Pineapple
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Pineapple

Kitimat, British Columbia, Canada | Established. Jan 01, 2009 | INDIE | AFM

Kitimat, British Columbia, Canada | INDIE | AFM
Established on Jan, 2009
Band Pop Rock

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This band has not uploaded any videos
This band has not uploaded any videos

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"Pineapple's self-titled album is kind of a ramshackle affair"

It might be a bit of a stretch to describe Pineapple as a supergroup. Okay, it’s a major stretch, but the band does feature some guys who are prominent in the Vancouver independent-music scene. Singer-guitarist Cameron Dilworth formerly led the Neins Circa, drummer Cary Pratt is better known for his piano-pop project Prairie Cat, bassist Aaron McKinney is also in SSRIs, and guitarist-keyboardist John Sparnoski is a member of the Joint Chiefs of Math. (And no, I’ve never heard of the Joint Chiefs of Math either.) Caleb Stull of Parlour Steps produced the disc, in case you keep track of such things.

With a pedigree that’s all over the map, what can you expect from Pineapple? As it turns out, it’s mostly fairly straightforward indie pop that takes the odd excursion into the quirky. It’s kind of a ramshackle affair. Dilworth’s singing has a way of wavering in and out of key that’ll strike you as either highly charming or sort of annoying, depending on your tolerance for wrong notes. Pratt, meanwhile, has a knack for sounding as if he’s constantly on the verge of losing the beat without ever actually doing so.

As for stylistic touchstones, “Words of a Girl” shuffles along like a Velvet Underground B-side, while “Happy B-Day 2000X” rides a disjointed funk groove that of Montreal might like to swipe (or swipe back, as the case may be). Pineapple is arguably at its best, though, when its influences are less easily detected. The prime example of that is “Harvey”, with its drunk-at-the-circus stumbling march beat and whistle-along sections. It’s based on the play/movie of the same name about a guy who hangs out with a six-foot rabbit that no one else can see, and, bizarre a ditty as it is, I can confirm that it’s a big hit with two-year-olds. - The Georgia Straight


"Pineapple sweet and sour"

When I was first asked to write a CD review I was excited! I like to think I have an appreciation for all types of music and enjoy being enlightened with new sounds and different genres of music. And then I listened to the self titled Pineapple album. When trying to think of one word to describe this self proclaimed indie pop/rock band from Vancouver, ‘special’ came to mind; and yes I mean special in the short bus kind of way.

I interpret Pineapple as a cross between The Wiggles on crazy acid trip and that guy who just won’t get off the karaoke microphone. Don’t get me wrong some of their songs are definitely catchy, ‘It’s A Gonna Be Good’ and ‘Words Of A Girl’ have got a good funky beat to them and the mixture of musical sounds is definitely original. They make real good use of the synthesizer and some of the sounds they reproduce put a smile on my face.

I give Pineapple credit for being like no other band I have ever heard before and they definitely won’t be anybody I’ll be able to forget for a long while to come. - The Reflector


"Pineapple and lead singer Cameron Dillworth"

It’s Wednesday night and Vancouver City Limits at the Railway Club. I step into a country music experience with Steve Elliott and Lucie Walker Band, and they were fun. They’re going on a cross-Canada tour soon, sponsored by Organic Lives, as a duo playing house concerts. This will support their soon-to-be-released third album, so look out for that!

Before the next band, I met two nurses from California who were taking in the sounds at the Railway Club. We enjoyed the 50s music of Pineapple and lead singer Cameron Dillworth. His voice reminded me of Buddy Holly, and all four band members were singing backing vocals which gave the music a very rich tone. They just finished a tour of Alberta and look forward to spreading their sweet and juicy Pineapple music across the rest of the country soon. - Backstage Vancouver


"Pineapple and lead singer Cameron Dillworth"

It’s Wednesday night and Vancouver City Limits at the Railway Club. I step into a country music experience with Steve Elliott and Lucie Walker Band, and they were fun. They’re going on a cross-Canada tour soon, sponsored by Organic Lives, as a duo playing house concerts. This will support their soon-to-be-released third album, so look out for that!

Before the next band, I met two nurses from California who were taking in the sounds at the Railway Club. We enjoyed the 50s music of Pineapple and lead singer Cameron Dillworth. His voice reminded me of Buddy Holly, and all four band members were singing backing vocals which gave the music a very rich tone. They just finished a tour of Alberta and look forward to spreading their sweet and juicy Pineapple music across the rest of the country soon. - Backstage Vancouver


"Album review - Pineapple"

It's pretty obvious that Vancouver's Pineapple is still a brand new band in its awkward infancy. Although fronted by the more experienced musician and songwriter Cameron Dilworth, Pineapple, being fairly young, is still frantic to make the message about its musical direction as clear as possible. In this case, it translates into a desperate scream for everyone to notice just how quirky they are.

This starts with the album artwork, which features a do-it-yourself Photoshop job of the band members, sporting ironic hipster moustaches and graphic tees, superimposed on a giant picture of a pixellated grizzly bear, superimposed again on some sort of science-fiction galactic-space-rainbow screensaver. This is possibly intended to be ironically humourous in some way, but it seems more like something one of the band members thought would be totally hilarious while they were baked.

Pineapple's music also continues in the panicky "everybody look at how wacky we can be" vein. Sometimes this is enjoyable, like on "Happy B-Day 2000X" and "It Doesn't Matter," which both make for very danceable, happy pop tunes, regardless of the weird lyrics. Then, there are songs like "Harvey," with endlessly repeating, bizarre synthesizer melodies that slowly drill a hole through your brain. At least Dilworth provides a bit of distraction from the grating instrumentation as he sings obscure lines like "he's a rabbit / he's your boyfriend / he's a lonely man."

The members of Pineapple seem to be having fun, but their first effort comes off as a little juvenile. The new band's music would be much easier to appreciate if its apparent uniqueness wasn't being crammed down listeners' throats. However, if you can get past the crazy cover art, among other distractions, Pineapple might be worth watching in the future, as they hopefully mature into a more cohesive ensemble. - The Gateway


"Pineapple"

The listener will know exactly what to expect from Pineapple’s debut release just by looking at the artwork. The album cover depicts four indie-nerds and a roaring grizzly bear superimposed against a glowing intergalactic night sky (an obvious choice of graphics for a band named after a popular tropical fruit). Featuring songs with titles like “Snoodle” and “Wahow”, the mishmash of quirky indie-pop contained on the album proves to be just as odd as the cover art.

The project is the brainchild of Cameron Dilworth, formerly of Niens Circa, who brought together some of his friends from Prairie Cat, SSRIs and the Joint Chiefs (along with the recording talents of Caleb Stull of Parlor Steps) to help contain and translate some of the songs that have been bouncing around his head. The resulting eleven tracks center around Dilworth’s strange, whimsical lyrics and his unique Fred Penner meets Lou Reed vocals. For the most part, the poppy tunes are catchy and fun. They are lighthearted and endearingly childish both lyrically and in instrumentation. This, however, proves to be a blessing and a curse, as some songs are clever and well delivered while others end up sounding just plain silly and interrupt the flow of an otherwise good album. On a whole though, it is nice to hear some music by talented musicians who don’t take things too seriously!
- Discorder Magazine


"Sunday Anthems"

"To make a record this fun, this strange, this cleverly confused, you’d expect special chemicals would be standard equipment. Powered by buoyant melodies, Kurt Weill oompa-loompa, wilfully arcane lyrics and a bucketful of lysergic lo-fi weirdness, the Neins’ first album comes as a welcome panacea for greying indie kids starved for another Neutral Milk Hotel record." - Exclaim! - EXCLAIM!


"Sleeves and Wigs"

Listening to Sleeves And Wigs, one gets the impression that the Neins Circa don’t quite know where they stand musically. The Vancouver quartet oscillate between boisterous pop songs, earnest school gym slow dance-worthy ballads and offbeat experimentation. Variety is great and all but sometimes the Neins Circa come across as two completely different bands. Even Cameron Dilworth’s vocals divide between the earnestness of Ben Folds and the quirkiness of Dan Bejar (an unsurprising comparison, considering New Pornographer Carl Newman essentially discovered the band). The Neins Circa like to give credit where credit is due, slyly slipping allusions to heroes into their lyrics. Opening track “Faster Than Them” mentions an “airplane over the sea” and “The Bentley Hills” includes a line about “summer teeth,” references to Neutral Milk Hotel and Wilco, respectively. The vast majority of the song structures on Sleeves And Wigs refreshingly defy formula. It’s interesting, however, that the very best track is the most formulaic of the bunch. “Green Pants,” a ditty about a crafty DIY girlfriend and her homemade pants, is strictly verse, chorus, verse but damn if it isn’t pure magic. They’re still a young band but their potential is apparent. Once the Neins Circa sort themselves out, they’re going to have even more magic up their collective sleeves. (Copperspine) - EXCLAIM!


"Neins Circa get ripped"



The life of a touring musician is often a long, hard slog. The Neins Circa might have had a few lucky breaks as they rose through the ranks, including being briefly signed to AC Newman's short-lived record label and playing to decent-sized crowds opening for The New Pornographers' maestro. But even with that behind him, frontman Cameron Dilworth seems to be doing a stellar job of not sweating the lamer components of a cross-Canadian tour.

The Vancouver-based indie band embarked on a trek from their hometown to Ontario with Young And Sexy this fall and, by tour's end, Dilworth almost sounds chipper over the phone when he says, "There hasn't really been much of a crowd at all. Most of them have been pretty bad turnouts, to be honest.

"The first tour I went on was with A.C. Newman, and that was playing to packed shows every night. Everything was really exciting, but I knew I was in for a reality check with the next tour I went on. I was prepared for it, and I think it was good for me."

Dilworth concedes that it's tough to get bodies out for shows over the Thanksgiving weekend, when many young people are in their respective hometowns plunging into a tryptophan buzz. In fact, none of what Dilworth calls the "Vancouver Neins" — band members Elaine Fung (bass, vocals), Sean Gilhooly (drums, vocals), Erin Jane (keyboards, vocals) and Kevin Cromie (trumpet, guitar, vocals) — could make it out.

Dilworth found himself tackling the tour as a one-man Nein backed by drummer Cary Pratt, the Spooneristic frontman of Prairie Cat, and The Rub bassist Aaron McKinney, with whom he's hoping to start a new project back in B.C. They're peddling Dilworth and company's latest EP, C.S. Rippen, a tribute to Dilworth's longtime friend and roommate Chris.

"It was funny because he was excited about the album, thinking it might get him some attention to some of the projects he was working on," says Dilworth. "But after the pressing was done, I realized I'd spelt his name [C.S. Rippin] wrong."

Rippin is a musician whom Dilworth calls "one of the most talented guys I know." What began as one ditty Dilworth made up in his friend's honour became a set of songs — that range in content from giving him a pre-gig pep talk to labouriously detailing the entire history of his birth — that plays like a mini-rock opera, with some obvious musical nods to The Kinks and David Bowie.

It wouldn't be the first time Dilworth has swiped stories from family members and friends for use as lyrical fodder. The Neins Circa albums Sunday Anthems and Sleeves And Wigs are studded with real-life anecdotes concerning friends, grandparents, ex-girlfriends, clothing stores where ex-girlfriends used to work and that weird guy who hangs around the arena and buys glass eyeballs on eBay.

"I think most [people I know] are hopeful I don't do it, to be honest," Dilworth concedes. "Or they hope that I'll say something nice about them. I think they also know I'll say things that are honest about them, but maybe aren't so nice."

C.S. Rippen, which was recorded at Vancouver's Vaudeville Studios, came from demos Dilworth made before a botched move to England. A family emergency forced him to decamp back to B.C., where he found himself having to essentially beat his muse into submission.

"I was feeling really unhappy about what I was doing with music in a lot of ways, in my songwriting and in my attitude about music," Dilworth says. "I was feeling like I couldn't write for myself, just overwhelmed with a feeling of, 'What are people going to think about this?' And I hated that I felt that way.

"Lots of times, I would stand up and start going down the stairs to do something other than music, and I literally had to give myself a pep talk and go back and keep working. In the end, the songs weren't really all that different from what I was doing. I think they're just going to be songs I'm happy with."

Catch The Neins Circa and learn more about the storied life of Chris Rippin at Vancouver's Western Front on Friday.
- Chart Attack


"CS Ripper"

First, Neins Circa, lose that bio on your website. No one needs a 1,000-word band diary about everything that's ever happened to your group. The general rule seems to be the longer and more self-involved the promo, the worse the band is, so thank God your music is good. Happyfuntime, B.C.-based orchestral indie rock with classic pop influences à la soaring vocal harmonies and songs about being friends with your friends and smiley glockenspiel junk like that. It's good, but I'll never listen to it again. Goddamn hippies - lay off the pot. Things out there aren't going well.


- Hour


Discography

Pineapple has one self titled record released June 1 , 2010
We will be releasing a new album 2014!!!

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Bio

Pineapple

Pineapple is a gang of fun loving fruits from the Vancouver music machine out for a good time. Guaranteed to make you smile, these guys are straight shootin pop rockers with a dash of wierd. Think VU, early Bowie, Beck Mutations/Modern Guilt and sorry, I'm gonna say it, The Beatles. 
Pineapple has played shows with some of these big shots, New Porno's AC Newman, Wilco, Chad Van Galaalen, Calexico and oh so many more. Not impressed yet, well ask our moms, they love us.

Band Members