Faunts

Hauntingly beautiful and defiantly hopeful, Faunts create perfect music for the twilight hour between wake and sleep. High Expectations/Low Results, their remarkably assured debut album, weaves together shimmering walls of pink noise with dreamy, languorous guitar, gently-treated vocals, and swimmingly beautiful melodies.

Fauntswas formed in the fall of 2000 by brothers Tim and Steven Batke and soon after, Paul Arnusch. At this point the band emerged, squinting, into the nightlight oftheir hometown of Edmonton, a modest-sized city in northern Canada with a healthy and thriving music scene.

Not long after their inception,Faunts shared the stage with prominent Canadian bands Broken Social Scene, Stars, and Do Make Say Think. Two Canadian tours followed shortly thereafter including a show at the Popmontreal festival. Now with the addition of Joel Hitchcock, Faunts continue to play breathtaking shows from local theatres to New York's CMJ music festival.

Steven's guitar is at the core of Faunts'sprawling, ethereal sound, and Tim and Joel's keyboards add layer upon layer to the music, which makes it all the more powerful when the wall of sound drops away, leaving nothing but a sparkling echo. This is headphone music at its finest, the band is comprised of musical perfectionists, and they can most often be found in the studio tweaking, recording and mixing until each song is sculpted perfectly to define a specific mood.

If you listen from the right angle, High Expectations/Low Results will reflect the musical tropes of bands like Mogwaior Sigur Ros, while still holding on to the pop sensibilities of bands such as Starflyer 59 and the Cure. But High Expectations/Low Results is its own distinct entity, from the soaring, spiky guitars of Parler De La Pluie Et Du Beau Temps to the hushed lullaby of Memories Of Places We've Never Been. It is an accomplished, drowsily beautiful album from what is sure to become one of Canada's most acclaimed musical groups.