Music review – Nick Faye and the Deputies: Last Best West

Nick Faye and the Deputies
Last Best West
Urban Planning Records

The Last Best West is a really nice album. So nice, in fact, that it is in danger of being swept up in the sea of other “nice” music that has come out of Regina recently, like the recent release from Regina-darlings Library Voices. But the Library Voices are becoming tiresome, and Regina needs a new music wunderkind to alleviate our indie music blues. Nick Faye may be that wunderkind, his album a sea of inspiring, uplifting, and ultimately contemplative sounds about the prairies. It finds its niche in the sounds of other Regina artists, but marks itself as distinctive from the abundance of urban intellectual indie music with this decidedly rural-focused album. The album is in danger of sounding like too much of the same thing, with “Housing” reminiscent of early Arcade Fire tunes, and “Giulianova” sounding oddly inspired by fellow Regina artist Rah Rah, but Nick Faye manages to forge his own space in the often crowded space of Canadian indie music.

Jonathan Petrychyn
A&C Editor