Thursday 08 September 2011
Recovery mode
About a year ago, I got all hot and bothered by The Rest‘s single, “John Huston”, released as the precursor to their third LP, SEESAW. At the time, I reported that the LP wouldn’t be out until some time in 2011, but reports out of The Rest HQ since then have led me to believe that Seesaw wasn’t going to make it into our hands before the end of this calendar year. In fact, things got eerily quiet after “John Huston” came out, leading me to fear the worst: a) either The Rest had broken up, or b) something happened to the SEESAW recordings.
Turns out it was the latter. Yesterday the band posted the following over at their blog:
At the end of last winter, we thought we were a few weeks away from completing our latest album, SEESAW, until a hard drive “glitch” deleted every last piece of it. After a few months of false starts and false hopes, SEESAW eventually found its way to the same company responsible for airplane black box recovery. Almost five months after the process began, we miraculously had our album back. I actually laughed hysterically for about ten minutes after getting the news, finally releasing the hidden stress of not knowing if we’d ever recover the album which we had spent nearly a year and a half assembling. SEESAW will (we promise this time!) see the light of day in early 2012…
In the interim they’ve graced us with a superb double A-side digital single, “Always On My Mind / The Last Day” that more than makes up for the delay. The Rest have a lot in common with The Society Islands (from yesterday’s post) in that they’re both two criminally overlooked bands that deserve to be heard (and both have suffered the loss of a whole album saved to a harddrive). You’ll happily drown in the sea of swirling guitars that “Always On My Mind” bounces along on top of. I’m totally dating myself here, but I hear elements of the first Curve album in the rhythm, nods to My Bloody Valentine in the distorted melody, and a little bit of Ride thrown in for good measure. That said, it’s not at all a retro-shoegaze throwback; Adam Bentley’s smooth-as-glass vocals split the song’s dense collage of sounds right down the middle, like a beacon summoning the listener safely through this sonic storm. I think he’s one of the best singers working in Canada today, not because he’s technically perfect, but because he’s an emotionally connected and passionate performer who lays it all on the line each time he steps up to the mic.
The Rest also announced a limited edition vinyl version of SEESAW that’s available for pre-order now. It will ship before the album’s official release early next year. You can get it, along with the double A-side, by heading to The Rest’s Bandcamp page now.
MP3: The Rest “Always On My Mind”
Facebook: The Rest
Twitter: The Rest
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