You Inspire You is probably not for everyone. Some will unfairly cringe at the commonality between Chairlift’s songs and the songs they’ve tried their best to forget about. Then again those same people may be anxiously awaiting Death Magnetic.
Chairlift - Planet Health
Does You Inspire You is out October 28th through Kanine Records. Buy it now on eMusic.
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