Toronto group FemBots are set to release their fourth album, Calling Out, this September. Now, when I first cued up the album (or rather, unzipped it and imported it into my iTunes), I stopped the song about 10 seconds into it thinking something else on my computer was making noise, or surely the garbage truck was taking the trash, but no, all those odd noises were coming from the track itself.

At first a little skeptical of a song with this much weird background noise, I found out a little more about it when I looked further into the making of the album. The original concept for Calling Out was to, as the band puts it, make the entire album by “using an assortment of junkstruments, musical instruments created from garbage by artist Iner Souster.” Unfortunately, it didn’t quite work. Says the press release: “Eight months into the project it became clear that the junkstruments simply were too unpredictable and too difficult to work with to sustain an entire album. Rather than scraping the project entirely, the FemBots used the junkstrument instrumentals they had recorded as rhythm tracks, the rock and roll chassis that the rest of the songs are built on.”

What results is this strange layered composition which, if you give it time, turns into a very good song. Although it’s built from the ground up on junk, at its height are catchy hooks and solid songwriting, which are all blended back into the junkyard foundation. Be sure to listen to the whole track (especially if you want in on the trumpets at the end) after the jump.

Tunes:

FemBots - “Good Days”

Info:

Callng Out is out September 16, 2008.

Websites:
[myspace]
[official]