Ryan's Hey Rosetta Review

Tim Baker, lead singer for Hey Rosetta!, has explained the name of their current album, Seeds, by saying that "the songs are seeds ... they’re these little things –- four and five minute things — but they have the ability to grow in your brain and be far more meaningful than just what they are", and I think that's a perfect assessment of the album. When I first started listening to it I wanted to say that the songs were haunting, but that's not really accurate – they don't have the mournful, melancholy edge that one would associate with a haunting. The 'seed' metaphor works as well because it's organic, and the music on Seeds is as well, each song fitting into a larger whole than just existing on its own.

I felt that Hey Rosetta!'s last album, the also-Polaris-shortlisted Into Your Arms, was about an immature band in the process of self-discovery; Seeds, in contrast, finds Hey Rosetta! having become much more mature and sure of themselves – sure enough that they've developed a more playful edge to their music. This is something displayed in the reggaesque beat of several songs, such as in the punningly named "New Sum (Nous Sommes)", or the outtake of laughter crossed with what sounded like a handsaw impression (?) at the end of "Parson Brown". It's an interesting contrast to the fairly structured, somewhat traditional instrumentation on display throughout the album. That play within structure helps strengthen the album, I found – you know it's neither going to become stilted or fall apart from self-indulgence.

Of course, instrumentation and self-discovery will only take you so far; if a band wants to win me over they need a strong lyrical presence, and it's here that Hey Rosetta! shines, with Baker crafting his lines in a thoughtful, measured way. In the hands of a lesser writer, subject material like new fatherhood and the intricate balance between fear and trust could come across as cliched or trite, but Baker manages to make them seem familiar and relatable, and brings them to the table without any judgment or trying to provide any unique insight. Doing it in this way allows the listener to develop their own conclusions about those subjects, which creates deeper roots for those subjects than a more didactic approach would. I mentioned that Hey Rosetta! comes across as very mature throughout the album, and this approach of guiding the listener and trusting them to make their own connections and conclusions is a reflection of that maturity.

Standout tracks: Young Glass, Welcome, New Sum (Nous Sommes)

Gary's Hey Rosetta! Review

Listening to the opening track of Into Your Lungs, you can picture lead singer Tim Baker standing in front of you quietly strumming a guitar and warbling the opening lines to New Goodbye. You lean forward in your seat, straining to hear his near whisper and think - Oh good, another acoustic singer/songwriter. But that's his plan, because before you know it you've been descended upon from all sides by the rest of Hey Rosetta!, in a tempest of guitars, strings, harmonies and other controlled chaos. It builds to a hair-raising frenzy before ending in a wall of fuzz and white noise. And that's just the first song.

For anyone who's heard the soundtrack to the movie Once or the band Swell Season, you'll recognize some familiar dynamics, including the ability to crank up the emotion to near heart breaking levels. Baker can go from 0-60 on that scale pretty fast, and does so frequently. In fact you might even argue that the intensity gets jacked up so often on this album (a healthy 60 minutes) that it's almost exhausting. The whisper to a scream velocity is so fast and frequent you may feel like you have emotional whiplash. But it's a cost worth paying when you know the people behind them music mean every word of it.

There's an art and meticulous craft that's gone into the album but not on a pretentious Arcade Fire-level. That said, there are moments when things get a bit "jammy" and the band seems really impressed with itself. These are fleeting moments, but I did find myself thinking - get on with it already - more than once.

Into Your Lungs has a sense of familiarity too, or as my wife succinctly put it: "I feel like these all sound like other songs." This isn't exactly a slight against Hey Rosetta!, but more a testament to how quickly they'll make you feel at home with the material. And why not - there's a lot to love on Into Your Lungs. It's powerful and weighty (Black Heart), it has grand, stomping sing-a-longs (Tired Eyes) and some really well executed 90's style rock (There's an Arc, A Thousand Suns).

It's refreshing to hear bands that have clearly taken time and effort to craft an album from start to finish and not just a collection of tenuously related songs. Hey Rosetta! have seemingly appeared out of nowhere for me, and to echo something Dave said, I'm not sure why. They have all the markings of a band I'd fawn over and yet Polaris is the first time I've heard of them. I hope that changes for them, because this is the kind of band that gets me excited for a Canadian music renaissance. Something akin to the mid-to-late 90s when bands like Local Rabbits, Eric's Trip, Thrush Hermit, Change of Heart et al, were establishing a pretty high bench mark. It's pretty clear what Hey Rosetta! grew up listening to, and by the sounds of things they studied well.