Montreal’s Feeling Figures are aging in reverse. “Everything Around You“, excellent follow-up to last year’s sleeper underground hit “Migration Music“, is actually their first album—at least in terms of when it was recorded. Who knows what internal math pushed this one to the back of the line, but it was a smart call—it’s actually a stronger, deeper, and richer LP (and other comparatives, even), and one of the better underground rock records of the last few years. And you can be excused for just assuming the band’s from Australia, as they’ve been schooling the rest of the world on this kind of stuff for a couple of decades now. If you’re well-versed in the wayward permutations of unpopular music, you’ll know the score here immediately.
Two guitars, bass, drums as trad a line-up as possible playing rock music, but not that kind of rock music; i.e., not something you would ever hear on classic rock radio, no matter how much time passes (those stations still exist, and they’re probably playing Vampire Weekend even as I type).
Think White Light / White Heat, Wire’s second record, Sonic Youth, early Dinosaur Jr., and a ton of New Zealand and Australian bands, from The Clean all the way up to whatever new group Jake Robertson formed today. Feeling Figures fit squarely into that legacy, and “Everything Around You” is a fine addition to that canon.
The Fat Angel Sings 