© 2024 KSUT Public Radio
NPR News and Music Discovery for the Four Corners
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Songs We Love: Close Talker, 'Afterthought'

Close Talker has a new album coming out in 2017.
Courtesy of the artist
Close Talker has a new album coming out in 2017.

In the "Raincoats" episode of Seinfeld, when Jerry describes his pal Elaine's new boyfriend as "a bit of a close talker," he doesn't mean it as a compliment. Jerry describes the ultimate social sinner who has no concept of personal space, who is so invasive that when he speaks he forces everyone around him to lean back lest they find themselves on a first-name basis with his pores.

Through that Seinfeldian lens, the Saskatoon band Close Talker couldn't be less appropriately named. This is a band that's built its stellar new single, "Afterthought," around giving you space. It's expansive. And as a result, it's an invitation to lean right in.

"Afterthought" is Close Talker's first offering since 2014's Flux, and it has the relaxed feel of a band that's taken time to reflect and exhale. The Canadian trio recorded the single at home in the province of Saskatchewan; you can hear in it the simplicity and vastness of that region's prairies, where the sky looks like it extends to the end of the earth.

Mixed by Marcus Paquin (Arcade Fire, The National), the song's arrangement soars without being in your face. And even though Paquin's production is slick, the scratches and squeaks of fingers on guitars make sure not an ounce of homegrown feel is lost along the way. There's a gentle exasperation to lead singer Will Quiring's breathy and beautiful vocals when he pleads, "Come on, baby, won't you stay / I've said it like a hundred times." It's as intimate as it is earnest. As the band says in a press release, fans "can smell insincerity from miles away" — and no matter how close you get to Close Talker, there isn't the faintest whiff.


Close Talker's new album will come out in 2017.

Copyright 2016 XPN

Talia Schlanger hosts World Cafe, which is distributed by NPR and produced by WXPN, the public radio service of the University of Pennsylvania. She got her start in broadcasting at the CBC, Canada's national public broadcaster. She hosted CBC Radio 2 Weekend Mornings on radio and was the on-camera host for two seasons of the television series CBC Music: Backstage, as well as several prime-time music TV specials for CBC, including the Quietest Concert Ever: On Fundy's Ocean Floor. Schlanger also guest hosted various flagship shows on CBC Radio One, including As It Happens, Day 6 and Because News. Schlanger also won a Canadian Screen Award as a producer for CBC Music Presents: The Beetle Roadtrip Sessions, a cross-country rock 'n' roll road trip.