One Weekend Under AGroove: The Chalets

And the winner is ...
[drumroll]
You know, this would be a lot more suspenseful if I hadn't put the band's name in the title of the post.

THE CHALETS

Official Site
MySpace
Wikipedia

The Chalets are my favorite of the bands I was introduced to during 'One Weekend Under A Groove'. Although I had heard the name before (and even mentioned them here on the blog!), I hadn't actually heard the band.

Hoo boy was I missing out. This is what happens when the only way to acquire a disc is to pop for a $30 import. Folks generally aren't going to want something they've never heard. Yeah, there's Itunes and stuff, but 'haven't heard it=don't know if I want it' still applies. And some of us want the liner notes and disc artwork you don't get with itunes. Scans just aren't the same as the actual physical object.

I'm thinking $30 might just be worth it here. The Chalets deal with many of the things I like in music.

• Lots of female vocals. Not exclusively in this case, but lots.


• Harmony. Lots of it. Most of the Chalet songs I've heard are sung by two or more vocalists harmonizing.


• Plenty of guitar. The Chalets don't exactly shred, but often songs are built around a strong, central guitar riff.


• Great pop songwriting. Those guitar riffs back songs which have a great rhythym and flow. There is the occasional misstep (see "Love Punch"), but the writing is usually solid.


• Fun. This is difficult to quantify, but the band seems to really be enjoying itself.

... and did I mention lots of female vocals?

If you doubt any of what I just said, just watch this video (yes, I've been messing around YouTube again). It's kinda goofy at times, but that just adds to its charm.




Second place in this non-contest went to The Long Blondes, whom I covered the other day. Long term I can see them overtaking the Chalets in my affections, but for now they come in second.

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Other parts of my life didn't stop while I screwed around listening to music. Been building up a backlog of non-music topics to cover here. Also things are in the works that could either be really cool or horribly disappointing. We'll see. And no, this has nothing to do with women.

Well, only sort of ....