Lotus Child

If you’re going to make piano pop, it helps to have a great piano player — which this Vancouver band do in Tom Dobrzanski. But it also helps to have great pop songs, and when a song called "Swedish Girl” finds them admitting, "You make me want to write songs about girls again,” we’re entering troublesome territory. At their best, Lotus Child are a tight band with an aesthetic that recalls a low-key Novillero; at their worst, they enter schmaltzy Five For Fighting territory, one step away from an overly earnest MOR ballad to help you get lost in the supermarket.