Versa hail from the beautiful Victoria, British Columbia, a location that is undeniably notorious for its ability to have anyone immediately fall in love with the scenery and the other sights located throughout the unobtrusive city.  Like Vancouver, this city doesn’t have a particular sound associated with it, as opposed to the most obvious of examples - Reykjavik or even Montreal.  Instead, due in part to how multi-cultural the whole province is in general, the musicians essentially end up borrowing from several different cultures.  Or, in the case of Versa, they end up expertly imitating a couple of their favorite bands and put a slight spin on it.  To summarize, the band describes itself on its myspace page as sounding like “Mogwai and King Crimson meeting in a seedy 1920’s German cabaret.”

In actuality, everything about the band more or less looks like a bit of a joke.  From the over-the-top band photos to song titles such as "The Freezer is Broken, My Soul is Destroyed,"  after a quick run through, it would seem as though we’ve been put through some kind of torture mechanism in which we have to choose who, out of all of the band members, is the most pretentious.  At this juncture, I’d much rather run to the nearest suicide booth and be done with it.  But then I’d miss out on some actually decent instrumentation put forth by this group.  Y’know - despite the painfully obvious imitations and what not.

To get it out of the way, as quickly (and easily) as possible, “The Freezer is Broken, My Soul is Destroyed” feels as though it was almost directly ripped from The Fountain OST, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and simply classify it as the after effects of them watching the film way too often, which is forgivable.  We then move onto “Approaching the Alex Fraser Bridge.”  Though present throughout the whole album, the strings are the real treat here.  In fact, it’s usually when they try to emulate the powerful bass which Mogwai does so well that things fall apart.  In the mix, it actually doesn’t sound bad, but  on its own, it simply doesn’t work – and it really takes away from the great 1920's seedy cabaret sound that the band flirts with.  With “Chaconne” following, there isn’t much to say – it's a fairly boring tune, not so much in relation to tempo, but rather the simplicity of the structure.  On “A Pile of Bones” the tempo is brought up but the structure stays within the same safety net in which Versa continually apply.  Admittedly though, it has a lot of energy, so if one needs a good boost in the morning this will certainly do the trick.  The filler here is some of the coolest I’ve seen; on “'Round the Bend” we’re treated to a man and his xylophone with some bass picks every now and then.  In the end though, there is really only one track to speak of on this entire disc:  “The Grind,” which doesn’t start quite as conventionally as all of the other tracks, begins as an exploration into ambient territory, and ends as a decent mix of classical strings and modern rock. 

Other than “The Grind,” which gives us the most we end up hearing of the 1920s cabaret sound, the album doesn’t boast any surprises, and the band isn’t exactly shy about flaunting their influences either.  It does seem a shame though, as there are clearly some shards of talent scattered about through all of the band members.  But, realistically, a plethora of post-rock bands are currently coming out of the woodwork trying to emulate the giants, and at the moment it seems as though Versa will get lost among all the others. 

-Jonathan Craig