Readymade

It may be five years into the new millennium, but somewhere out there bands are still recording melodic dream pop and Vancouver’s Readymade are one of them. Regardless of whether this album sounds mistakenly displaced from a decade (the ’90s) when groups like Slowdive and their ilk reigned supreme, All the Plans Resting is a damned good album. And while it could quite well be their downfall, Readymade’s latest effort can’t help but remind one of the years when this side of the ocean was looking to England for the next serving of spacey musical creations. Listening to All the Plans Resting is like taking a musical time machine back into those glory days and vicariously living the dreamy mellow melodic thrills of the mid-’90s all over again — and just as good the second time around. And sometimes that’s just it, the mark of a truly great album is in its ability to stir your emotions or take you to a memory you hadn’t expected to revisit. All that gushing aside, All the Plans Resting, defies time and manages to wow just as it undoubtedly would have at height of the subgenre’s the musical explosion. The 13 tracks served up by the West Coast five-piece are guitar-driven numbers; slow-paced but uplifting, dense but light — a series of careful contradictions that serve to weave an album full of lusciously expansive (and soul warming) space ballads. Singer Arch’s incredibly soothing voice, lyrics that tangle emotion with modern technology/living, and music deliciously thick with layers, coax us into their sad but beautiful hopefulness and dare us to take an unfettered journey into both nostalgia (perhaps unintentionally) and escapism. It’s only February, but this one’s going on my year’s best.