Rating: NNNN
Steven Foster’s Omhouse has existed in various forms since at least 2012, periodically releasing songs and EPs that charted waypoints in his wide-ranging musical explorations. Finally, Omhouse’s first full-length is here, and it distills years of sonic exploration into an epic guitar record that is tightly focused and meticulously produced. Eye To Eye’s audacious pairing of technical wizardry with pure pop instincts recalls Dirty Projectors’ Bitte Orca and XTC’s English Settlement, albums that ring with confidence and ambition.
Listeners who draw hard boundaries around the genres they like might feel their heads splitting apart at the way Omhouse’s soaring pop vocals sit atop dense math-riffage and swaths of chorus and compression. By the time you arrive at the tubby rock riff that anchors lead single Aurock, any sense of incongruity has given way to wonderful idiosyncrasy.
Toronto’s Foster (who has drummed for Moon King, Doldrums and Snowblink) is an extremely well-travelled and well-rounded musician. His vocals live in the nosebleed section of a stadium, next-door neighbours with the likes of Bono and Brandon Flowers. His guitar chords hang out in a jazz club. His song arrangements have a membership with the clockmakers’ guild.
The album hits a languid stride on its title track, with Foster’s voice ringing out over cascading 12-string melodies, drifting in a light fog of reverb. Out of nowhere, the band arrives thunderously, like a mountain appearing out of the ground, a shuddering earthquake inside the song. Moments later, Foster’s unaccompanied guitar pours forth again in refrain, but it feels like the landscape of the song has shifted. It’s in these moments where form and content have been stitched together so thoroughly that it’s hard to tell where the seams are.
Nursery is another standout, with its shape-shifting triplet rhythms and Mellotron accompaniment furnishing a buoyant spiritedness that feels impossible not to surrender to. “Never leaving this room,” Foster sings, his vocals overdubbed with an angelic high-register harmony.
Listening to the virtuosic performances and layers of sonic refinement, you get the sense that Foster maybe didn’t make it outside a whole lot while working on this record. But if your room sounded like this, where else would you possibly want to hang out?
Top track: Nursery
Omhouse play the Garrison on February 18 as part of the Wavelength Winter Festival. See listing.
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