Album Review: Lab Coast - Pictures on the Wall
Monday, March 21, 2011 at 7:00AM 
There's just something about lo-fi recordings. Give me gorgeous songs strangled by a hissy, hazy 4-track mess of white noise over slick, big budget recording studio sterility any day. And that reverby beachy sound that Real Estate, Holiday Shores and countless other bands have turned into its own sub-genre over the past couple years is probably my favorite flavor of lo-fi.
If you dig those bands you'll want to listen to Lab Coast, a Canadian band that sounds way more SoCal than Calgary. A casual slacker sound permeates their debut LP Pictures on the Wall. With 12 songs clocking in at under 20 minutes (only one track cracks the 2:30 minute mark), calling it an LP is a bit generous - but it's a totally enjoyable listen, even if it's over too quick and the ideas are left frustratingly unexplored. "Radio" wants to be a hit in the shimmering, meandering vein of "Range Life" but it's over before it really gets going. Maybe that's the point though - these are fleeting moments of beauty, like a summer day it's gone before you know it. "Really Realize" might be the most fleshed-out song here and it sounds like a 90s alt-rock radio hit filtered through a 2011 indie rock lens -- it's destined to be one of my summer roadtrip songs. Check out "Really Realize" here, and grab the rest on iTunes.
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