Home Alone – Teddybears & Weed
Home Alone‘s Teddybears & Weed comes to us from dreary suburbs of Toronto, and its studied, meandering lo-fi grandeur is a testament to the benefits of semi-urban isolation. Its languid tempos, heavy reverb and bedroom and basement production create a space that is at once limited and expansive, building a sense of wonder and possibility through understated means. Beneath the layers of fuzz and delay there is a sharp pop sensibility at work, perhaps most evident in the reeling sample driven stomp of the title track, which recalls Toronto’s lo-fi heroes of yesteryear The Russian Futurists. Elsewhere, “Sleep.Walk.In” delivers a Buddy Holly guitar lick at a glacial pace, while the leadoff track, “Keep Breathing”, is a hypnotic semi-instrumental trip, gradually building through a haze of unintelligible vocal samples. “Teenage Tide might be the highlight, shambling along under the power of a jangly lead guitar line it’s reminiscent of The Shins’ pre-Shins band Flake Music, but with a greater eye for adventure. Over the album’s six songs there really isn’t a bad track and they hold together remarkably well, its a near-perfect dispatch from too-stoned suburbia.

Teddybears & Weed is available as a download on bandcamp and in a physical format through Orchid Tapes. This post first appeared in our column on No Fear of Pop.