reviewed by Jack Derricourt

Want to lighten up your day? Try Death.

No, seriously, Daniel Terrence Robertson’s lighthearted Vancouver sounds will help you soothe out those tense moments. Bone-wrenching anxiety got you down? That’s easily assuaged with a bit of this album’s soft, playful heart.

The recordings offered up by DTR are like sour songbirds, left to cry out from a farther room. Synths and vocals are lightly off balance, never really restful, but in love with a groove all the same. Tones of reverence and meditation flirt with a few ghosts over the course of eight tracks. Domestic figures totter around within the song matter, without any concrete place within the space created between opener “House and closer “Garden.”

An experimental batch of pop songs hold out their hands and say, “Let’s play:” On “House,” DTR pleads, “Get behind me Satan,” that old cliche, and ranges out into a crashing of cymbals; the guitar tones of Calgary visionaries resound on “Soundtrack 4 (Mother)” as a synth flow incubates within those jangles, and grows out of the treble, to form a rich, beautiful bird of noise; “Falsity” breeds “God I’m Sorry” — and all the Pet Sounds a la Tron hijinx found therein.

Some things get better on second, third, fourth listen. I can say that about Death. It never gets old, even if it took a while to grow on me. Give it a shot!

Top Track: “Soundtrack 4 (Mother)”

Rating: Strong Hoot (Good)