LIGHTSPEED CHAMPION - Galaxy of the Lost

By Simon Howell - A Listening Ear - 07/16/2007

Call it colonial back drifting. A few years back, Murray Lightburn and his Dears emerged as one of the first (possibly the first) widely successful band of Montreal's now prominent post-referendum scene. Lightburn's vocal style was an uncanny imitation of Britpop luminaries like Damon Albarn as well as the magnate of mopery himself, Morrissey. Now comes Lightspeed Champion (aka Dev Hynes, formerly of defunct post-hardcore thrashniks Test Icicles), who, it must be said, carries an uncanny vocal similarity to Lightburn, as well as sharing a penchant for the melodramatic (never mind that he actually is British, as opposed to the artificially inflected Lightburn). 

As a companion piece to his ambitious debut LP, The Falling of the Lavender Bridge, Hynes has issued Galaxy of the Lost which consists of the title track (taken from the LP), two covers, and two outtakes from the LP sessions. "Galaxy of the Lost" is by far the strongest original of the bunch, with its brisk pacing and meaty chord progression -- even if its principal acoustic riff is a little too reminiscent of Weezer's "I Just Threw Out the Love of My Dreams." Meanwhile, an acoustic version of the LP's closing track, "No Surprise" (itself a reprise of the album's nine-minute centerpiece "Midnight Surprise"), is nice enough, but the removal of the original track's percussive elements doesn't reveal anything new about the song itself, rendering it a curiosity at best. The first cover is a take on the closing medley from 60's Broadway musical Hair, "The Flesh Failures." Again, the track seems more or less an arbitrary inclusion; if you've heard the original, you can enjoy a faithful recreation of every last harmony and cascading vocal line (right down to the "Manchester, England" reprise), but the Hynes' stubborn acoustic arrangement robs the "Let the Sunshine In" coda of its appeal. The other cover, also derived from a musical (this time the title song from ELO leader Jeff Lynne's Xanadu score), is more successful, with its relatively understated arrangement nicely counteracting Lyne's sublimely ridiculous celebration of the song's neon namesake. The EP's only truly exclusive original track, "Waiting Game," is an unmemorable ballad that, while hardly terrible, was wisely left off the well-paced LP. As short-form releases go, one could certainly do worse, but seek out the superior Falling of the Lavender Bridge first. 

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