The Organ

Grab That Gun

December 13, 2004

# 7

Truth be told: I am a big fan of post-punk but have never really cared all that much for Joy Division or The Smiths. Yeah, I like them just fine alright, but I’ve never loved them, and for that matter, couldn’t tell you when Morrissey’s birthday is and, to be perfectly frank, I find New Order a helluva lot more exciting than Ian Curtis’ monotone mumblings. I guess that makes me slightly cooler than your average Godsmack fan, but then again, you probably won’t see me invited to the hipster tables at The Ecko Lounge anytime soon either. So it is with life, and since this is an album review and not a show how cool your tattoos are contest, please allow me to get back on track.

As Interpol is to Joy Division, so is Vancouver’s own all-female The Organ to The Smiths. It is an analogy any post punk fan would surely answer correctly if faced with such a life or death SAT question, (but then again, maybe not, these are Morrissey fans we’re talking about, and if death by ten ton truck were the means, all bets are off). But alas, The Organ’s first full length album is a stunner, hands down, and is as sweet and beautiful as a star filled evening in the great Pacific Northwest.

I’ve spent a lot of time the last few months trying to track down a copy of this album. It seems it was released in Canada earlier this year, but didn’t make its way to the U.S. until November. Visits to a few local music shops found me leaving empty handed as not only had no one heard of them, but once the employees checked their computers, they seemed certain that if the album did exist, it definitely had not yet been released. But alas, I am old enough now to understand that part of the price for greatness is toil, so with my best cunning, I finally figured out where to hear the album: Russia (well, a Russian streaming music website by the name of allofmp3.com). Regardless of where or how, I had gotten Grab That Gun, and it was indeed just as stunning as the samples I had heard months before on the band’s website.

Every song on Grab That Gun sparkles in its own way creating a joyously somber mood much like The Cure and The Smiths in their heyday. Katie Sketch is tremendous as a vocalist whose voice is as much an instrument as Jenny Smyth’s droning organ and Deb Cohen’s shimmering guitar. Melancholy is certainly the mood of the day but the words never get bogged down in mopey cliché. Rather, Sketch manages to conjure up the angelic as she twists and turns through passages into and out of love. The album’s opening song, Brother, may be the best one on the album and one listen is all it takes to decide if this is your type of music. It definitely is for me.

On the whole, The Organ is a band that does one thing and only one thing with their music, but they do it very well. They have mastered a style of earnest and passionate alternative rock that never really had its time in the spotlight, and might not in the future either. But what they have done with Grab That Gun is brought out of the mothballs that particular musical style and inserted it into the present. This is heartfelt music and as such, is practically a dinosaur in this day and age of lip synching corporate bands and ironic posturing.

My final verdict on Grab That Gun is that this music isn’t for everyone (and if you hate The Cure and The Smiths you’ll no doubt find The Organ very boring) but if you like mid-‘80s college rock you’ll probably like these ladies. The Organ’s biggest contribution, beyond the songs themselves, is that they fill in the gaps in today’s music scene quite well, falling somewhere between Interpol and The Strokes on the rock and roll radar. And even more importantly, they carry the torch of artists like The Raincoats, Throwing Muses, Liz Phair, and That Dog as honest and genuine female rockers, which sadly, has once again become a dying breed. It is sad that for every The Organ there are 50 Avril Lavignes and Ashlee Simpsons, but as is the case with such disheartening statistics, when you do discover a band like The Organ and an album like Grab That Gun, it is that much more rewarding.