Monday, March 30, 2015

Boyhood : When I'm Hungry






















Wow wow wow.   This record from Boyhood came out at the tail end of last year on Bruised Tongue and I’m kind of obsessed with it.  It’s hard to find out much on Caylie Runciman’s career so far other than she’s from Ottawa, has one other EP/Tape out on the same label and ‘When I’m Hungry’ appears to be her first full length album.   Comprised of swampy pop and noise explorations these 12 songs are shrouded in psychedelic weirdness.   ‘When I’m Hungry’ is predominantly an electronic record however,  ‘Heat’ allows guitar to the fore in the closest thing this album comes to traditional indie, and a song that could be considered straight up indie on here still exceeds expectation by delivering something adventurous and electrifying.  Runciman’s vocals get filtered through chewy haze alongside a freely ambling melody line pitting loud and quiet arrangements against each other, and if you think you’ve heard this all before just give it a listen and see how her treatment moves the goal posts of where these sounds can go.  As the album progresses it reveals songs made from pimped subterranean beats, blissed out vocals and spooked guitar work.  Runciman wrote/performed all the songs on here and the interplay between drum machines and a drum kit gives the album different grains to latch on to, checking out ‘Maintaining My Uncool’ followed by ‘Cheddar’ is a great example of that.  ‘Where I’m Going’ fittingly shows how Boyhood captures an immersive pop sound that is sunny as it is sunless , and closer ‘Post Poc’ best describes these shady undertones intermittently emerging throughout.  ‘When I’m Hungry’ is an intimate search of the curiously twisted parts of bedroom pop.  It’s this creeper slant touched by saccharine glamour that makes the LP prevail as a blood-tingling debut release; executed with a forward thinking approach ‘When I’m Hungry’ is effortlessly unpredictable, exuberant and captivating.

Bruised Tongue's Bandcamp is here where the album has a few more track's on it than Boyhood's personal page, copies of the LP are still available too!






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