Since 2009, Toronto musician, producer, and engineer, Michael O’Connell, has been at the helm of the exciting Canadian indie outfit Culture Reject.
After three releases in the span of a decade, O’Connell returns with an absolutely brilliant new 10-track LP, Breaking With The World.
From the LP’s first tracks to the final songs, O’Connell treats the listener to an amazing collection of indie pop-folk songs that span a spectrum of genres and sub-genres that include bedroom pop, lo-fi soul, slacker rock, post-punk and indie folk.
The album’s opening track, “Bail,” is a lazy, cool stroll featuring retro indie folk pop-inspired instrumentation, including horns, and choruses altogether with whimsical lyrics and sound effects.
The LP’s title track feels a lot like a Vampire Weekend track (in a good way) with its airy, upbeat tropical-leaning guitars and beats; academic-like lyrics (and the repeating of ‘breaking with the world’); thumping bass notes; voice-overs and dubbing vocals and keys.
The more melodic pop-oriented track, “Control,” feels like a lazy summer melody while the song “Aisles” is a more sinister, throw-back slacker track that sounds like it could be a lost Built to Spill track from the 1990s.
Next, the artful and beautifully melodic “Animal” may remind some listeners a bit of Matt Pond PA (and that’s a compliment). And unlike the title, the song is nicely controlled and upbeat; it’d be fitting on a soundtrack for a film or TV series. In fact, we can’t also help but to notice the similarities with other artists like L.A.’s Opus Orange.
The one-minute and thirteen seconds of “Reverse Flow” are given to a relaxing guitar instrumental right in the middle of the album. It’s placement there seems intended as a light intermission before the rest of the album.
On the soft and calming, “Same Change,” with its heavy bass lines, light guitar riff and Fleet Foxes-like vocals and choruses, the band shines through once again. This is one of the album’s better standout songs.
The track, “I’m Your Freak,” would be perfect for a Halloween playlist. It sounds like it even has some Moog synth sound effects mixed with horns and acoustics in a swirl of choruses perfectly followed by the piano-leaning, Beatlesque, “You’re Free To Love By Accident.” The latter track really tugs at the heartstrings – from the overall composition to the lyrical content.
O’Connell closes this terrific album with a killer, yet mellow, track, “If I Can’t Turn You On,” that is full of heartache, yearning, and emotion. A brilliant end to a fine indie album.
In addition to songwriting and vocals, O’Connell plays guitars and programs loops. The band’s bass player and beats maestro is Carlie Howell while Karri North contributes vocals. A large number of part-time and revolving band members on drums and brass have circulated in and out of the band over the years.
The band has toured extensively throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe and appeared at festivals like POP Montreal, Iceland Airwaves and New Yorks CMW.
But for a decade now, the core of the band has been O’Connell.
He manages to connect various genres, styles, moods, and feelings together almost effortlessly; the album is a collection, he writes, of “prose-induced, 60′s soul-inspired, lo-fi pop songs.”
There is much to appreciate and enjoy about Breaking With The World; it plays and feels like the ‘good ole days of indie’ when artists blended genres and styles freely; experimented with instruments, time signatures and sounds; wrote stories and poetry and intelligent lyrics to music; did not over-produce their recordings, and were not trying to shape themselves to fit into a box, but rather to make their own box.
O’Connell was helped by producer Andy Magoffin (Great Lake Swimmers, The Weekend) who mastered the album while Justin Nace (Alvvays, Andy Shauf) co-mixed with O’Connell.
Culture Reject’s roots go back to the heyday of indie in 2008 when O’Connell started the outfit as a solo bedroom project. The single that launched the band into the spotlight that year was the solid indie track, “Inside The Cinema,” with its early Modest Mouse and Afro-Cuban ensemble influences.
We originally featured that song in our second year of publication, way back in 2008.
Now that we’ve rediscovered CR’s music once again, we’re neck-deep into O’Connell’s must-hear-for-any-true-indie-fan’s discography. The album was released on Specific Recordings.
