A seven-song survey of displacement, Brookside Mall’s No More Fragrant Thoughts places proper nouns in improper places. Whether bending a love song to fit an homage to television’s Forensic Files or the surreal irony of tugging at a string of mailer daemon emails like a loose thread, the album balances a blank slate with the anxiety of reestablishing oneself in a strange city.
There is something inherently hypnotizing about Brookside Mall’s “Young Champions.” Credit it to the lush horns, the waltz-style vocals, or the psychedelic guitars. The band created something undeniable here. The song is expansive yet quaint; it is the isolated log cabin in the middle of a forest. A warmth radiates from the vocals that intertwine with booming drums and subtle string sections. “Young Champions” is all-encompassing. Brookside Mall found the middle ground between prog-rock and psychedelic soul, creating an atmosphere of subtle beauty and blatant prowess.
“I used to sit on the kitchen counter in my second-floor apartment, watching traffic slither through the Fredericton winter,” said Brookside Mall’s Brendan MaGee (he/him) of focus track ‘Young Champions.’ “I wasn’t working and didn’t have a television or any disposable income. Looking back, I’d over-committed to a Rear Window bit, listening to albums and smoking up the tiny kitchen with the lights out, watching people stagger through snow in the faint street light below. Two blocks down was the dead mall that forms the central stop for our City’s transit. I began to channel what I was feeling through the lonely car I’d noticed parked all hours at the taxi stand out front.”
