From the opening strains (and that’s what they are, distorted strains of some stringed instrument being sawed in a kind of echoing desperation), you can hear there’s something different going on here. Kathryn Calder’s disc is aptly named for its outside-the-box tunefulness. There are melodies, harmonies and catchy riffs, but there’s also closely miked and distorted violins, and a keyboard line that sounds like an old Hammond in someone’s living room playing over top of contemporary clap-drum-synth rhythms, and the distorted vocals swapped for the clean sound of Kathryn’s boisterous voice on “Who Are You?” As a 16-year-old listener declared after her first listen, “When I get a car, the first thing I’m going to do is buy this disc and drive around playing it with all the windows open. Perfect for driving!” Hopefully it’s summer driving.
And then in “Turn a Light On,” there is a subtlety of harmonies and instrumentation (slide guitar, shakers, drums, etc.).
But then there are moments like the plucked strings of electric guitar and cello at the end of “City of Sounds” which are so aurally satisfying to set up a place for Kathryn Calder somewhere between Chairlift and Tegan & Sara’s landscapes.
Quirky is not the word to use. Quixotic, perhaps.
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