by Matt Williams
It’s just past five o’clock in The Party Dress jamspace on a chilly November Sunday, and Reuben Todd (guitar/vocals), Stefan Kroeker (drums), and Hart Koepke (bass) are relaxing beside a coffee table scattered with a colorful array of dead soldiers and full ashtrays. The walls are plastered with posters: a jolly roger, a velvet tiger, and my personal favourite, a cheap printout of a half-naked Brigitte Bardot. An old Budweiser pool table lamp hangs in the far side of the room. The heater is cranked up and it smells like the air is burning. Koepke just woke up.
“You go to those regular hot dog stands and they’ve just got ketchup, mustard and relish,” says Koepke. “But then you go to another one, and on the side you see he’s got four different types of hot sauce, sauerkraut, banana peppers, jalapenos… it’s like walking into God’s mind. We’re like the perfect hot dog stand.”
Koepke was the last ingredient (the best guess is nacho cheese) in that hot dog stand, joining the band later this year. Todd and Kroeker already had an established musical relationship with The Mystics. The Party Dress was birthed from an uncomfortable stagnancy which found the two of them hankering to get something done on their own.
“Instead of waiting to see if the Mystics would ever keep going, we just decided, well, fuck that,” says Kroeker. “We’re just gonna write our own stuff in-between, and call it something totally different.”
That need for immediacy, to not hang on to songs too long before getting them on tape has translated to a ferocious, devil-may-care three-song single they’ll be releasing sometime in February.
“We just didn’t wanna sit on the songs until they were really stale, and then record them,” says Todd. “It was more like, if we’re excited about it, record it.”
The You’re Dead 7” single is the polar opposite of pretentious, featuring blistering, grimy swamp-rock full of fast-and-hard drums, thrashy, overdriven guitar riffs, and bass lines that drive them all toward a dark-but-dancy oblivion. There aren’t a lot of bands in Winnipeg making waves with a similar aesthetic, and that refreshing take on graveyard rock ‘n’ roll can likely be credited to the separate influences of each member.
“It’s not like we’re trying to pull off any particular style,” says Kroeker. “It’s like, let’s just write stuff we like and that’s what comes out. We’re always trying to make it kinda spooky. That’s a question that comes up all the time: ‘how can we make that spookier?’”
The band had the inklings of an intention to put these songs out on a record, but Kevin Strang, drummer for local noise-wizards Pop Crimes, expedited the process. You’re Dead will be the first release on his brand new label, Bonzer Records.
“It all very much fell into place, like Hart kinda fell into place and the 7” fell into place,” says Todd. “It’s almost intimidating ‘cause now we’ve kinda got our work cut out for us.
Strang walks in near the end of our interview and offers his first signings a hoot of the devil’s lettuce. Now that Koepke has recovered sufficiently from his nap, it’s almost time for practice. But he’s yet to be in on a writing session with Todd and Kroeker.
“Usually we just do a lot of cocaine, get really worked up into a state of trance, and then just let it flow from there,” laughs Todd.
You’ll never find that in another hot dog stand.
The Party Dress will be playing the Big Fun launch party at Union Sound Hall on Dec. 23 with SMRT TYPE and DJs Wolf Boy, Schelly Handsome, and Burglar, with a 7″ release party to come in February. Check them out at thepartydress.bandcamp.com.