Toronto dream-pop quartet offers up a solid pop record
Doing one thing really well is hard enough; some bands seem to do a bunch of different things fairly well without coming off as overly forced or, at worst, redundant. The latest LP from Toronto’s Cairo, A History of Reasons, acts as a tasteful blend of styles, ranging from epic, vocal harmony-heavy pop songs to more straight-ahead rock and folk fare, but it sort of falls short in the strong song category.
The record is low-key and subtly restrained in its production while sprawling in its stylistic reach. It sounds as though the record’s producer, Nygel Asselin (of Half-Moon Run and Air Marshal Landing), put the whole thing through a piano’s dampening pedal. This is where the record really works – its restraint is welcomed in music like this. Where it could easily come off like the dreck of a band like Fun’s pseudo-epic, incantation-core sound, the band and the LP’s production don’t add too much, allowing for the headspace and musical subtleties to shine through effectively.
The band’s careful attention to the characteristics of each instrument and voice as distinctive is certainly the mark of informed ears and narrative-oriented musicianship. Here are four musicians whose personalities pierce the overall product while not detracting from the band unit as a whole. But the songs themselves? Varied and heartfelt, but not overly exciting.
It sounds all too familiar sometimes, with the “Hey-ayy-ohh” chorus tendencies all so present in contemporary indie rock, but overall, the LP is solid. It makes up for sometimes-lackluster songs with its compelling production style and obviously tight musicianship, as noted before. Standout tracks include the violin-punctuated “Kingdoms,” “One at a Time,” and the lulling “Extinguishing Fires.”