Once again, a Canadian band has captured my heart with their interesting song structures, perfect melodies, and yearning but positive lyrics. Canadians really excel at this kind of stuff. Vancouver’s Said the Whale have an eclectic style, mixing elements of the 60’s, 80’s and 90’s into a really polished, heavy pop sound. Their new album “hawaiii” (three i’s) drops on September 17th, not wasting any time and taking full advantage of their momentum, and they are touring the U.S. now, with a date at Larimer Lounge on August 19th in Denver. They’ve been popular in Canada for a few years, and just made the crossover with the success of their new single “I Love You”.

I had a chance to listen to the new album, and it’s great stuff, each song is a little pop nugget, really developed pop nuggets. “Narrows” is great straightforward pop rock with the perfect amount of 90’s distortion and jangle, collecting together into a crescendo of beautiful sound at the end. The new single “I Love You” starts out straightforward pop punk, the chorus goes off into a Blur sounding Britpop wall of vocals, and then one of my favorite musical things ever, the continuous tapping of one piano key. I don’t know what it is about that “dink dink dink dink dink” but it sounds like rock to me. They remind me a lot of the band fun. in “Safe to Say”, a big, grand sounding song with lots of pomp and excess. The rest of the album is rounded out with 60’s surf beats, junkie lyrics and Canadian rap a.k.a. all the good stuff. This band is making the big push, go see them in your town: tour dates

Watch the video for “I Love You”, and no it’s not an episode of Most Extreme Elimination Challenge, I mean it is, but the band is guest starring: “I Love You”