whorehousepiano:

Another gem from 2006, this time a little bit of the faux Brit-Pop revival from Vancouver’s The Book Of Lists.

TBOL drift in and out of some then uncharted waters on these two cuts. A strait somewhere between the more accessible sounds on the Creation label and the more beloved or maybe more despised champions of that new british pop sound circa ‘92; a touch of blur maybe, some Oasis even? I don’t know, but certainly a sound deeply indebted to the Stone Roses but with a bouncy rock swagger all it’s own. Although you may claim to have always loved them, and who knows maybe you really did, and whether you love them or hate them, I’m going to go out on a limb (a pretty sturdy one I think) and say that in ‘06, despite the existence of similar sounding and ever so slightly successful contemporaries like The Clientele, that to riff as hard on the Stone Roses tip as TBOL have on these two tracks, was unheard of, and most definitely not cool. But those were the days before Captured Tracks obscuro-shoegaze reissue series, before the 2nd or 3rd revival and explosion of interest in the C86 sound, before MBV stopped yanking our chain, reformed and actually got on with playing music again, and before bands like The Big Pink and other purveyors of that big, baggy, brit sound, came and made the style, if not cool, at least marketable to the youths again.

Nevertheless, the good ship TBOL could not weather the stormy seas they sailed, and were unceremoniously wrecked on the rocky margins of music history before the market shores softened to their brand of catchy U2 spiked, RIDE and Roses flavoured, anglophile guitar rock. God Rest Ye Baggy Souls.

Miss these guys. One of my favorite Vancouver bands (and there weren’t many).