The first thing that hits you when listening to Vancouver New Wavers The Organ is singer Katie Sketch's striking vocal resemblance to Debbie Harry; the second their New Order-esque aptitude for a broad and shimmering soundscape. But the concomitant effect is of a band purveying a broader sound with utter conviction and authenticity.
Sketch's vocals are exactly what you'd want from a dissolute New Wave crusader, evoking pin-ups and glamour whilst being emotionally piquant and lyrically relevant and just to die for. In Memorize The City her vintage drawl animates the bleak urban isolation elegantly carved out by her band with a shimmering grace few contemporaries can match.
As an eminently sophisticated quintet, the prevailing intellectual effect of The Organ is perhaps to remind us that derivation is an art-form too, and while for some of our darkest indie friends that spark of personal meaning is not enough to shroud their risibility, here we are left to drool. Five-thousand miles away from home, The Organ will never be strangers in the city.
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