Timber Timbre

The evolution of stellar Canadian outfit Timber Timbre continues on its third Arts & Crafts album, Hot Dreams. Ringleader Taylor Kirk again blends a range of musical styles and sounds into lush, complex soundscapes fit to score Angelo Badalamenti’s most surreal dreams and fevered nightmares. The cinematic allure of TT’s sound has already brought Hollywood knocking (songs have appeared on Breaking Bad, and a French-Canadian adaptation of the Joyce Carol Oates novel Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang, and more), and here’s hoping there will be more of those opportunities to come. Kirk brings new muses to each mix, the last outing (2011’s Creep on Creeping On) was marked by his diabolical take on doo-wop, and this one is equally influenced by spaghetti westerns and the type of 1970s Eurotrash soft-core flix they show on Skinemax. Standout track “Run From Me,” for example, is the closest one can imagine to a meeting of Roy Orbison and Sergio Leone. Though Kirk has announced in interviews his desire to move away from the “creepy” tag, this album is, thankfully, still haunted as hell, with a few mirthfully macabre lines occasionally bursting forth to startle listeners. For example, Kirk seethes, “I want to follow through on all my promises and threats to you babe” on the lustful title track, and prays a chasm “take our plane inside its mouth” on the album’s most epic offering, “Grand Canyon.”