BEAUTIFUL SENSELESS The Warmest Rain (Bam) Rating: NNN
Rating: NNN
The Warmest Rain brings another set of dreamy, wistful pop from the musical hotbed of Guelph, and it’s as lovely as you’d expect. Jessy Bell-Smith’s sweet Sarah Harmerish sigh plays hide and seek with Paul Farmer’s and Andrew Coombes’s shy sissy-boy crooning over a feathery bed of low-key head-nodding drum beats, watercolour washes of guitar and keyboard fills, and bass lines like somnolent heartbeats. The hook is Bell-Smith’s warm trumpet breaks that cut through the cloudy melodies like the sun after a storm. Throw in a few arch track names (Gap Kids, You’re Soaking in It) and you’ve got a good record with one flaw: it’s all too samey.