First Man Over - s/t (1986, Attention)

And so we come again to that annual Chanukah installment, wherein I laud and share files of a particular indie rock record that really spun my top this year. It's a subjective endeavor I suppose, as what might strike me as a revelation might seem comparatively routine to you.  In the grand scheme of things, satisfying as it is First Man Over's lone LP (more akin to a mini-LP given it's brevity) doesn't quite pass muster as a desert island disk. To be honest, I didn't even purchase it this year, rather a pre-pandemic.  2021 was however the year I made a concerted effort to acquaint myself, and by and large I loved what I heard. 

The Toronto trio in question evolved from another TO-area combo Kinetic Ideals, an icy post-punk setup who emphasized keyboards in near equal amounts to guitars. Alan Murrell and Jean-Claude Chambers made the migration from Kinetic Ideals to the considerably more approachable First Man Over adding Patrick Duffy on percussion. FMO ditched the electronics altogether and went straight for the jugular with a more linear but forward thinking agenda wielding a discernible pop overbite. Strummy, jangly and sonically dense FMO skirted between power pop ("Somewhere," "Diamond Mind") and moodier indie rock ("It's Happening," "Umbrella Man"). The album's concluding piece, "Here it Comes" manages to fuse these diverging styles into one, with an extra heavy dollop of melody, and in the process, angles vaguely in the vicinity of what Husker Du had cooking around the same time. Just these eight songs are what consist of the band's oeuvre (or what they managed to release anyway) and even if I don't have anything particularly profound to note about First Man Over I fully endorse what they did in their fleeting lifespan. Feel free to comment if you do as well.

01. Somewhere
02. Sincerely
03. It's Happening
04. Fire Engine
05. Blue
06. Umbrella Man
07. Diamond Mind
08. Now or Never

MP3 or FLAC