For fans of brazen noise-pop, the solo debut from Montreal’s Pat Jordache, Future Songs, will be a refreshing and dreamy distraction. Jordache draws from a lot of musical sources with this album. At times, the line between harsh and beautiful is blurred.
This formula has paid off for other Montreal maestros like AIDS Wolf, Arcade Fire and Godspeed You! Black Emperor, who never shy away from incorporating everything in their orbit and filtering it through their specific and sundry lenses. Future Songs has a similar style and does well to execute it.
The first few tracks, “Radio Generation” and “Get It (I Know You’re Going To),” charm the listener with their lo-fi crinkled arrangements, zig-zagging guitars and peculiar poetry. It’s all the more thrilling then when Jordache rips into “Salt on the Fields,” which, almost out of nowhere, conjures up Unknown Pleasures-era Joy Division, as his baritone eerily calls to mind Ian Curtis while an atmospheric high-treble snare and syncopated bass line erupt and unsettle.
“Phantom Limb” is a psychedelic surprise that somehow echoes Tall Dwarfs’ crudely crafted folk fuzz. This seems to be the aesthetic Jordache is after, as “Gold Bound” and “Song for Arthur” continue down the well-worn psychotropic glitz carved out by the Elephant Six and the Yerself is Steam rise of Mercury Rev.
Future Songs is a dizzying debut and fans of Jordache’s old act, Sister Suvi (with Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs) will still be able to draw a line between the two, but this is certainly a different and more varied direction for the musician. If baroque and bombast describe your brand of pop, you’ll take a shine to Pat Jordache.