I'd heard of Canadian label Endearing Records for a while, but hadn't heard any of their releases until now. They seem to specialise in indiepop in a wide sense, whilst also venturing into more rockish territories, and spoken word. Five recentish releases of theirs are as follows.

Novillero, featuring members of Duotang, Transonic and Bullet Proof Nothing, have an album The Brindleford Follies. This is a varied collection of songs, but that's not surprising when you consider there are five songwriters at work here. Basically a pop band, but a diverse one, Novillero sometimes deal in modish, Elephant 6-ish pop; cute, Shelflife style pop; spacey pop; loungey pop; psychey pop and songs that contain a mixture of several of these influences, but all held together by the use of trumpet.

British/Norwegian band Twigs, based in Bergen, Norway, have released their 2nd album, Epicure on Endearing. They play noisepop with female vocals, that in its noisier moments reminds me of various other Scandinavian bands, although the other bands in this style that I'm thinking of tend to have male singers. The Swedish label A West Side Fabrication have released similar stuff in the mid 90s, and Sticky Records used to feature some of the same bands, or similar sounding ones, on comps in the UK around the same time. Like these other bands, Twigs sound influenced by assorted indierock and noisepop bands, usually American ones. The end result is the sort of melodic but noisy music that's often pigeonholed as lo-fi, regardless of the actual sound quality. Various songs here have that 'chugga-chugga' rhythm much loved by 'lo-fi' indierock bands. As well as the sort of noisepop/indierock that sounds to me typical of mid 90s Scandinavian (but American influenced) bands, the Twigs occasionally also sound reminiscent of various 4AD bands from the early 90s. Some of the more dark, reflective stuff here doesn't remind me of anyone in particular although it still has the hallmarks of the lo-fi indierock sound. Track 5 (no titles supplied with this promo) has a happier tune than most songs here, and what sounds like a glockenspiel, but it's far from twee as it still has the chaotic, aggressive guitar noise. Track 9 adds punk to the list of influences with its noisy one-note riff. Songwise, it's a mixture of the dark and sleazy (in the verse) and the poppy (in the chorus). Twigs mix together a lot of familiar influences, but do this without (to my knowledge) directly ripping anyone off. If you have a soft spot for early/mid 90s noisepop and indierock, check out Twigs.

The Caribbean are an off-centre pop band whose album Verse By Verse is out on Endearing. Their music incorporates elements of easy listening/sunshine pop, spacey bleeps, electronic beats, Cardiacs-type quirkiness, powerpop, noisy stuff, lo-fi pop, tuneful experimentalism, janglepop and all manner of other bits that you may think shouldn't work well together but do! The Cardiacs-ish sound is most evident on the first track; the other songs are also quirky but in a different way. The Caribbean are a very different sounding pop band and are worth a listen!

Red Wolf Glass by Projektor is an album of atmospheric guitar based music - a rockier and more recent sounding interpretation of the early 90s shoegazer sound. There are hints of post-rock and also prog, but despite this last bit, they definitely don't sound like a 70s band. There is very much a current sound about them. Track 6 is poppier and happier sounding than much of the rest, but is still atmospheric, and has a proggy guitar in the chorus.

Trains of Winnipeg is a collaborative project concieved by poet Clive Holden and featuring music by singer/songwriter Christine Fellows, and Jason Tait and John K Samson of the Weakerthans. Clive reads poems over a variety of music, some of the instrumentals are like indiepop without the vocals, others are more subdued piano pieces and others are atmospheric, with varying degrees of experimentation. The first poem on here rhymes; rhyming poems are seemingly a rarity these days. The ones that don't rhyme are still well thought out and have meaning. Good to here poems that are structured and make sense, rather than the more abstract kind of modern poetry that just seems thrown together at random. Also rare to hear poetry read over music that sounds like the backing for a song; most spoken word artists I've heard tend to favour experimental soundscapes as backing. In fact, Clive Holden does sometimes, for example track 3, which is a non-rhyming poem that reads more like a story, that uses somewhat sinister sounding atmospheric music in the background. This music on its own would be a bit too much, but it works well as incidental music for this rather dark, gory tale. Track 14 is different as the voice is not provided by Clive, but is a recording of someone telling his story about riding the trains and getting chased by railway cops, over a backing of industrial machine noise. Track 15 returns to Clive, reading a poem about his parents, but there's no music for this one.

Info on these and other Endearing releases from blair@endearing.com

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