Monday 08 November 2010



Through the winter

Make Your Exit remind me why I love music

(photo: myspace.com)

Every musical genre has an artist (or more than one) that epitomizes its aesthetic and style, and I know that if I were to even try and give you an example of one such artist/genre connection, I’d have upwards of a dozen comments citing alternate examples of equal worth and relevance.  Increasingly though (and thank God for it), genres are becoming less distinct from each other, and artists seem to cross the borders and boundaries between them as freely as Nexus card-toting Sunday shoppers. Where am I going with this?  Toronto’s Make Your Exit, a five-piece currently touring Southern Ontario, are the perfect example of genre splicing and category-defying music that makes it had to put them in a nice, neat box.  If “ambient experimental folk alt.country” were a stand-alone genre, these guys would be its poster children.

Their EP, Remind Me The Reason I Came just recently landed on my doorstep, and I’ve ushered it into my playlist with a welcoming heart and open arms.  That the record is nearly a year old already leaves me a bit embarrassed that it’s taken me this long to discover them for myself, but if I’d only been paying attention to my fellow bloggers 12 months ago, I would have certainly been on the bandwagon.  What strikes me most about songs like “Three Movements” is the way Make Your Exit take simple melodies and make them sound vast and complex.  They’ve often been referred to in the same breath as Fleet Foxes, and I understand where that comparison may comes from, but I hear similarities to  The Walkmen, Broken Social Scene, Wilco, and  The Acorn in these seven songs.  There’s an organic quality to this EP; it’s almost as if it were a field recording of the last days of summer captured and preserved in mason jars lined along a sun-kissed window sill.  If you ever spent your days trying to catch butterflies and your nights chasing fireflies, you know that it’s a delicate process trying to bottle nature’s beauty without disturbing it.  Make Your Exit make that seem effortless.  In their gentle and deft hands, these natural musical moments have been preserved for years to come.  Here I am, a year on from the EP’s release, savouring its preciousness as if it were a fresh new recording.

Mike Dellios, Make Your Exit’s bassist, tells me the band are currently writing new material, and I for one cannot wait to hear more.  If you find yourself in the same boat, you can find Remind Me The Reason I Came, along with their 2008 EP (called EP) at iTunes to help tide you over while the new material gestates.  Save your coffee and cigarettes money this week and spend it on these two records; there’s enough natural stimulants in these songs to last you through the week and beyond.

MP3: Make Your Exit “Leave This Town”
Myspace: Make Your Exit
Twitter: Make Your Exit





by J. Di Gioia | Comments Off

This entry was posted on Monday, November 8th, 2010 at 8:35 am and is filed under MP3. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Comments are closed.