Au4

Pronounced "0-4,” Au4 is the brainchild of Vancouver’s Wylie brothers: Aaron, Nathan and Ben. Influenced by superstar club acts like Massive Attack and Underworld, the band fuse trip-hop with emo pretty seamlessly, wallowing in lost loves and lurid, layered loops. "Hit and Miss” opens with an ambient melody and meaty bass line over fluttering drum chops. It’s an uplifting feeling to open the album with, one that promises something exciting. Then, the chord picking hits, driving choral vocals into a meandering miss. For various reasons, both melodic, and when you really analyse most of the words being sung like a wolf in the night, On Audio features hooks that affect almost hauntingly. On the album’s most palatable track "A Mile from Here, Is a Hole Where I Buried Your Love,” the vocals could confuse Au4 for Scandinavian, inflecting the oddest parts of each word in the two lines worth of lyrics. "An Ocean's Measure of Sorrow” feasts on sparse, dissonant guitar twanging, and a chorus of "na-na-na-na” falling somewhere along the lines of Oasis’ "All Around the World” waltzing belligerently against Nine Inch Nails’ "Where Is Everybody.” Each band member has a Conservatory background, so the instrumentation is predictably polished rather than engagingly enthusiastic. It gives the album a "look what I can do with my computer toys” kind of feeling, perpetuated by the taunting tone of the vocals on closer "The Seeds It Left Behind.” Sticks and stones may break my bones, but vapid, pretentious songwriters bore me.