The Flashing Lights – Sweet Release

I’ve been listening to a lot of defunct Halifax-connected bands of late, having learned that the east coast city was a bastion of awesome power pop bands in the 1990s. While it’s given me a lot of joy, I’m a bit melancholy about it, too. Every time I discover a great Canadian band that passed on without me ever knowing them, my irritation grows with radio programmers of, well, pretty much every era. I don’t know if radio failed The Flashing Lights – I was barely paying attention to it when the band’s two albums came out in 1999 and 2001 – but someone did. Wikipedia claims they had a hit on modern rock stations in 1999 with “Half the Time”, but it was a quiet hit for certain. What matters to me is that I missed them, and in the musical wasteland that was 1999 – I mean, just read this list and weep – their music would have been much appreciated.

The songs have that easy grace that the best pop music has, a confidence in their quality as songs and in their execution as recording artists. There is certainly a commonality with fellow Haligonoans like Sloan, The SuperFriendz, Thrush Hermit and Cool Blue Halo, but name any great power pop act of the era – Teenage Fanclub, Matthew Sweet, Material Issue – and the echoes are there. They are a lot noisier than many power pop artists, and it’s that rock edge that distinguishes them. My favourite tune here is the album’s opener “Been Waiting”, with the rock star boastful chorus leading into directions to their gig that ends with a “left at the Burger King / Look for a murder scene”. Other great tracks include every bloody song on the album, and I refuse to pick another standout because it would only diminish the songs I don’t pick, and they deserve better than that. Their first album was also great, though a little rougher, and “Highschool” is my fave there. (It’s cool that the three guitarists let a guy their dads’ age play drums.) Just a fantastic band, and I only learned of their existence – and some of the bands they have led me to – because Spotify thought “Been Waiting” was the right song to follow the end of Josh Fix’s delightfully eccentric album “Free At Last”. And they were absolutely right, but I don’t even remember how I came to listen to the Fix record. Random discoveries can be the best.