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  Vancouver’s Jason Zumpano was the drummer for the pioneering pop group that bore his name, Zumpano, a band he co-founded with Carl Newman of The New Pornographers.
  You might think of them as the “ankles” of power pop, falling right between The Shoes and The Shins.
  
  Jason has also had his hand in many a crucial Vancouver musical project, most notably lending his keyboard skills to seminal albums from Destroyer.
  
  After Carl Newman left Zumpano during the recording of their never completed third Sub Pop album to form The New Pornographers, Jason bided his time, performing some stellar side work for various friends in Vancouver. Songwriting became a priority and he diligently worked on his craft. 2002 saw the limited self-released debut The Sparrow, followed by the simpler Sparrow on Chicago’s respected Overcoat Recordings in 2003.
  
  On these records, Jason was just coming into his own with gentle midrange and mid-tempo songs breezing through the records. Sparrow was a fine record, but it left old fans puzzled with its somewhat somber and reflective mood. Where was shimmering, dynamic pop of those first two Zumpano records? Was this the same guy? The latest Sparrow album, entitled The Early Years, captures Jason in full stride, successfully lending the gentler sound of his current band’s debut with the upbeat pop rush of his previous band’s work. There is a newfound confidence in his voice as he sings in a higher register, adding a wonderfully vibrant dynamic to the work. The album’s title track alone is clearly the work of a master craftsman and Jason Zumpano’s finest work to date. The Early Years makes it abundantly clear that Zumpano was as much Jason’s creation as anyone’s.
  
  The Sparrow of today incorporates many of the influences that have informed Jason’s previous work: the baroque whimsy of The Zombies and The Left Banke, the complex melodicism of the Beach Boys, and the classicist songwriting chops of Bacharach and Spector. However, the music now adds the direct punch apparent in the best work of The Kinks or The Raspberries and also fits in nicely with other like-minded contemporaries such as The Shins, The Decemberists, Elliott Smith and Belle and Sebastian as well as his old band mate in the New Pornographers. The Early Years will go a along way to establish Jason Zumpano as a major songwriting force and showcase Sparrow as a dynamic pop combo soon to make the masses bop and swoon. www.inflightmusic.com ... more
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  Includes unlimited streaming of Sparrow- The New Pastoral (2010) via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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