Salteens
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Salteens

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This band has not uploaded any videos

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Press


"Grey Eyes story"

"A pop album with a deep, innocent heart that tackles the uncertainty of the future [with] incomparable Spector/Bacharach/Wilson-esque melodies." - Vancouver Sun


"Grey Eyes review"

"Once known more for mod-ish, plucky melodies, Grey Eyes... strikes much closer to influences like Burt Bacharach, AM golden greats and Brill Building... A marked leap forward, Grey Eyes proves with their absence The Salteens were missed greatly." - The New Music / Much Music


"Grey Eyes / Yo Gabba Gabba feature"

"Layered, orchestral soundscapes that listen like a dramatic movie score mixed with perfect, Pet Sounds pop." - Uptown Magazine


"Grey Eyes review"

"Grey Eyes is a record of sublime beauty and infectious brilliance." - Tuesday Guide


"Grey Eyes review"

"Grey Eyes is a record of sublime beauty and infectious brilliance." - Tuesday Guide


"Grey Eyes review"

"Grey Eyes isn't just something new for the Salteens, it's a kind of masterpiece." - AllMusic


"Grey Eyes review"

"Scott Walker has a gift... [Grey Eyes] is alive with brass dominating and arranging subtleties... [with] a respect for songwriting values à la Burt Bacharach." - The Province


"Grey Eyes review"

"A truly great album... magnificent... I love everything that the wind section and standing bass bring to the sound of this formerly simple pop rockers... this is definitely their best album so far." - In Your Speakers


"Grey Eyes review"

"The Salteens return to the limelight is completed... The group have ditched power-pop for orchestral pop à la the Brill Building, and both reinvented themselves and stayed true to the catchy harmonies that brought them success at the beginning." - CHARTAttack


"Grey Eyes review"

"Dropping the guitars altogether and adopting '60s orchestral pop, à la Tin Pan Alley and Pet Sounds... It's a welcome return from a too often overlooked gem in Canadian indie rock." - Exclaim!


Discography

Grey Eyes - lp (2010)
Kid Songs - ep (2010)
Moths - ep (2010)
Let Go of Your Bad Days - lp (2003)
Short-Term Memories - lp (2000)
Tomorrow/Motor Away - 7" (2000)

Photos

Bio

It’s a testament to the better angels of global culture that a bunch of music geeks in Vancouver can grow up to make worldly, magisterial, boldly contoured pop together. And it’s a testament to the better angels of The Salteens that, after a decade as a band and seven years after establishing indie label-of-love Boompa Records, they’ve crafted an album defined by both precision and heart.

Grey Eyes nods towards sophisticated ’60s European and American pop constructionists (Gainsbourg, Bacharach, the other Scott Walker) and brass-tacks workmanlike hit-makers of yore (Tin Pan Alley, the Brill Building), while acknowledging transformative pop heirs from the ’70s and ’80s (Godley & Crème, The Smiths). Yet far from being a mash-up of influences, Grey Eyes captures the freshness that marked the dawn of popular music and periodically renews it — no matter what hurts and indignities pop songs are woven from, a transcending embrace of possibility remains a genre fundamental.

Salteens’ songwriter Scott Walker had a lot of grief to give to Grey Eyes: the passing of his father, and witnessing his mother’s struggle with Alzheimer’s, leaving him on the threshold of assuming the terrifyingly adult roles of caretaker-of-memory and maker-of-the-future; navigating the dashed expectations and broken promises of grown-up life in this crazily uncertain era; and, most of all, committing the brave acts of love that can be as painful as they are redeeming.

Nevertheless, the pop law holds: the lower the lows, the higher the highs. And so it is that Grey Eyes — polished, crisp, sprightly, and architecturally realized — is a sublime and energetic continuation of a catalogue launched with The Salteens’ award-winning debut Short-Term Memories (endearing Records, 2000), deepened on their 2003 college radio chart-topper Let Go of Your Bad Days (raison d’être for Boompa) and this spring’s tantalizingly silence-breaking EP Moths, and further developed over years of globetrotting tours and performances (did you catch them on Yo Gabba Gabba?).

The Salteens — some of them friends for decades, and almost all steeped in formal training, including Walker and his BA in Music — approached their long-awaited follow-up as a celebration of shared experience and technical mastery. Eschewing guitars to fashion Grey Eyes solely from stunning brass arrangements, gleaming choral melodies, and other deft orchestrations, the band has crafted an impeccably burnished album that disputes the silly notions that ‘indie’ equals ‘ramshackle’ and pop is inconsequential.