Tuesday 28 November 2006



Memphis

To give my thanks to Jim (that crazy Canuck) for doing this whole merging bit, the first band I’ll be taking a look at will be from his cold, densely-forested homeland.


Memphis has some interesting history – despite being seemingly a “side project” of Stars frontman Torquil Campbell, it is much more. Campbell had played with the other member of this duo, Chris Dumont, throughout the 1990s, before Stars were born. After Stars gained some popularity, the duo got back together again to make music under the name Memphis.
Memphis recently released their sophomore effort, A Little Place in the Wilderness, through Good Fences, a small label out of Canada. Given that they make their home in that hockey-obsessed nation, that one of their members is in Stars, and that they work with Broken Social Scene and the rest of that crazy in-bred music scene (James Shaw of Metric actually plays with them on the album), you’d expect that they sound like Canadi-pop, and you would be dead on. Memphis has a “big” sound, and the music is straight-up pop. Setting them apart, however, is their excellent use of horns, and their ability to hide cold soundscapes underneath it all is a nice touch, too. While they haven’t re-invented anything, they’ve managed to modify a sound their own way, and make it very entertaining. This is best demonstrated by “I’ll Do Whatever You Want” – it’s fun Stars-esque pop with dark undertones and an interesting video (directed by Lemony Snicket!).

[MP3] [Video] Memphis “I’ll Do Whatever You Want”

[Memphis Myspace]
[Buy from AmpCamp]
[Find more mp3s at the Hype Machine]





by J. Di Gioia | 1 Comment »

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 28th, 2006 at 3:40 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

One Response to “Memphis”

Jim November 29th, 2006 at 3:41 pm

The crazy Canuck thanks you for the post, but would like to point out that today it’s a balmy 17 degrees Celsius (that’s 62.6 Fahrenheit, you Yank), and while yes, there is a propensity for trees in my home and native land, there’s just as many urban areas, and more donought shops per capita than any other nation in the world. :-)