I recently came back in contact with an old friend of mine: a girl I had met back when I was 16-17 years old who had come to my city all the way from Saskatchewan as part of a language exchange program. We became really good friends really quickly (to the point that my girlfriend-at-the-time used it as a reason to dump me months later) and grew quite close.

We tried to keep in touch once she returned home, but neither her nor I had any real talent in that area, so we melded into the world without much of a trace of each other, up until recently. And while the Internet (especially Facebook) has allowed for old acquaintances to look me up with a certain degree of awkwardness, our contact was effortless, very natural, picking up pretty much where we left off, despite our own individual experiences taking us down different paths. If you ask me, that’s special.

So as infinitely tacky and self-important as it is, I’m dedicating Catching Up by the Great Bloomers to her, a song which comes from their justly lauded EP released last year, and which is surfacing in anticipation of their first LP coming out later this year.

This unfeigned homage to friendship starts off as a swaying folkish air with cautious piano, sparse guitar plucks, and rustling tambourines, slowly graduating into an energetic, earnest, buoyant caper. Taking a page from 1990s powerpop determination, they handle a spirited guitar melody with solid backup from breezy drums and bubbling bass, which seem right in tone with the song’s amicable hum. But throughout it all sinews a distorted orchestration of feeback, effectively unobtrusive though rigorous enough to keep the melody from being prissily smooth, as their instrumentation comes together in a cohesive, soaring, unapologetically harmonic song of heartfelt camaraderie and indisputable complicity.

Goes without saying that we’re looking forward to their new material soon, as I am looking forward to new chats with my old friend.

MP3: Great Bloomers - Catching Up

myspace.com/greatbloomers

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008 at 2:37 pm and is filed under download, free, great bloomers, MP3, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Related reads: The Little Ones II | Pacific UV | This Hand Has Three Fingers: Plushgun, Golden Bloom, ¡Forward, Russia! | Cinderpop | My Morning Jacket |