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WINDSOR FOR THE DERBY Following on the heels of albums titled We Fight Til Death and Giving Up The Ghost and quite audibly indebted to sounds found in the early Factory Records catalog, you might expect How We Lost to be a gloomy affair. Despite those facts and an opening passage that pairs a melancholy, quavering synth with an echo-laden bass and drum cadence that sounds like it was pulled from the bottom of Martin Hannett’s bag of tricks, Windsor For The Derby’s latest is a pretty uplifting affair. “Don’t worry about the old times,” singer Dan Matz assures a few songs later on “Forgotten Troubles,” “they’re not with us anymore.” He and fellow singer/guitarist Jason McNeely, who have been the band’s core members since the mid-’90s, have always embraced change. On previous records they explored open-window ambience, open-road twang and electronically enabled experimentation. They’ve come through it all with a refined appreciation for melodies that catch like fishhooks and encyclopedic stylistic resources for realizing them; if they want to sound like the Chills, the Beach Boys or New Order, they can. On How We Lost they use their well-crafted tunes and historically resonant textures to make lyrical tidbits of wisdom about what parts of life to hold onto and what to let go slide by nice and easy. [Secretly Canadian, www.secretlycanadian.com] —Bill Meyer
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