Reviews
21 Tandem Repeats
Never Wanted To Be Anyone
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Add to del.ico.us.Review Date: 2007-08-20
News: By the time you are reading this odds are I'm an engaged man. That's on the agenda this weekend in Winnipeg so hopefully she says yes so typing this here wasn't a huge tiny mistake.
Let me tell you a funny story about a band called 21 Tandem Repeats and their album Never Wanted to be Anyone. I’m not sure when I received this album, who sent it to me, or how long I’ve had it. It got lost in a pile of random CDs, and out of pure boredom I came across it just now. A musical adventure – I thought – might break up this boredom, so I slipped it into the CD player.
First it seemed rather inoffensive, talented yet not overwhelming or hugely original -- but it reminded me of something I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, though I knew that something was near and dear to my heart.
A few songs later it hit me: the Rheostatics! Oh, how much I miss the bloody Rheos… so, being reminded of them like this was a bizarre experience: half ecstatic, half melancholy. I trudged forward, not sure whether 21 Tandem Repeats were out to fill a huge musical void in my life, or on the verge of becoming a bitter disappointment.
It turns out I am not the only one who has stumbled upon the 21 Tandem Repeats/Rheostatics comparison. Being the astute reviewer I am, I went over to 21 Tandem Repeats’ Myspace, where I found a review by Red Cat Records pondering the very same comparison.
The comparison is almost as much in the spirit of the music as it is in the physical, tangible comparison. I’m certain that 21 Tandem Repeats have a few, if not all, of the Rheos’ albums in their collection. But even when it doesn’t sound like the Rheos, it does have that Canadiana feel that allowed people from sea to shining sea to feel patriotic and warm when listening to the Rheostatics’ tales.
In the twilight of the Rheos’ illustrious career, they started to stray from the type of songs that 21 Tandem Repeats specialize in. The immature years of the Rheos is more in line with Never Wanted to Be Anyone. “Jupiter” was the first song to really grab my attention. The whole thing seems to be wrapped around an awesome straightforward-but-captivating performance on guitar as the story unfolds. This is the type of song that translates well in small but spirited scene bars all over the country, and would do one Mr. Bidini very proud.
On the second half of the album, the highlight for me is “Never Wanted to be Anyone”. It’s not unlike “Jupiter” in its build-up, but it has a subtler intensity, anthemic almost. I can see how 21TR have nestled themselves into Van city with a weekly bar gig; with songs like this, you could develop quite the following. The concept of “Never wanting to be anyone / I want to be like myself” throughout the song is damn right inspirational and exactly the type of lyrics us twenty-somethings are looking for when we mope into a bar after a long week of work/school/whatever.
Rounding out an album that has a band with their fingers right on the pulse of what their target market is looking for, they include a song with an alcohol motif, “Last Call.” Heavy on the Canadiana this sees 21TR embracing their immature side, and I love them for it. You can hear a lot of songs like this on an album like Introducing Happiness in the Rheos’ back catalogue and they were always crowd favourites when they brought them out, up until the final Massey Hall show. It’s a touch muddled, and could use a few more bucks in the production, but that’s indie right? I shouldn’t nitpick.
As the tendency in indie music seems to be to move more and more to the experimental, the ambitious, the obscure, it’s refreshing to hear a band who just decided to make an album full of mostly crisp, Canadiana-infused, melodic songs. The torch, which was most certainly flickering rather dimly after the Rheos departed the scene, might survive after all.
I’ll drink to that.
Score: 7.3
- Dan