Altamina is an indie-rock band from Montreal, Canada is dropping its latest album “Tomorrow Morning Will Be Tonight” on the 11th of June. The band who has recorded with Howard Bilerman (Arcade Fire, Wolf Parade), started out with Marco and François, is currently composed of François Graham (keys, lead vocals), Marco Gervais (guitars, back vocals), Roxanne Miller (Bass, back vocals) and Matt Davis (Drums).
Altamina’s music reminds me of the ocean. There’s a common feel to all of it, but also an incredible variety of textures, and an intense level of detail to the ebb and flow of the musical patterns. More importantly, once you’ve experienced it, you might think you don’t need it anymore, but something pulls you back…again…and again.
At first you may be perplexed by the dark tones or underwhelmed by François Graham’s deep and somber baritone. Then you give it another go, just to see if you’ve missed something. And before long, the songs stick in your head, and fine shards of light seems to break through the melancholic ambience.
Soon you’ll be hunting down friends, and even foe, to jabber about your new musical discovery. You’ll be discussing the lyric in “Storm” or that piano segment on “Tonight” and the guitar arrangement – the one that sounds like nothing you’ve ever heard before, yes the one in “Liablity”.
It’s like going to beach as a kid and it seems OK, but you feel like you can take it or leave it. And the next thing you know, you’re an adult owning an oceanfront property. That’s what happens with this album.
“Tomorrow Morning Will Be Tonight” is an album with the rough edges removed, the polished work of pros who have gotten incredibly good at what they do, but who have also explored all the corners of their sound and are now going back and polishing the middle. But that doesn’t mean over-produced gloss. The music is both jangly and graceful, while the lyrics are intense, full of soul-searching, confessional recrimination, and empirical observation.
The polish is to be found in the near-perfect storytelling. It seems to be a dark and brooding series of musical monologues by a character living on the margins of his mind and seeking to rise above the darkness, to make sense of his life and find something worth living for.
Altamina is one of those groups that you don’t quite understand at first, yet with time their music becomes something personal and affecting. With every song they expand their sound, dig a little bit deeper, and unearth some treasures that leave you speechless. The mixing is well-balanced and thankfully isn’t too compressed.
The record has some breathing room and continues to give off an aura of intimacy that makes it easy to get lost in the atmosphere. “Tomorrow Morning Will Be Tonight” is exactly what you would expect from a group of this nature: tight musicianship, haunting atmosphere, and melodies that stick with you long after the record has finished playing.
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