WARSAWPACK
Wednesday, September 14
Liberty Lounge
Bread not bombs. Warsawpack is one band that knows which side its bread is buttered on. Fronted by smooth-tongued rapper Lee Raback, the eclectic seven-piece orchestra has been performing live since 1999, moving audiences with their jazzy hip-hop jams, and winning critical acclaim for Raback’s antifascist beat poetry.
Taking their message to the people, Raback and company preach against the evils of capitalist society, while laying out a full array of flute and horn, funk-rock fusion. Defying the typical pigeonholing of bands, Warsawpack continues to push the boundaries of contemporary jazz and punk. Fans and critics alike can only praise them for their contentious approach to making art and politics one and the same.
According to Raback, the countless live shows and tours that followed the release of Warsawpack’s first album, Gross Domestic Product, allowed the band to further polish their already brilliant act to an even more provocative lustre.
"I think we’re tighter and we understand each other better as individuals," Raback says. "We’ve gained a greater sense of space in our compositions and the range of sound that we can produce. Our approach to the whole thing is very co-operative, and much more cohesive (than) on the first album. As a result, our songs tend to come across as sounding looser than they actually are. We had the new album, Stocks & Bombs, almost completely written before we hit the studio – only one or two compositions were written at the time of recording. Most of the material is stuff we’d been playing in front of live audiences for over a year. We like to try out our material as soon as possible. We write them as we go along. That way we can ‘battle test’ songs before we go into a recording session."
This process of hammering out new ideas in the public arena has greatly benefited Warsawpack’s musical evolution. Happy to play jazz festivals and punk shows, the genre-crushing capability of the band is now almost legendary.
"Live shows are where we invest most of our time," Raback says. "We’ve made no move to become more concrete or classifiable in our sound. At this stage in the game, our album is really just another piece of promotion. When we first started people would bug us to do a fun song, or a lighter song, but now people expect the political stuff. The people who come to our shows regularly have come to crave it. That’s just how I write. I’ve tried to do overly humorous stuff like "Friday Night" from Gross Domestic Product, but that’s the exception. When it comes to writing lyrics, my natural state is much darker."
Forging ahead with their own style and set of priorities, Warsawpack hasn’t always chosen the easiest route to reach their destination. Whether driven by revolutionary outrage or creative impulse, the results have been impressive. Balancing their guiding principles and individual priorities has made Warsawpack a unique entity, and while this revolutionary spirit may pose a challenge to more conservative record labels, it’s these very qualities that make Warsawpack the quintessential band to represent Canada’s G7 Welcoming Committee Records. Known for promoting everyone from International Noise Conspiracy to Clann Zu, G7 fosters bold lyricists and open-minded musicians from around the world.
"We’ve had very good critical response to our work – way better than we ever thought we’d get," Raback says. Despite a unsure start with their label G7, Warsawpack have settled in and attribute a portion of their success to them. "They have a really good business sense, and have marketed and promoted us in the way we’d like to have done it for ourselves. They’ve opened a lot of doors for us. At first, we weren’t sure that we were right for them, but now… we feel right at home." |
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