By Ryan Pike
The latest trend in indie music has been the blending of punk sensibilities with electronic flourishes, dubbed “dance-punk” by music critics and “music that girls can dance to” by genre forerunners Franz Ferdinand. Canadian bands have joined the fray, with groups like Metric & Hot Hot Heat attempting to carve out a niche in the genre. Joining them are Montreal’s Mobile with their vibrant debut, Tomorrow Starts Today.
The five members of Mobile come out swinging, delivering a concoction of sound that is equal parts hypnotic, clever and groove-inducing. While “Out of My Head” and “Montreal Calling” were released as singles prior to the album proper, they don’t represent all that Mobile has to offer. Following a four-pack of frantically energetic songs (including both singles), Mobile slows things down and explores the breadth of their sound before amping things up in the latter parts of the recording.
Too often groups leap into a musical genre with a “Me, too!” mentality, resulting in countless albums that sound exactly the same–as evidenced by the Theory-of-a-Nickle-Creed hodgepodge. Luckily, Mobile avoids this cliche, delivering instead an album that is markedly different and definitely worthwhile.