On this sixth full-length release, Montreal’s Men I Trust (aka MIT) make a statement by creating a masterpiece without particularly being different or innovative.
Equus Caballus makes no attempt to even remotely hide that MIT are happily comfortable in their soft dreamy pop stylistic bubble that is heavily indebted to eighties music. But even within the very narrow confines of this bubble, this album shows that the band can create music that is absolutely remarkable.
There is a “greatest hits” vibe to this record, where every track could be a single; and a killer one at that. The music has the obvious eighties new wave catchiness, but instead of the bombast of synthpop, MIT play this music with an understated fragility that is singular to them.
For instance, “Billie Toppy,” musically, sounds perilously close to The Cure song “A Forest,” if it were remade in the present time. But with the band’s gentle spin on the jagged guitars and biting rhythm section—which they play with total conviction—they quite convincingly make what could have been a derivative number into a modern post-punk song that only they can create.
Even while they stick steadfastly to their sound, MIT still manage to bring the listener into weird netherworlds, as they do on “The Better Half,” where gnarly synths, muted guitar chords, and suffocating drums along with some distorted vocal parts transport you to a universe much darker and sinister than, for instance, a song like “Another Stone,” which is just so sweet, warm, and heavenly.
The band plays aspects of smooth jazz (“Ring Of Past”), hair-metal (“Carried Away”), eighties stadium rock (“To Ease You”), and sophistopop (“Hard To See”) among a host of musical influences with mouse-like quietness and lion-like pride, with frontwoman Emmanuelle “Emma” Proulx’s feathery vocals (deserving a special shout-out of its own) that gently carries you into a very unique musical space that is untethered from the musical influence of the songs she is singing.
Very few albums have pulled off what MIT have, on Equus Caballus… while proudly showing off their influences, they are still staunchly original.
