In A Matter Of Speaking

The Intercontinental Pop Exchange are a series of split CD EPs released by Endearing Records of Canada. A simple concept, get two bands with similar styles to contribute three or four songs (and now also videos!) to a CD, package it in a classy card sleeve with great artwork and details of the bands, seal it in a bag with a cute little badge and Viola! the perfect introduction to some wonderful music. Each of the EPs are well worth getting and as well as being availabe seperately you can now get them in package deals to save yourself a few pennies. I primarily bought the EPs as My Favorie featuring on the most recent (IPX7) but have since discovered a couple of new bands, Paper Moon from Canada and Treeball from Finland, who I'll write a bit more about later.

In the meantime here are just a few of the bands/songs featured so far. From IPX1 are Thr Paperbacks from Winnipeg who to me sound somewhat similar to The Weakerthans, adopting a similar storytelling style of lyric writing. From IPX2 also from Winnipeg are Paper Moon who list influences like That Dog, The Cardigans & Juliana Hatfield, have released one album so far with anothet to hopefully follow soon in early 2006. Treeball hail from Helsinki and were formed by songwriter Nick Triani who used to be in a UK band Supermodel. His new band are big on smokey duets and have released a couple of albums so far, the first of which is on iTunes in the US. Lastly but not leastly the four My Favorite songs included on IPX7 include one new one, a cool remix of "Homeless Club Kids" and a couple of their other songs. You also get two great videos of the band.

The Intercontinental Pop Exchange EPs can be purchased here

Endearing Records main webpage with package deals on the EPs can be found here

The Paperbacks live here

Paper Moon live here

Treeball live here

aaaaannd My Favorite reside here