Review Summary: Some big names create a faithful well crafted tribute to the 60's hit parade, if you're in to that sort of thing...
For those who aren't acquainted with Canadas other national language, “Maintenant” means "now" -- as in, right now. This is a pretty ironic title given that the recording of this album dates back to 2005, and was largely completed before 2008. Sure, recording dates don’t matter, but what makes Maintenant so ironic is that this album is completely dedicated to recreating the sound of the '60 hit parade. And to this end, it succeeds.
It’s easy to imagine producer/engineer Colin Stewart as Phil Spector, and songwriter Nick Krgovich as Lieber and Stoller, and if it weren’t for some familiar voices across the album, Maintenant could easily be mistaken for a collection of greatest hits lost from a past decade. This album is anything but "now," but the songs are, almost without exception, well-constructed and fun to listen to.
The problem is that this album channels '60s pop so well, it sounds far more like an exercise in recreation than in originality. They don’t make that style of pop anymore because they made it in the '60s, and it sounded pretty good then, but then people moved on. Those who kept their records from those days still listen to them. Either way, unless you want to hear some familiar names like Owen Pallett, Zac Pennington, and Katie Eastburn lending their voices to music that so unabashedly recreates a bygone era, you’ll probably stick to the real thing, or far more likely, you can keep living in the now.
