3/6 Diana @ The Pageant, St. Louis, MO 3/10/13

Diana, today's new band, operate in similar territory -- late-70s/early-80s soft-focus soft rock -- which becomes evident when, on the track Perpetual Surrender, Shabason starts blowing his sax over the sparse but glossy production, the gentle patter of drums and muted, hesitant bass. He doesn't quite give it the full Baker Street, but the music is in the same area of airbrushed ennui and varnished perfection as Roxy Music's Avalon.
Diana, based on the two tracks we've heard anyway, are where the blissed-out session-muso sheen of AOR meets the hypnagogic drift of chillwave. The cool-coy vocals of Carmen Elle take the as yet unsigned band somewhere else, though. They give the music a cuteness, a perkiness, it might otherwise have lacked and make Diana sound a bit like Friends (the band not the sitcom) coming out of a downer and heading down the indie disco, if indeed they have indie discos in Toronto, they being such a peculiarly British institution. Born Again, their lead track, has the atmosphere of Toro Y Moi, Washed Out et al, a Friends bounce, the synths of Grimes/Nite Jewel and the melody of an 80s hit such as Nu Shooz's I Can't Wait. Basically, it's so jam-packed with Stuff We Like we can't help wondering whether it was designed to generate blather on the internet. Perpetual Surrender finds Diana in languid mode, ticking boxes like you wouldn't believe, Elle's enervated sighs ("I need saving from myself") over blown beats sounding like so much manna from blog-pop heaven, or like Lana Del Rey singing about a smooth operator in one of Ariel Pink's dreams (same difference). Depending on your view, it either goes on too long or ends too soon, and then at the four-minute mark there's a further 60 seconds of droning ambience and eerie atmos from another green world. We can't help feeling that there will be some small measure of furore about this lot.
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