Austra – Feel it Break

Another big disappointment.

Austra produced one of the favourite tracks on my Youtube playlist in the latter half of last year in the shape of ‘Beat and the Pulse.’ It’s a soaring synth driven classic with the added bonus of a live performance resplendent with a show stealing dancer at the front of the audience. They should get him in the band sharpish. The singer Katie Stelmanis is beautiful, charismatic and sings like a cross between Florence and the Machine and Emily Haines, which can only be a good thing. It sounds like a recipe for greatness, however…

There’s only a couple of decent tracks on the whole (double) album and none come anywhere near ‘Beat and the Pulse’. I wanted to like it so much and I gave it far longer to grow on me than most CD’s, but ultimately it just didn’t work for me. It ended up sounding not unlike a high pitched Florence or a low pitched Grimes and definitely not in a good way.

 There’s a lot of promise however in some of these songs and I honestly believe there’s a great album in this outfit. Hopefully it will be Olympia as I’ve purchased it already, but if not I’ll follow them until it arrives. There has to be a place for Canadian synthpop in this world.