November 2, 2006
The Beige
01
Independent
What to do with the Beige? The Vancouver quintet's songs defy easy categorization. They're certainly too complex and jazzy to be considered pop, although songwriter Rick Maddocks has a serious knack for coaxing memorable melodies out of the near cacophony that the music occasionally swirls through.
"When I was dead the newspaper said nothing / Nada." That's how the album opens, like a distant voice calling out from the horizon. The delivery by Maddocks conjures up a rush of sadness, but then the band powers up and lifts the song into another realm, one where a little bit of hope shines down through the clouds. We're not talking about unbridled happiness here, just a glimmer of something better along the way. The ability to capture moods in the music is not something that's particularly easy to do (at least, not to do well), but the Beige pull it off, thanks to the skill and chemistry of the players involved. Included in those ranks is the inimitable Jon Wood, who excels on guitar whether he's painting up the songs in an ethereal gauze here, or stripping it right down to the bone with Rodney DeCroo & the Killers.
Given all of that, let's not try too hard to categorize the Beige. We'll just say that Maddocks writes damn good songs that allow the band to take all sorts of twists and turns through interesting corners of the sonic spectrum.
-Eden Munro
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