Rating: NNNN
For reasons that may have more to do with language barriers than with musical inspiration, Quebecois outfit Fly Pan Am still haven’t achieved the DIY super-celebrity of some of their labelmates. In many ways, they still seem like the beleaguered provincial cousins of the Constellation stable, lagging behind Godspeed You Black Emperor!, A Silver Mt. Zion and even Do Make Say Think. Too bad, cuz FPA have always been inspired noisemakers, and this latest disc finds them doing massively interesting things. Harmonic noise and pre-nascent melodies are the toys FPA play with, and they draw pleasing nuances out of the mess. Most surprising of all, they’re able to turn distortive chaos and wall-of-sound cacophony into sweet, nearly pastoral arrangements. Fly Pan Am roar into the Horseshoe tonight (Thursday, October 14).
