Tag: Calgary AB

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Sunglaciers Shares Meditative “Ballad for Eddy”

With the release of 2019’s Foreign Bodies, 2022’s Subterranea and 2024’s Regular Nature, Calgary-based JOVM mainstays Sunglaciers — founding duo Evan Resnik (vocals, guitar, synths, piano, sampling) and Mathieu Blanchard (drums, percussion, production) along with Nyssa Brown (vocals, guitar) and Kyle Crough (bass) — have firmly cemented a sound that blurs the boundaries between polished melodicism and opaque experimentation, auspicious romanticism and unbridled descent. Though anchored in the strange realties of our time, their songs are laced with a certain optimism through well-placed and well-calculated psych elements and vibrant rhythms. 

The Calgary-based outfit’s highly-anticipated fourth album, Spiritual Content just dropped today through Mothland. The album sees the band further exploring the chiaroscuro depths of post-punk while simultaneously setting out to redefine their sound. Thematically, the album explores modern day life through allegorical songwriting, elevated by genuinely catchy melodies, resolute arrangements and stylish production.

Over the course of its breakneck 35-minute run, the album’s indie rock-meets-post-punk-tinged, nine songs capture fleeting yet endearing moments in time, their narrative bent, twisted and distorted into expansive and highly evocative soundscapes. The album is meant to layout like a psychedelic sequence where grooves dance and wiggle in and out, awaking feelings of wonder and awe, while also trigging emotions like bewilderment, fear and alienation. 

The album sees Resnik and Blanchard turning to their bandmates Brown and Brougham along with acclaimed producer and multi-instrumentalist Chad VanGaalen (synths, vibraphone, electric piano and additional production) to flesh out the album’s material. The band also continued their collaborations with mixing/mastering engineer Mark Lawson and former Besnard Lakes‘ Richard White, who took on vinyl mastering duties. 

Spiritual Content includes the Freedom of Choice-era Devo-inspired “Eye to Eye” the  Heaven Up Here-era Echo and the Bunnymen, early The Cure and Gang of Four-like “Only Love” and the album’s latest single “Ballad for Eddy.”

“Ballad for Eddy” is a meditative sway of a tune, featuring brooding, undulating drum and percussion, gently buzzing synth bass and bursts of twinkling keys serving as a lush bed for Resnik’s dreamy and ethereal melody. Written to pay tribute to the legendary Eddy Grant, “Ballad for Eddy” lyrically touch upon youthful idealism, the search for connection and meaning amidst difficulty and strife. The result leaves the listener to wonder what role — if any — music can play in overcoming adversity.

Featuring footage shot and edited by the band’s Evan Resnik, the accompanying video captures life in the studio and on the road as a DIY band. And at the core of the video is a sweet nostalgia over going on a series of adventures that you and your friends/bandmates can only really understand. It’s a unique, difficult to explain relationship that becomes one of the most important of your life.

“I was struggling to come up with a concept for the video for ‘Ballad for Eddy’ and I came across these old tour clips,” the bands Evan Resnik explains. “We’ve been doing bigger cross-country trips around the US and UK in the last few years so there was a lot of footage. Most of it I forgot I had! It got me a little sentimental, reliving all these great experiences and moments that we’ve shared as a band. It reminded me that all the hard work is worth it for the friendship and camaraderie. 

‘The song is inspired by Eddy Grant—who wrote ‘Electric Avenue’—and how tireless and dedicated to music he was. Sure, being in a band booking DIY tours, recording albums, and sleeping on couches and floors is hard. But we’re also really lucky for the opportunity, and the memories that come out the other side are priceless. I’m even more inspired by Eddy Grant when I think about how much harder it all was for him as a young person of colour in a foreign land. His life story is really interesting, you should check it out!”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Sunglaciers Return with Shimmering “Only Love”

With the release of 2019’s Foreign Bodies, 2022’s Subterranea and 2024’s Regular Nature, Calgary-based JOVM mainstays Sunglaciers — founding duo Evan Resnik (vocals, guitar, synths, piano, sampling) and Mathieu Blanchard (drums, percussion, production) along with Nyssa Brown (vocals, guitar) and Kyle Crough (bass) — have firmly cemented a sound that blurs the boundaries between polished melodicism and opaque experimentation, auspicious romanticism and unbridled descent. Though anchored in the strange realties of our time, their sons are laced with a certain optimism through well-placed and well-calculated psych elements and vibrant rhythms. 

The Calgary-based outfit’s highly-anticipated fourth album, Spiritual Content is slated for a March 27, 2026 release through Mothland. The album reportedly sees the band further exploring the chiaroscuro depths of post-punk while simultaneously setting out to redefine their sound. Thematically, the album explores modern day life through allegorical songwriting, elevated by genuinely catchy melodies, resolute arrangements and stylish production.

Over the course of its breakneck 35-minute run, the album’s indie rock-meets-post-punk-tinged, nine songs reportedly captured fleeting yet endearing moments in time, their narrative bent, twisted and distorted into expansive and highly evocative soundscapes. The album is meant to layout like a psychedelic sequence where grooves dance and wiggle in and out, awaking feelings of wonder and awe, while also trigging emotions like bewilderment, fear and alienation. 

The album sees Resnik and Blanchard turning to their bandmates Brown and Brougham along with acclaimed producer and multi-instrumentalist Chad VanGaalen (synths, vibraphone, electric piano and additional production) to flesh out the album’s material. The band also continued their collaborations with mixing/mastering engineer Mark Lawson and former Besnard Lakes‘ Richard White, who took on vinyl mastering duties. 

Spiritual Content will include the Freedom of Choice-era Devo-inspired “Eye to Eye” and the album’s latest single “Only Love.” Seemingly channeling a synthesis of Heaven Up Here-era Echo and the Bunnymen, early The Cure and Gang of Four, “Only Love” sees Resnik, Blanchard and company musing on the transformative and redemptive power of love — but it’s underpinned with the subtly bitter reality that nothing is forever, not even love.

Directed by Ethan Clark, the accompanying video features the band’s members at a packed house party but love — whether of someone else or self-love made the video’s protagonist change his life, perhaps for the better. We see this through a series of woozy flash backs and flash forwards, sometimes within the same scene.

“Only love can upend your lifestyle, change your patterns. You’re young, you’re out at parties all the time,” the Calgary-based JOVM mainstays explain. “Then something happens. Years pass in an instant. Maybe you found love, or self-love, or something else. Got healthy. Got busy. Where you used to go out, now you stay in. The party’s not over; it rages on in your memories. This video is kind of an illustration of those memories.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Sunglaciers Share Punchy and Breakneck “Eye to Eye”

With the release of 2019’s Foreign Bodies, 2022’s Subterranea and 2024’s Regular Nature, Calgary-based JOVM mainstays Sunglaciers — founding duo Evan Resnik (vocals, guitar, synths, piano, sampling) and Mathieu Blanchard (drums, percussion, production) along with Nyssa Brown (vocals, guitar) and Kyle Crough (bass) — have firmly cemented a sound that blurs the boundaries between polished melodicism and opaque experimentation, auspicious romanticism and unbridled descent. Though anchored in the strange realties of our time, their sons are laced with a certain optimism through well-placed and well-calculated psych elements and vibrant rhythms.

The Calgary-based outfit’s highly-anticipated fourth album, Spiritual Content is slated for a March 27, 2026 release through Mothland. The album reportedly sees the band further exploring the chiaroscuro depths of post-punk while simultaneously setting out to redefine their sound. Thematically, the album explores modern day life through allegorical songwriting, elevated by genuinely catchy melodies, resolute arrangements and stylish production.

Over the course of its breakneck 35-minute run, the album’s indie rock-meets-post-punk-tinged, nine songs reportedly captured fleeting yet endearing moments in time, their narrative bent, twisted and distorted into expansive and highly evocative soundscapes. The album is meant to layout like a psychedelic sequence where grooves dance and wiggle in and out, awaking feelings of wonder and awe, while also trigging emotions like bewilderment, fear and alienation.

The album sees Resnik and Blanchard turning to their bandmates Brown and Brougham along with acclaimed producer and multi-instrumentalist Chad VanGaalen (synths, vibraphone, electric piano and additional production) to flesh out the album’s material. The band also continued their collaborations with mixing/mastering engineer Mark Lawson and former Besnard Lakes‘ Richard White, who took on vinyl mastering duties.

Spiritual Content‘s first single “Eye to Eye” is a Freedom of Choice-era Devo-inspired motorik ripper featuring woozy synths, skittering and booming drums, squiggling guitars paired with Resnik’s punchy, almost California punk rock-like delivery before shifting into a towering cacophonous storm of feedback and a gentle, seemingly exhausted fade out.

“The song is about how we all have more in common with each other than we think, and how the small differences between us have been magnified to stoke division through social media and media in general,” Sunglaciers’ Evan Resnik explains. “I used a lot of old footage/movies/propaganda to showcase both our creative and destructive capabilities. There’s a lot of sped up footage, reversed sequences, and pretty flower timelapses. Sometimes it feels like we’re racing to our inevitable demise; we have to slow down and take a step back. There’s still time to recover and progress together, but it’s getting a bit late in the game, you know?”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Gloin Teams Up with Sunglaciers on a Unique Cover of “Bucket of Blood”

Toronto-based post-punk outfit Gloin — longtime friends John Watson (guitar, vocals), Vic Byers (bass, vocals), Simon Lou (drums, vocals) and Richard Garnheim (synths, guitar) — formed back in 2018 and at the onset was a means for the band’s members to convey their shared passion for engaging and visceral live performance.

Since their formation, the band has gone on a handful of North American tours, making the rounds of the North American festival circuit with sets at SXSW, Freakout Fest, New Colossus Festival, Sled Island, Treefort Music Fest, West Fest and FME while also sharing the stage with a number of renowned acts including Snapped Ankles, Osees, Amyl and The Sniffers, Brian Jonestown Massacre, A Place to Bury Strangers, Orville Peck, Moon Duo and Night Beats. 

Throughout, the Canadian band has put precedence on delivering unforgettable live shows, driven by improvisation and experimentation, with the musicians trusting their instincts that louder is always better. And as a result, the band’s live sets are sweaty and cathartic.

The Toronto-based outfit self-released their debut EP, 2019’s Soft Monster. The EP caught the attention of Montréal-based label Mothland, who signed the band and released their 2022 Dylan Frankland produced full-length debut, We Found This, which was mixed by Graham Walsh. Inspired by Sonic Youth and Lightning Bolt, the album featured pop melodies and beautifully noisy arrangements, anchored by a distorted rhythm section that offers urgency but also soothing grooves. 

The band’s Polaris Music Prize long-listed sophomore album All of your anger is actually shame (and I bet that makes you angry) was released earlier this year. Described by the band as “dancey, but scary,” the album’s material sees them revamping their noise rock-driven sound, adding further elements from darkwave, industrial, and post-punk. 

The album sees the band tackling themes of bewilderment, dread and anger, while being anchored around bombastic rhythmic constructs, savvy arrangements and fervid melodies. All of your anger is actually shame (and I bet that makes you angry)‘s material are solemn tracks about perseverance and self-determination that are cleverly subverted through sarcastic commentary. 

“We wrote the whole album as a collective, influenced by shared experiences. Half was written electronically with usually one person bringing in ideas that we all elaborated on together,” the band says in press notes. “We jammed a lot, finding things we liked that we later pieced together, while also saving pieces that we might be able to plug into a future song. One method for a few of the song was for all of us to write a complete piece, and then switch up instruments.”

Just as the Toronto-based outfit is about to embark on a UK and EU tour, released a unique double single “Buckets of Blood.” “For this release, Gloin asked us to reach out to over acts on Mothland to see if they would cover their song ‘Bucket of Blood’ with only the instrumental version and lyrics for reference,” Mothland’s Phillipe Larocque explains. “So basically Sunglaciers and We Owe did not hear Gloin’s version until their album dropped. We really dug this ‘blind cover’ initiative. We love it when moths collaborate with other artists from the label. It often pushes them to work outside their comfort zone and reinforces the bonds inside our community.”

The first release from the double single, “Bucket of Blood” feat. Sunglaciers retains the tense, Gang of Four-like post punk disco feel of the original but while being a Vulcan mind-mend — to the point that this version sounds as though it could have been a B-side on the Calgary-based outfit’s 2022 effort, Subterranea.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Calgary’s Sleepkit Shares Woozily Hallucinogenic “Oxygen on the Autobahn”

Calgary-based outfit SLEEPKIT — co-founders Chad VanGaalen’s Ghostkeeper‘s and Plant City Band’s Ryan Bourne and Texture Twins‘ Marie Sulkowski along with newest members Alvvays‘ and Ghostkeeper’s Eric Hamelin (drums) and Crystal Eyes’ and Plant City Band’s Joleen Toner — can trace its origins back to when its co-founders were members in the fellow outer limits leaners Devonian Gardens, whose two albums allowed the pair to find their own patch of common ground.

With SLEEPKIT, Bourne and Sulkowski eschewed Devonian Gardens stylistically wide-ranging arpparoch in a favor of a streamlined sound that pairs textural inventiveness and zoned playing techniques with the immediacy and approachability of dance music. Their full-length debut, 2016’s Champion Weekend was a slick blend of sunshiny dream pop, post-disco and psychedelic synth pop/synth rock with nods to Giorgio Moroder, The Stooges and ELO. (Yeah, I know that sounds kinda wild, doesn’t it?)

Bolstered by the additions of Hamelin and Toner, the band’s long-awaited Scott “Monty” Munro-produced sophomore album Camp Emotion is a reportedly a deeply-nuanced and emotionally refinement of their brand of experimental pop that sees them exploring the outer edges of songwriting and creation, functioning as a dance floor friendly soundtrack as much as it does as a hazy, late-night headphone session through inner space.

Camp Emotion’s first single “Oxygen on the Autobahn” is a woozily hallucinogenic, dance floor and headphone friendly bop anchored around reverb-soaked thump, buzzing synths and a trance-inducing groove. The result is a song that seemingly channels a mind-melting synthesis of Evil Heat-era Primal Scream and deep house.

The accompanying video by the band’s Joleen Toner with tiles by the band’s Ryan Bourne features the band’s members surrounded in a glitchy VHS tape haze, sine waves and cosmic imagery superimposed over cars driving on a highway. Fittingly trippy for a trippy song.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays Sunglaciers Share Punchy Post Punk Ripper “Fakes”

Regular Nature, Calgary-based post-punk/psych pop outfit and JOVM mainstays Sunglaciers‘ highly-anticipated third album is slated for a March 29, 2024 release through Montréal-based label Mothland. While the material sees the band further continuing to blur the boundaries between polished melodcism and opaque experimentation, the material also blurs the lines between auspicious Romanticism and unbridled dissent. Firmly anchored in the strange and uneasy reality of our time, the album’s songs are laced with a certain optimism, through well-calculated psych elements and vibrant rhythms, creating a unique strange of kaleidoscopic pop.

Continuing their ongoing collaboration with co-producer Chad Van Gaalen, the Calgary-based JOVM mainstays’ forthcoming third album was purposely designed to be enjoyed in many ways, from solitary headphone listening to a crowded live venue, while sonically seeming to nod at Deerhunter, Ought, MGMT, DEVO, Talking Heads and others. The album also features a guest spot from acclaimed Zoon creative mastermind Daniel Monkman. 

“We wanted to make a concise yet explosive record, continuing to find the balance between familiar and novel sounds and approaches. We have not and may never make ‘dance music,’ but we make continued efforts to bring sounds that we like from dance and electronic genres into our own, delighting in the process as much as the product,” the band explains. “We love to play and experiment, defying expectations and discovering new sounds. This record shows how these novel (to us) elements interact with the rock and roll world we comfortably inhabit.

“We want to make you dance. We want to make you think. We want to make you think while you’re dancing and dance while you’re busy thinking. This is an album for the body, brain and heart. It’s compassionate, frustrated, communal and dreadful. In a world of information overload, where everything comes at you at once, Regular Nature is trying to normalize the phenomenon. This is chaotic music for a chaotic world, a three-way conversation between outer self, the subconscious and the mad world. As expressed on penultimate track ‘One Time or Another:’ ‘There’s always somebody talking.’”“We wanted to make a concise yet explosive record, continuing to find the balance between familiar and novel sounds and approaches. We have not and may never make ‘dance music,’ but we make continued efforts to bring sounds that we like from dance and electronic genres into our own, delighting in the process as much as the product,” the band explains. “We love to play and experiment, defying expectations and discovering new sounds. This record shows how these novel (to us) elements interact with the rock and roll world we comfortably inhabit.

“We want to make you dance. We want to make you think. We want to make you think while you’re dancing and dance while you’re busy thinking. This is an album for the body, brain and heart. It’s compassionate, frustrated, communal and dreadful. In a world of information overload, where everything comes at you at once, Regular Nature is trying to normalize the phenomenon. This is chaotic music for a chaotic world, a three-way conversation between outer self, the subconscious and the mad world. As expressed on penultimate track ‘One Time or Another:’ ‘There’s always somebody talking.’”

Late last month, I wrote about “Cursed,” a woozy dream pop-meets-psych pop-meets-post-punk track that features glistening and fluttering synth arpeggios, a motorik rhythm section, an Avalon-era Roxy Music-like guitar solo and hazy and yearning vocals. The achingly nostalgic song sees its narrator discussing a love passing them by with a weary and bitterly resigned sense of regret. “Oh, if I had only known what I know now,” the song’s narrator seems to say. 

“‘Cursed’ is quite probably Sunglaciers’ biggest downer to date. It is a piece about shattered, unsaid expectations, and reflecting on the reality of a situation after it has passed, and all that remains is its memory,” the band explains. “It is a slow dance between regret and acceptance, a song about lost love and lost potential. It is being caught in a moment, blinded by short-term desires, only to wake up on the other side when everything has passed and it is too late to reconcile (“You wish your head could unremember this/ But memory is all there ever is”).

“Fakes,” Regular Nature‘s second and latest single is a Freedom of Choice-era DEVO and Remain in Light-era Talking Heads like ripper built around a relentless four-on-the-floor, angular chorus pedal-drenched baselines and squiggling guitars and atmospheric synths paired with Resnik’s punchily uneasy delivery and bursts of gossip and shit-talking. The song captures the inner monologue of someone struggling to keep up with appearances and with keeping up with others, while recognizing — with an excoriating sense of humor — that practically everything in our lives has a veneer of phoniness.

“‘Fakes’ is a song about performance, artifice, and image,” the Calgary-based outfit explains. “Partly a direct narration of a social scene, partly an inner monologue. It is about how our priorities have changed or are distorted. Instead of who we truly are, the importance seems to be on what we appear to be or how we act. Sometimes these intersect, but oftentimes are at odds. We are desperate to mold a certain self-image, a certain perception from the outside, despite what we really think about a situation. We run a risk of being seen as ‘all style, not a lot of substance.’ All social interactions are performative. We are striving to be seen as having a certain character, whether or not that’s who we truly are or how we believe we “ought” to be. ‘Fakes’ is like the subconscious taking over the controls of someone engaging in society (‘Don’t tell me your thoughts about the weather’), then abruptly turning its focus back inward (‘I’m anxious, always acting up’).”

Directed by the band’s Evan Resnik, the accompanying video is inspired and informed by 90s MTV/Muchmusic music video aesthetics, while also nodding at some of DEVO’s videos from the 80s. Featuring the band playing a sparse, white studio space, at points we see some uncanny mash-ups of their faces and bodies that seem startlingly real and unsettlingly weird.

“Everyone in the band grew up on the aesthetics of 90s MTV/Muchmusic, so it’s no surprise that many of our videos look like they belong to that era,” Resnik says. “When conceptualizing the ‘Fakes’ video, Mathieu (Blanchard) told me he wanted it to be our ‘Big Bang Baby,’ a music video by Stone Temple Pilots. I hadn’t seen the video in years, but the vibe is unforgettable. I freshened it up to fit our weirdness, and adjusted for our complete lack of budget. I tend to go off the rails during the editing process, so I spliced our faces to exaggerate the fakeness. And there are parallels to ‘Big Bang Baby’ that found their way in without my realizing (the old TV, neon colours in the bridge). I think Scott Weiland passed these elements to me from the great beyond.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Shane Ghostkeeper Shares a Loving Classic Rock-Inspired Tribute to His Late Uncle

Acclaimed Calgary-based singer/songwriter and musician Shane Ghostkeeper is best known for his namesake band Ghostkeeper, an act that combines elements of 60s girl-group melodies, country music, 90s indie rock, African pop and traditional indigenous pow wow music, and has developed a reputation for crafting some of the more thrilling and interesting music to emerge from Alberta over the past 15 years or so.

Ghostkeeper stepped out into the spotlight as a solo artist with the recent release of his full-length debut, Songs For My People. Songs For My People is a deeply reverential tribute to the music he absorbed while growing up in the Northern Alberta Métis communities of Paddle Prairie, High Level and Rocky Lane. The acclaimed Canadian artist recruited a close-knit crew of collaborators to help bring his songs to life:

He recruited longtime producer Lorrie Matheson, who has been a part of the Ghostkeeper world from the beginning, working on the band’s 2008 debut And The Children of the Great Northern Muskeg through last year’s Multidimensional Culture. His Ghostkeeper bandmates — JOYFULTALK‘s Eric Hamelin (drums), Chad VanGaalen‘s Ryan Bourne (bass) and Surf Kitties‘ Wayne Garrett (guitar, pedal steel) — are his backing band, and as Ghostkeeper says “their expertise and wide-ranging artistic sensibilities helped elevate this album form what could have been a simple tribute project to another fully-formed entry in our body of work.”

Songs For My People‘s latest single “Sunbeam” is a jammy, joyful and deeply loving synthesis of elements of The Band, 60s psych rock and Creedence Clearwater Revival. “Sunbeam” is a mischievously anachronistic tune that sonically wouldn’t sound out of place in your dad’s or uncle’s classic rock record collection, but while being remarkably modern. The result is as song that sounds a bit like the soundtrack for one of the greatest, weirdest adventures ever known — life.

Ghostkeeper explains that “Sunbeam” was written for his late Uncle Tucker, and the family he left behind. “I was unable to attend his funeral, so I wrote this to express my condolences and support for my Aunty Lorraine and my cousins.

“Tucker was a huge force in the Paddle Prairie Metis Settlement community and beyond, and he was a fiercely dedicated father and husband,” Ghostkeeper continues. “This song started as an acoustic lament and then morphed into a classic rock-style tune once the band and I hit the studio. This was not my intent. However, my Uncle Tucker’s spirit stepped in and said let’s make this a rocker. I have awesome childhood memories of his love for classic rock; Led Zeppelin, T-Rex, and CCR. I will forever appreciate his influence on me.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Lyric Video: L.T. Leif Shares Lush “Gentle Moon”

L.T. Leif (they/them) is a Canadian-born singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, who has spent stints residing in the Canadian prairies, Finland, Iceland and the Pacific Northwest — and is an adopted member of the Scottish DIY music scene. Their life and work is rooted in the self-sufficient spirit of the Canadian prairies and is informed by their travels.

Leif first cut their teeth with Calgary-based orchestral pop outfit The Consonant C. Since the group’s split back in 2011, Leif has explored different configurations and approaches, including experimental noise collaborations with the Bug Incision crew, playing sold-out shows with punk-hearted OK JAZZ, drumming with slacker-rock bands Hex Ray and Hungry Freaks, playing synths with Astral Swanns’ Matt Swamn, and even singing in a witch choir, Hermitess. Leif’s admirers including K Records founder and label head Calvin Johnson — they toured together with The Believer Magazine.

As a solo artist, Leif has collaborated with a collection of friends, releasing 2016’s double album Shadow on the Brim/Rough Beasts and her first release on Lost Map Records, last year’s Lost Cat cassette compilation of live and unreleased tracks, Introducing L.T. Lief. Throughout each of those releases, Leif’s spirit is collaborative generative, experimental and kind. The band members and the parameters of the project are ever-evolving, but as Leif says of the overall project, “to the friendships and the moment, we are grateful and stay true.”

Leif’s recently released album Come Back To Me, But Lightly was demoed in a room on Glasgow‘s Great Western Road and made intercontinentally with contributions both remote and in-person from pals near and far. The album features lush and sensual songs about “the body, loss as a decision, and knowing your own desire as a radical act,” the Canadian artist says. “It has a lot of imagery and thought from the northern places I’ve been living, and takes inspiration from minimalist writers, painters, and thinkers. This album comes from a six-year long space of change, from a life I was living as someone afraid of my own brain and body, into someone a lot more openly unshiney. Painful and seeping. I think that distance and decisions and loss and conflict are all things that can birth you into a different kind of being.”

Come Back To Me, But Lightly‘s latest single “Gentle Moon,” is a lush and beguiling tune rooted in a gentle, kindly spirit paired with an arrangement featuring glistening pedal steel, twinkling keys, strummed guitar and Leif’s expressive vocals singing lyrics that make references to the cosmos, the human body and longing. The song feels warm, deeply-lived in and unabashedly earnest.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays Preoccupations Share Brooding and Lysergic Chad VanGaalen-Directed Visual for “Slowly”

Canadian post punk outfit and JOVM mainstays Preoccupations —  Matt Flegel (bass, vocals), Mike Wallace (drums), Scott Munro (guitar) and Daniel Christiansen (guitar) — just released their fourth album Arrangements today.  Longtime label home Flemish Eye will handle the release throughout Canada while the band will self-release the album outside of Canada. 

Initial work on Arrangements began in the fall of 2019, when Flegel and Christiansen met up with Munro at his Montreal-based Studio St. Zo. The trio wrote the album’s material and recorded all of the bed tracks together. Wallace then joined in and recorded his parts. With all of the instrumental parts laid down, the band planned to reconvene in a few months and decided what else the songs needed.

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the JOVM mainstays’ plans to reconvene in person were understandably halted. At the time Munro was in Calgary on tour with his partner when the shutdowns began, so he wound up staying with his parents for the next 16 months. He whipped up a make-shift studio in his parents house, and the rest of the record was finished remotely with Munro and Flegel sending tracks back and forth to each other: Munro’s vocal and keyboard parts were completed in that set up while Flegel’s vocal parts were laid down in New York. Holy Fuck‘s Graham Walsh mixed the record and Total Control‘s Mikey Young mastered it. 

Pandemic isolation helped to encourage the band to reconnect with elements of their earlier releases: Munro, holed up in Calgary with endless weed gummies, obsessively doubled keyboards on guitars and vice versa, sampled the recordings using an old Ensoniq keyboard sampler and made new parts out of the samples. While on 2016’s self-titled and 2018’s New Material, Munro was committed to making keyboards the centerpiece, Arrangements sees guitar returning to the spotlight — an instrument that he describes as much more fun and visceral to play. Throughout most of the album, Christiansen employs a unique tuning that sees him blurring and smearing his parts while Munro’s standard-tuned riffs provide melody and clarity. The end result is an album that sonically will see the band weaving their guitar-heavy origins with their more synth-based recent work to create what may arguably be their most intense and playful album to date. 

Much like its predecessor New Material, Arrangements‘ title is simultaneously literal and cheeky — a sharp contrast to their overall aesthetic. Thematically, the album is dark and direct: “The lyrics are pretty conspicuous and self explanatory on this one, but it’s basically about the world blowing up and no one giving a shit,” says Flegel. 

“I’m certain that I’ve been writing about the same bleak things over and over again throughout the lifespan of Preoccupations,” Flegel adds. “This time around the themes of isolation, anxiety, trepidation, imminent self-annihilation, fear of totalitarianism, and general malaise unintentionally all feel a little more relevant than they have in the past. I guess that’s not a great sign, but I think we’ve taken this culmination of dark things, and turned it into something that can happily be listened to loudly, and that is maybe even…fun?”

In the lead-up to the album’s release, I’ve written about two album singles:

  • “Ricochet,” a murky and dark churner featuring layers of glistening and distorted guitar slashes, rolling and lashing snares,atmospheric synth arpeggios and a propulsive bass line paired with Flegel’s mournful, embittered delivery and their penchant for rousingly anthemic hooks. And while being a slick and seamless synthesis of their earliest work and their most recent work, “Ricochet” manages to evoke the creeping, existential dread we have all felt lately — and perhaps continue to feel — during one of the most heightened and uncertain periods in recent memory. 

  • “Death of Melody,” a brooding and tumbling track centered around textured, reverb-drenched shoegazer-like haze, martial, machine-like rhythms paired with Flegel’s plaintive delivery fed through even more distortion. Sonically “Death of Melody” is a one-half funhouse in hell, one-half vacillating thoughts tumbling about in the mind of an anxious, uncertain person. 

Arrangements‘ third and latest single “Slowly” begins with a murky prog rock-inspired bass and drum driven introduction before quickly ditching it for brooding atmospherics that fit the song’s malaise, self-flagellation and uneasy acceptable of annihilation.

Directed by Chad VanGaalen, the lysergic animated visual for “Slowly” fully embraces the song’s dark thematic concerns: The video begins with Picasso meets Dali-like animations that transform from humanoid to other object and back. We see a man turn into a skeleton lying at the bottom of a grave; faces turn into natural flora and fauna and so on.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Indigenous Canadian Trio Double Rider Share a Sweet and Old-Timey Love Song

Siksika Nation, Alberta, Canada-based trio Double Rider (formerly Third Generation) — Hannah and Lennon Owlchild and Erin Many Heads — grew up in a rather musical home: their late grandfather Matthew Many Heads was a singer/songwriter.

The trio started the band back in 2014. And in their first year or so as a band, they quickly established a sound that draws simultaneously from classic and modern rock. Although, they do write their own material, they have also taken some of their late grandfather’s songs and recorded them in a new light with a modern context, as a loving tribute both to their grandfather and to their people. “Our grandfather gave us his songs and his music as gifts,” the members of Double Rider say in press notes.  “These gifts are full of stories and speak about love and loss; the history of our people and the present day.” The band adds “It’s real and speaks to historical trauma to native people; but emphasizes the solidarity and power that Blackfoot people have, has, and will continue to have.”

Within the band’s first few years, they started playing local festivals across Southern Alberta, as well as some of the province’s most notable venues including Banff‘s Rose and Crown and Calgary’s Ship and Anchor. And they’ve frequently played at Siksika Nation’s Annual Run as One Festival.

In early 2020, the Canadian trio went on their first tour, The First Nations Music Tour, alongside a collection of notable Indigenous artists. Although the pandemic forced them, like countless other bands to pause some of their plans and hopes, they were able to record and release their self-titled debut EP earlier this year, which features songs written by their grandfather.

The self-titled EP’s latest single is the folky rocker “Walk With Me.” Prominently featuring some shimmering Harvest-era Neil Young and The Byrds-like acoustic guitar paired with a strutting bass line, a simple yet propulsive backbeat and plaintive vocals, the song is a sweet, old-fashioned love song about finding that special someone, reminiscing about those early moments with them — and knowing that they’d be there with you through life’s most difficult and trying times.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Calgary’s Sunglaciers Share Brooding and Uneasy “Best Years”

Calgary-based post-punk outfit Sunglaciers can trace its origins back to 2017 as a caollaboration between its founding — and core — members: multi-instrumentalist Matthieu Blanchard and lead vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Evan Resnik. When they started the project, Blanchard had completed his studies in medicine, working in family medicine and addiction and Resnik had returned from a trip hitchhiking through France.

Since the project’s formation, the Calgary-based act has released a couple of EPs and their full-length debut, 2019’s Foreign Bodies. Foreign Bodies saw the Canadian post-punk outfit saw them crafting a maximalist approach that saw them blurring the lines between dazzling indie rock melodicism and icy, post-punk experimentation.

During that same period, the duo have seen a steadily rising profile: They’ve shared stages with the likes of JOVM mainstays Preoccupations, Omni and Daniel Romano while topping the charts of college radio stations across Western Canada.

When the pandemic put their touring plans on a then-indefinite pause, the band quickly shifted their focus to writing material, dedicating 40-plus hour weeks to music during the early months of 2020. Those writing sessions wound up becoming their sophomore album Subterranea, which Montreal-based purveyors of all things psych and trippy, Mothland released today.

Continuing an ongoing collaboration with Chad VanGaalen, who co-produced the album, Subterranea  sees the band eschewing the maximalist approach of their previous releases and crafting material with a decided laser focus. The end result is a frenetic, breakneck album of material that never overstays its welcome. “We tried to write vertically instead of horizontally,” Sunglaciers’ Matthieu Blanchard explains. “Our last album Foreign Bodies and the EPs that came before it had lots of long songs with different parts drifting back and forth. For this album, we decided to strip our songs down to two or three minutes with only a few ideas in each of them.”

“The bulk of this album came together during the pandemic and the changing of gears that we had to do,” Sunglaciers’ Evan Resnik says. “I was out of work and Mathieu was working half as much as usual, so we had lots of time on our hands. We flipped a switch and started playing music everyday. It’s a good indicator of how we were writing at the time while we wrapped our heads around some new gear and saw what came out of it. Essentially, we took all of our favourite musical tendencies and put them together. We were listening to a lot of McCartney II at the time and loved how eclectic it was, which led to us mirroring that vibe.”

With an extended timeframe to write and record, the album, which was recorded at Bruce Crews’ voiceover studio On Air Studios allowed Blanchard and Blanchard the opportunity to learn engineering skills and for the opportunity to experiment with swapping the instruments that each member typically played, a strategy that was employed during the writing and recording of Portishead‘s Third and David Bowie‘s “Boys Keep Swinging.”

The album also features contributions from the aforementioned Chad VanGaalen, Hermitess‘ Jennifer Crighton and Roman66′s Louis Cza The Black Greek God. The end result may arguably be Sunglaciers most urgent and cohesive batch of material, an effort that draws from the likes of Deerhunter, Total Control, and BEAK> among others.

In the lead up to the album’s release today, I wrote about two of Subterranea‘s singles:

  • “Avoidance,” a woozy and uneasy ripper full of guilt and recriminations delivered with a breakneck freneticism centered around a persistent synth-driven groove. And while sounding a bit like Plague Vendor and Atsuko Chiba, “Avoidance” lyrically touches upon themes of alienation, abandonment and guilt in a way that should feel familiar to most of us during this unusual moment of our lives. 
  • “Out of My Skull,” another breakneck track full of foreboding, uneasy menace centered around hypnotic, glistening synth arpeggios, a sinuous bass line and propulsive drumming paired with Resnik’s anxious delivery. And as a result, the song evokes a frustrated, restless boredom — and it should feel familiar for most of us, stuck at home with nothing to do, nowhere to really go and no one to see. 

“Best Years,” Subterranea‘s latest single features a guest spot from the aforementioned Chad VanGaalen and may be the dreamiest, most Wolf Parade-like song on the entire album with the song featuring wobbling synth arpeggios, a slow-burning grinding groove, glistening guitars and Resik’s plaintive vocals. But underneath, the seemingly placid surface is a gnawing and uneasy dissatisfaction.

“The song is about getting stuck in what comforts you and losing years inside passive contentment,” the band’s Evan Resnik explains. “Time passes, you realize all those plans you had for yourself have charred on the back burner or disappeared completely. You thought you were happy, but it was just the safety of your situation, a relationship or a decent job, that made you feel this way. Suddenly the world is dull and you feel like your time is up. I’m very afraid of that feeling and these days I try my best to avoid it.

The video was made by Calgary-based multimedia artist Ryan Kostel. He reworked old film footage and ran it through different media (weird lenses, old TVs, VCRs, etc.) to create a visual story for the song.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Calgary’s Sunglaciers Release A Feverish Visual for Breakneck Ripper “Avoidance”

Calgary-based post-punk outfit Sunglaciers can trace its origins back to 2017 as a collaboration between its founding — and core — members: multi-instrumentalist Matthieu Blanchard and lead vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Evan Resnik. When they started the project, Blanchard had completed his studies in medicine, working in family medicine and addition and Resnik had returned from a trip hitchhiking through France. Since the project’s formation, the Calgary-based act has released a couple of EPs and their full-length debut, 2019’s Foreign Bodies, which saw them crafting a sound that blurred the lines between dazzling indie rock melodicism and icy, post-punk experimentation, centered around a maximalist approach.

During that same five year period, the members of the Canadian post-punk outfit have seen a steadily rising profile, as they’ve shared stages with the likes of JOVM mainstays Preoccupations, Omni and Daniel Romano while topping the charts of college radio stations across Western Canada. Understandably, when the pandemic put their touring plans on a then-indefinite pause, the band quickly shifted their focus to writing material, dedicating 40-plus hour weeks to music during the early months of 2020.

Those writing sessions wound up becoming the Calgary-based outfit’s sophomore album Subterranea, slated for a March 25, 2022 release through Montreal-based psychedelic purveyors Mothland. Continuing an ongoing collaboration with Chad VanGaalen, who co-produced the album, Subterranea reportedly sees the band eschewing the maximalist approach of their previous releases and crafting material with a decided laser focus. The end result is a frenetic, breakneck album of material with songs that never overstay their welcome. “We tried to write vertically instead of horizontally,” Sunglaciers’ Matthieu Blanchard explains. “Our last album Foreign Bodies and the EPs that came before it had lots of long songs with different parts drifting back and forth. For this album, we decided to strip our songs down to two or three minutes with only a few ideas in each of them.”

“The bulk of this album came together during the pandemic and the changing of gears that we had to do,” Sunglaciers’ Evan Resnik says. “I was out of work and Mathieu was working half as much as usual, so we had lots of time on our hands. We flipped a switch and started playing music everyday. It’s a good indicator of how we were writing at the time while we wrapped our heads around some new gear and saw what came out of it. Essentially, we took all of our favourite musical tendencies and put them together. We were listening to a lot of McCartney II at the time and loved how eclectic it was, which led to us mirroring that vibe.”

With an extended timeframe to write and record, the album, which was recorded at Bruce Crews’ voiceover studio On Air Studios allowed the members the opportunity to learn skills in engineering and for the opportunity to swap the instruments that each member typically played, a strategy that was employed during the writing and recording of Portishead‘s Third and David Bowie‘s “Boys Keep Swinging.” The album also features contributions from the aforementioned Chad VanGaalen, Hermitess‘ Jennifer Crighton and Roman66′s Louis Cza The Black Greek God. The end result may arguably be Sunglaciers most urgent and cohesive batch of material, an effort that draws from the likes of Deerhunter, Total Control, and BEAK> among others,.

Subterranea‘s latest single is “Avoidance,” a woozy and uneasy ripper full of guilt and recrimination delivered with a breakneck freneticism and featuring a nagging and persistent synth line-driven groove, angular guitar attack, driving four-on-the-four, dryly delivered vocals and screams by Louis Cza. Sounding a bit like JOVM mainstays Plague Vendor and Atsuko Chiba, “Avoidance” lyrically touches upon themes of alienation, abandonment and guilt in a way that should feel familiar to most of us during this unusual moment of our lives.

Directed by the band’s Evan Resnik and Ryan Kostel, the video is a paranoid and uneasy fever dream in which the video’s protagonist is tormented by figures that he thinks are his friends — but prove to be in his own head.

“The video depicts a nightmare scenario with the protagonist in a panic as he is tormented by figures he thought were his friends, ultimately coming face-to-face with himself,” Sunglaciers’ Evan Resnik explains. “The fogged-out rooms, varied lighting, and overlaid shots pull the viewer inside this dreamscape and accentuate the anxiety and trepidation we explore in the song.”

“When filming ‘Avoidance’ I really wanted to mimic the anxious, unsettled mind,” Ryan Kostel adds. “Constantly shifting angles, I used long fluid shots and shifts in time to create an unbalanced sensation. Rapid fluctuations of light and color layered over kinetic and sometimes violent imagery help to convey the subject’s mental unease.”