Onward, Voyageur
Onward, Voyageur (Independent)

This decisive debut from Onward, Voyageur showcases a band that can certainly sit comfortably alongside new young pop tarts like Apollo Ghosts, while also carrying a slight whiff of cozy nostalgia. The five-piece hits hardest on tracks like the circular and pensive “Spaces” and the dreamy “Redbird Battalion”, while a thing as slight as “Dead & Buried” slips in and out of its chorus with such sly expertise that you might underestimate how clever it really is.

There’s a yawning trumpet-and-triangle break in “The Myth of Broken Wrist” that’s less covert about melting your heart. Ditto the beefy organ that smothers the chorus of “Landmine”, and the way the band hammers away all Stereolab-like in the last minute or so of “Hot Wheel”. And with the “The Leisurely Collapse” Onward, Voyageur blatantly recalls the Breeders, Belly, or any number of other distaff melodic rockers who ruled so hard in those innocent ’90s.

Which is where the slightly retro feel really surfaces—not surprisingly, since guitarist-vocalists Christine Choquette and Annie Wilkinson are both veterans of knock-down-ginger, a band that emblematized Vancouver’s indie-rock community at one time. With that in mind, it’s hard not to hear the sound of a still-vital genre that happened to enjoy one of its peaks some 15 years ago, when it was characterized by clever young things, optimism, a strong female presence, and a certain playoff between raggedy-ass DIY pragmatism and idealized youthfulness. Not to mention melody, which runs through Onward, Voyageur like a river of cream soda.