Sound Advice: Beacons by Ohbijou

Every Tuesday, Torontoist scours record store shelves in search of the city’s most notable new releases and brings you the best—or sometimes just the biggest—of what we’ve heard in Sound Advice.

Even a marginal indie pop fan should have a soft spot for Ohbijou—three years ago, their darling sounds and community contributions (both musical and social) helped define a new sector of Toronto's indie scene and made them an instant focus. After a recent signing with Last Gang Records, Ohbijou release their second album, Beacons, today (digitally, with a physical release on June 16), and it's a perfect reminder why their orch-pop left such a lasting impression.

Not unlike on 2006's Swift Feet for Troubling Times, Ohbijou continue to deliver small stories through quaint, cautious observations of life's inside and outside moments. From the universal bleak and dark of winter to the hyperlocal of "Memoriam"—whose vague descriptions and low word-count nonetheless paint a vivid picture of the flames, smouldering mess, or still-gaping hole at Queen and Bathurst—these words don't take strong stances or weep openly, and they don't draw many conclusions. Instead, in their playful rhythmic phrasing, they lay decent groundwork for stories that started in private (fitting, since Ohbijou started as a bedroom project for singer Casey Mecija before she was joined by her sister Jennifer and the multi-instrumental talents of James Bunton, Ryan Carley, Heather Kirby, Anissa Hart, and Andrew Kinoshita) but are now up for grabs—scenarios to imagine and plots to unfold, all with the built-in backdrop of a familiar city, one defined by everyday moments.

Each track gives its own reason for listening closely and repeatedly: the delicate, lilting vocal hooks ("Black Ice") or, of course, those haughtily satisfying Torontoisms. But the tuneful septet's true strength is in the orchestral leanings of their dense-but-agile dream-pop compositions and performances, the poised musical fluidity that gives Ohbijou a depth that most contemporaries often lose to the twee. In the instances that Beacons runs the risk of sounding a little too much the same in tempo and in temperament, unexpected swells of controlled intensity ("New Years," "Make It Gold") change the listening trajectory, shaking up previous notions and adding some refreshing momentum.

In an indie pop world saturated with Feist-alikes and collective copy cats, Ohbijou manage to side-step a lot of the clichés while maintaining a similar could-be commercial sound and fertile collaborative approach and aesthetic. No sophomore slump here, not even a stumble; Beacons further establishes Ohbijou as a vital creative unit amongst Toronto's best and most important indies.