THE MOST SERENE REPUBLIC - Underwater Cinematographer

One of the latest musical fashions is revisiting pop music from every possible angle. Often this means piling up a disparate heap of instruments and weaving them together in the most bizarre way possible, with the basic melodic line veering into unusual territory, out of time and/or out of its mind. Among the forerunners of this scene are the Broken Social Scene. In Canada, Arts&Crafts turned them into an actual trademark sound - and it's to that trademark that Most Serene Republic submit themselves obediently.

Their "Underwater Cinematographer" is indeed yet another collection of instrumental ensemble oddities, with the addition of a heavy electronic touch, often essential in achieving that underwater sound the band is after (every track is immersed in a haze or coated with a film — depending on how intrusive it gets — of noise). The problem with the record is that its ambition finds very few outlets, ending up folding in on itself in pointless overstructuring, leaving the songs mewing into the void. "Content Was Always My Favourite Colour" is the perfect testament to all this: a watery landscape of lavish arrangements, multi-stage deconstructed pop, guitars and keyboards of every kind, yet nothing that manages to grab the track by the horns and steer it in the right direction. All that's left is the odd flash of inspiration, like the closing piano motif. This is the template, as we said, and it's immediately followed by "The Protagonist...", still wandering without finding its footing, despite the usual solid, classically-flavoured piano, revealing instead just how flat and monotone the lead vocal really is; and "Where Cedar...", which on paper looks exactly like the kind of fireworks track the album's worth should be built on, but on which its failure instead rests.

So it turns out the best moments come when the band sets itself the proper limits. "Proposition 61" offers a touch of enchantment with its pensive guitar figure which, accompanied by handclaps, unfolds along a fixed line, allowing only decorative intrusions (female vocals, vocal percussion, electric pulses, wisps of horns); by contrast, the Brazilian-flavoured acoustic guitar of "King of No One" isn't enough to carry the track. Further scattered ideas turn up, without ever amounting to much, in "In Places, Empty Spaces" with its ethereal little-bells atmosphere (which then opens up, badly, into a pop song) and in "Relative's Eyes", which features some decent guitar work.

It can only end in a thumbs-down. The Most Serene Republic come across as an extremely immature band, especially in terms of the paper-thin substance of the original project, ultimately paying the price for the very existence of the indie-pop fad of the moment. The usual story: too many records, and too soon.

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30/04/2026