One week and change ago the Tripwire flew to Montreal. We weren’t there for the usual reasons (hockey/steamy, French-Canadian love affairs) but rather Pop! Montreal, the very same festival whose always excellent lineup we’ve helped you watch grow longer and longer over the past few months. And instead of telling you a heap of late night tales that take us from bar to bar, band to band and one Poutine spot to the next (there was only one and thats actually a pretty good story,) we realized you’d hate us less if we told you about the one band we saw that made the trip most worthwhile. You know, a band you’re going to want to hear when you shower or drive tonight. Their name is Braids (formerly Neighborhood Council) and they are a loosely “experimental” boy girl four-piece who made their way to Montreal via Alberta. What do they sound like? This decade distilled: the psychedelic Shiatsu of Animal Collective, the expansiveness of Broken Social Scene and bit of the primitivist snap-a-longs of High Places and the Blow. They’re only wee, but this isn’t at all precious stuff. Somehow they’ve manage to sound colossal and timely all at once.
Download EP jams “Lemonade” and “Liver and Tan” below, wait for a full-length to land in early spring 2010.
Braids, Lemonade
MP3 Download
Braids, Liver and Tan
MP3 Download
