Come Into My House

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Come Into My House album cover
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Total Tracks: 12   Total Length: 41:21

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Andy Battaglia

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Andy Battaglia writes about music and culture of various other kinds from a home base in New York. His work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Wire, t...more »

05.12.08
Meticulous music-school students emboldened by the casual air of indiepop self-invention.
2008 | Label: Tomlab / SC Distribution

Ever wondered what Sufjan Stevens would sound like over a chamber-music backdrop ripe for a Wu-Tang jam? Nobody else has either, but that's one of many scenarios that might well have played out in the subconscious of the Canadian group No Kids. Derived from another Vancouver indie act called P:ano, No Kids fiddle with a promiscuous mix of styles on Come Into My House. It's a stately album, devoted to the most precious aspects of craft but in no hurry to dash all the comforts of home.

“For Halloween” strikes an intriguing early note by mingling a sound suggestive of Thom Yorke's “The Eraser” with the kind of miniaturized R&B heard on pop radio. Trailing that is “Bluster in the Air,” the one that imagines the Sufjan/RZA collaboration; others nuzzle up to notions of New Orleans jazz (“I Love the Weekend”), gee-whiz old-movie singalongs (“Four Freshman Locked Out as the Sun Goes Down”) and somber mope-rock (“Dancing in the Stacks”). It's a curious mix that makes more sense with knowledge of a particular No Kids tourmate: Dirty Projectors. Neither band sounds much like the other, but both sound like projects helmed by meticulous music-school students emboldened… read more »

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marv

tenpoundmustache

Anyone think this band is named after the song by the Legendary Marvin Pontiac?

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A brilliant confluence of pop and classic sounds

DoctorTrash

This album is a very pleasant and whimsical one. The harmony of the horns combined with the eclectic percussion among warm lyrics and voices really tie the room together.

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They Say All Music Guide

Say what you will about the Great White North’s notoriously finicky weather, but Vancouver sounds like the sunniest place in the world when filtered through the immaculate comfort-pop prism of former P:ano denizens Julia Chirka, Justin Kellam, and Nick Krgovich, better known as No Kids. Like their previous incarnation, No Kids are exceedingly uncool and irrefutably talented scholars of pop history, preferring the brainy accuracy of artists such as Steely Dan, Burt Bacharach, Sufjan Stevens, and the Style Council over more traditional indie rock heroes like the Velvet Underground and the MC5 (think Yo La Tengo and Field Music-lite). The trio’s one undeniable thread to the gentrified indie pop community is the omnipresent shadow of Brian Wilson, though instead of Pet Sounds, No Kids seem far more intrigued by later albums like Sunflower, Holland, and Carl & the Passions, a notion supported by the schizophrenic one-two punch of melancholic opener “Great Escape” and the bouncy Stereolab-esque “For Halloween.” Less busy instrumentally than P:ano, the band still deals out polyrhythms generously and peppers its tunes with a vast arsenal of instruments that include expansive lap steel, woodwinds, and string and horn sections, especially on the Broadway-tinged “I Love the Weekend” and “Neighbors Party.” All of these diversions are lovely, if not a bit contrived, and in the end it’s the quieter moments like “Dancing in the Stacks” and the lush closer, “The Puddle,” that resonate most on Come into My House. – James Christopher Monger

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