Tomlab
Five years ago Vancouver producer Colin Stewart got his hands on a pair of vintage reverb plates the kind that gave ’50s girl-group pop its irresistibly warm feel and asked his friend Nick Krgovich (P:Ano No Kids) to provide songs that would do the equipment justice. Let’s not mince words — they’ve succeeded.
While he’s no slouch in the vocal department himself Krgovich has enlisted a crew of ringers from Final Fantasy’s Owen Pallett to Parenthetical Girls singer Zac Pennington and K Records folkies Karl Blau and Mirah to flesh out the tunes. The results sound like a sampler from a long-forgotten ’50s record label spotlighting ballads and upbeat twisters that should have been floating on AM waves for the last half-century. It’d be snide to deride it as a nostalgia project — it is one yes but when it sounds this good who cares?
