| Autumn is traditionally a big time for the music industry. Record labels are gearing up for the Christmas rush and since school is back in session their bands are out touring campuses. It would be easy to say that there is nothing new in the world of music, but all across Canada independent bands are proving that just isn’t true. With the help of writers nationwide, Fast Forward brings you the best bands you’ve never heard.
VANCOUVER – Alarm Bell
It’s New Music West 2003, and I’m literally being dragged to a strip club to see my friend’s band play. The good news is there may be actual strippers at the show. I get there and ante up, order my brew and wait for the naked ladies. No such luck – the talent gets the weekend of New Music West off in favour of the flavour of the week. I put my earplugs in and hope for the evening to pass quickly. It doesn’t, thankfully, for if it had I would have missed Vancouver’s best kept secret – Alarm Bell.
Featuring members of Vancouver’s pop sensations the Salteens, Alarm Bell is fronted by Age Of Electric’s Ryan Dahle. That’s all I know – except that they have a CD in the pipe. I hadn’t seen them before and I haven’t seen them since, and to be honest I’m kind of jonesing. The sound is like a kaleidoscopic rock ’n’ roll airplane that plots its course to land in emoville, but gets diverted to Bowietown by way of Mercury Rev City. Alarm Bell wears its influences proudly on its well-dressed sleeves. Each song sounded different from the last – firmly rooted in pop, sliding in and out of the harshness of rock and finding its groove in what we like to call hook. Finally a pop-rock band that isn’t afraid to just sit between the ears and be what it’s meant to be – a simple joyful melodious breath.
MATTHEW CURRIE HOLMES
(Fast Forward’s Vancouver Correspondant)
EDMONTON – The Last Deal
It’s just one of the casualties of the music business that so many talented, visionary bands languish in local obscurity, while some guy with a bad goatee and good marketing sense manages to sell millions of crappy records. Yeah, blame it on the industry – and usually you can – but you can also blame it on being idealistic perfectionists in the case of my favourite little-known Edmonton band.
Take the serious pre-pop-punk signposts nailed in by Samiam and The Doughboys in their earlier days, add a heavy dose of atmospheric dynamics and some aggressive technical instrumentation that runs from sweeping Seaweed-esque melodies to post-punk dissonance, and you’ll start to describe The Last Deal. The trio gained a dedicated Edmonton following a few years ago, playing with the likes of Moneen and Czech prog-punkers Uz Jsme Doma. But when drummer Steve Reid got seriously ill in 2001, rather than find a new member and continue the momentum, bassist Matt Golden and guitarist James Stewart waited almost two years for a recovery before continuing. It’s part of the same frustrating dedication that sees The Last Deal continually self-record amazing analog sessions, only to scrap them and start again with higher standards. Any of the never-released demos floating around their living room would be among the best to come out of Edmonton – if they’d ever see the light of day. Here’s hoping.
GEOFF MOYSA
(See Magazine)
WINNIPEG – The Western States
Formed just over a year ago, The Western States played its first show last month, opening for local indie-rock darlings The Paperbacks. While the latter's following is a devoted bunch indeed, the former quickly won over the masses with thoughtful, inventive pop hooks. Nobody in the quintet, comprised of Sean Buchanan (vocals, guitar), Nicole Marion (guitar, vocals), Keli Martin (bass, vocals), Jesse Reimer (keyboards) and Jared Plummer (drums), has much experience playing live, save Martin, having spent time playing in Sixty Stories. But the band ably tore through just under a dozen songs with ease – and if stage fright was a problem, it was internalized, as The Western States looked to be having a good time.
Buchanan's singing and guitar-playing abilities shone in The Western States' bouncy pop numbers, reminiscent of Carl Newman's fine work in the New Pornographers. With great guitar and keyboard hooks and a solid rhythm section, the band's first show came across almost flawlessly, as if the band had done it dozens of times before. Word is The Western States will be gracing Winnipeg's stages again in the coming months, but to date no recording plans have been established. Truly a brand new band to be watched.
BEN MACPHEE-SIGURDSON
(Stylus magazine)
TORONTO – controller.controller
Do you know how hard it is to make audiences here dance? It can’t be done. I’ve seen bands break down in tears of frustration at the sight of so many stone-faced, lead-footed fans. This is a city where the merest bit of head-nodding is considered an expression of deep admiration. That’s why the reactions to controller.controller, an enigmatic local five-piece, seem so surreal.
In the shows they’ve played at loft parties and art spaces as well as at Queen Street West’s rock clubs (the band recently made a perfect opening band for avant-funksters Out Hud) over the last 10 months, controller.controller has developed an uncanny ability to make scenesters move. Their sound is steeped in all the de rigueur post-punk-funk influences of the moment – art-damaged U.K. acts like the Pop Group and the Slits as well as New York faves like the Bush Tetras and the Contortions. Yet the music retains a feel that is more visceral than studiously reverential. Singer Nirmala Basnayake keeps her hips swivelling even when the songs are at their most menacing, and the furious yet funky rhythms take the edge off the corrosive guitar lines traded by Colwyn Llewellyn-Thomas and Scott Kaja.
Although controller.controller still has a way to go in terms of really outpacing its influences, the band has already proven highly adroit at connecting spines to bass lines.
JASON ANDERSON
(Eye weekly, The Globe and Mail and Toronto Life.)
MONTREAL – Echo Kitty
Most francophone rock bands fare poorly in the city's anglophone community, and vice versa, but electronic music seems to weave around the music scene's language divide with little problem. Combining minimal techno and dazzling electropop (French and all) this trio draws equally from both camps.
Singer Xavier Paradis founded Echo Kitty in Quebec City in the late ’90s, but recruited Montrealers Serge Mustang (guitar) and Sabio Palmarella (keys) when he moved south in 2001. Since then, the band has played the Montreal Electronic Groove festival, warming up the crowd for a DJ set by Ladytron's Reuben Wu, and shared its infectious sounds and animated stage antics about a dozen times in Montreal, Quebec City and Toronto. Echo Kitty's original lineup recorded an eponymous, four-song EP in 2000 (available at www.alterflow.com/neon), that was reissued in 2002 and subsequently nominated in the "Killer Demo" category at the Montreal International Music Initiative awards. The new lineup's exhuberant "Suzi" is featured on this year's Lux Catalogue compilation (also available at the above Web site), proof that new-wave fans need look no further for Canadian ditties to dance to.
LORRAINE CARPENTER
(Montreal Mirror, Exclaim, Chartattack and CBC Radio 3)
HALIFAX – Death by Nostalgia
Bring together Peter Gabriel-era Genesis, underground hip-hop, the British Invasion, Motorhead, the Pixies, Neil Young and a big old Wurlitzer piano. Write aggressively confessional lyrics. Get mowed down by a car while riding your bike home. This is Halifax’s Death by Nostalgia – fucked up like in a car crash. Literally.
Keyboardist/vocalist/lyricist Matt Reid was run down the night before the band’s first gig as a four piece last fall. Bruised, but ever the trooper, he was on stage dancing and screaming his heart out just a few weeks later.
It’s that kind of dedication that makes Death by Nostalgia such a great band to watch. Reid, Jim Cooper, Roderick Affleck and Jon Hutt are passionate about what they produce. They push themselves to put on the most energetic live show that they can – it’s not a Death by Nostalgia show unless they’re all drenched in sweat.
Named after an infamous Frank Zappa quote, Death by Nostalgia will release its debut album later this fall. Listen for ace guest appearances by Scratch Bastard, Mike O’Neill (the Inbreds), Michael Catano and J. LaPointe (North of America) and Carla Gillis (Plumtree, Bontempi). Listen for a sound you definitely haven’t heard before from this recently battered city by the sea. Listen to Death By Nostalgia, a band that deserves to become as difficult to ignore as it is to define.
TARA LEE WITTCHEN
(Fast Forward’s Halifax correspondant)
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