(photo: Norman Wong)

There’s always been something about The Most Serene Republic that leaves me wanting, and I just can’t put my finger on it.  I love the idea of the band:  a multi-instrumentalist collective that flies in the face of traditional song structure and the rock-pop formula?  Sign me up!  Yet, oddly enough, I’ve never been taken enough with the music for it to stick with me, or to call myself a proper fan of the band.

I thought that maybe by the time I got around to hearing their third and newest album, …And The Ever Expanding Universe, my opinion would change, seeing as how they called in Broken Social Scene producer Dave Newfeld to helm the album.  Where their previous albums (Underwater Cinematographer from 2005, and Population from 2007) were chaotic and claustrophobic to the point where parts of them might be considered unlistenable, my hope was that Newfeld would be able to harness and focus The Most Serene Republic’s musical power.

But there are just some wild horses that can never be fully tamed, and truth be told, …And The Ever Expanding Universe is all the better for it.  Newfeld does bring a new dynamic to the band’s sound, that intangible quality he seems to have to make sense of a million rays of lights pointing in a million directions at once.  In Newfeld’s nimble hands, he brings as many of these points together to spotlight the exuberance and joyful optimism that made TMSR so endearing in the first place.  “Heavens To Purgatory” feels like a musical update of their first single, “Content Was Always My Favourite Colour”, as it’s one of the album’s catchiest numbers.  As such, it does stand apart from the rest of the tracks, but not in a way that detracts from the others.  This is quite possibly the most consistent on the band’s three albums, and their most cohesive.  My favourite moment on the album so far is the delicate tones of “All Of One Is The Other”, which reminds me of some of the more pretty moments on the Pink Mountaintops’ Outside Love album.  It may have Newfeld’s deft touch all over it, but it’s poised to be a pivotal moment in the band’s career, as it verges on the truly epic and cinematic.  They pull off the same feat with closing track “No One Like A Nihilist”, this time by turning the volume up and down, letting the song ride on the sonic waves it creates.  This is the direction I want to see them move into.

So the question remains to be answered: does …And The Ever Expanding Universe still leave me wanting?  Yes, it does, but not in the same way their other albums did.  Whereas before, I wanted the band to rein in all the chaos and confusion, now I would like to seem them expand their scope and range even further.  Newfeld has helped the band define their sound, and now it’s time for them to do as their album title suggests and expand their musical universe.

MP3: The Most Serene Republic “Phi”
Myspace: The Most Serene Republic
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