The new album from Montreal's Look Vibrant, The Up Here Place, is an indulgent bit of business, but it's also a reasonably interesting record. Out on Friday, the album dabbles in a few genres with ease, and hops all over the place in terms of style.
Here on their full-length debut release, the members of Look Vibrant -- Justin Lazarus, Matthew Murphy, Alex Rand, and Eli Kaufman -- make music that sounds a bit like that of Ariel Pink and MGMT in lots of spots. If a number like "Last One To Survive" coos-and-pops with a bright, electronic sheen in a neat approximation of the previously-mentioned MGMT, it's the whirling "Sweater in the Lake" that offers up a lo-fi approximation of the sort of panoramic psychedelia that The Flaming Lips perfected in the mid-Nineties. The lovely "Drive Common Sense Away" segues into the catchy "Numb Your Spirit", a neat melding of Temples and Foxygen records. There's a certain amount of sonic overload here that makes the music of Look Vibrant far better in small doses than large ones, but one must still applaud the artistry here. The members of Look Vibrant are hardly careful here, but I sort of appreciated how much they threw into the mix on The Up Here Place as the result is, if not compelling in every moment, at least very interesting.
The Up Here Place is out on Friday. More details on the album via the link below, and more details on the band via their official Facebook page.
[Photo: Uncredited promo picture]