BUY / STREAM I FEEL ALIVE HERE
"Their strongest songs yet... Tops are now up there with Phoenix as the masters of modern soft rock." - **** The Guardian
"guaranteed to brighten your mood" - CBC Music
"It's a pleasurable, sun-drenched record — the work of a band who've found their voice, louder and clearer than before" - Exclaim
"One of Canada's most consistent musical exports" - NYLON
"Unassuming but fascinatingly complex" - The FADER
"Indie pop bliss." - Pitchfork
"One of the most riveting and peerless acts in indie rock" - Stereogum
"Their chemistry is plain to see" - Paste Magazine
Photo Credit : Justin Aranha // DOWNLOAD HI-RES
Today, Montreal four-piece TOPS release their newest album I Feel Alive via their own label Musique TOPS. On the new album, their trademark sound of beguiling melodies over soft-rock grooves, with touches of '80s sophisti-pop and a contemporary experimental palette is intact, but bolder and more expansive. The songs manage to be both immediately catchy and deceptively deep, with Penny's literary lyrics adding an extra dimension to the pure pop hooks. Satisfying yet far from predictable, I Feel Alive is a record to be savored, revealing itself slowly, gaining power and poignancy with each listen.
TOPS began to write I Feel Alive in Montreal after an extended sabbatical where all members lived in different cities without working on new material or touring. Coming together with a renewed sense of energy, the result is an introspective and resilient album that immediately hits and lingers. The record is their fourth full-length, following 2017's Sugar At The Gate and follows singles "Echo of Dawn" and "Seven Minutes" from last year. The album also includes previous singles "Direct Sunlight", which singer Jane Penny described as "a song to remind myself that it's up to me to choose the perspective that I take," "Colder & Closer", which came with a striking Mashie Alam-directed thermal vision video, the upbeat "Witching Hour", and the album's title-track.
WATCH AND SHARE “COLDER & CLOSER” HERE
The artwork for TOPS' fourth LP sets the tone for the music enclosed. Inspired by the work of photographer Thomas Ruff, TOPS' vocalist Jane Penny stares bare-faced down the lens-simple and un-posed, yet striking with starkness and vulnerability.
The image captures the fraught nature of being alive, which the 11 tracks on the album explore. Penny's remarkably expressive voice is front and centre. On this record more than any other, she sings with passion and energy, without sacrificing the honesty and introspection that gives her voice its depth. The songs cover a range of experiences but at its heart I Feel Alive is a record about resilience, the ways we can grow from for our pain and the strength that comes from learning to stand on your own as an individual.
For I Feel Alive, the band members convened in a basement studio in Montreal, recording for the first time with keyboardist Marta Cikojevic who joined the band as a live member in 2017. "From the first time we practiced with her it was clear that we were in sync musically, and we found ourselves improvising together at the first rehearsal" says Penny. "Having Marta manning the keys allowed me to reach for my flute, and gave me the chance to integrate my flute playing with the writing process, using it as an expressive instrument rather than more production element which it has been in the past."
LISTEN AND SHARE “WITCHING HOUR” HERE
She continues: "We'd spent a lot of time apart, not working on new stuff or touring, just living life, all in different cities," says Penny. When we went to make I Feel Alive we all had a good sense of what we were trying to do and a renewed energy towards playing together. The goal was to get in a room together and play, not holding anything back."
"It was a quick process," says guitarist and fellow song-writer David Carriere. "We would work all day writing a song and then demo them the same evening, relying on our natural chemistry as a band to let the songs come into their own." The band's line-up is completed by Riley Fleck on drums.
Title track "I Feel Alive" is a bracing pop gem with darker undertones. An ode to new love, Penny sings "I feel alive looking in your eyes" with the exuberance that comes with the early stages of romance, the discovery of a deep love. But love is complicated, and within the joy and happiness is the pain of leaving someone else behind. "When I saw you wanted to spend the night with someone else at home," she sings, "I knew it wasn't right." This honest admission that happiness can come at the expense of others adds another dimension to the song's ecstatic energy. True love defies us to overcome others expectations, and that's a good thing. People may be watching, but why should you care.
Opposing and it, "Colder and Closer" is a sonic departure, with programmed synths and metallic drumming, the song shimmers. A tribute to seeking meaning in an increasingly confusing world Penny sings "Searching constellations/seeing if the stars align." But she doesn't take comfort in the stars, rejecting fate as something arbitrary, though not quite meaningless. "Signs are myths like nations/shapes drawn over crooked lines."The song is swift and lean, a pop confection, but it's also ripe with meditations on the social isolation that plagues casual intimacy. It's a prime example of the way TOPS layer meaning within pop songwriting. Beneath the soaring melodies and crisp production, I Feel Alive balances the giddiness of a new relationship with the agony of leaving old things behind. It's an introspective record that you can dance to, music that hits in an immediate rush but sticks around, lingering like the memory of a perfect doomed love affair-both the joy and the pain, until it becomes a part of your life forever.
BUY / STREAM I FEEL ALIVE HERE
1. Direct Sunlight
2. I Feel Alive
3. Pirouette
4. Ballads & Sad Movies
5. Colder & Closer
6. Witching Hour
7. Take Down
8. Drowning In Paradise
9. OK Fine Whatever
10. Looking To Remember
11. Too Much