It isn’t uncommon for young bands to be some combination of reckless and precise, but Winnipeg indie quartet Right Through seems to be the inverse of metal and hardcore bands, opting for the lo-fi sounds of ’90s indie rock instead. Rather than worrying about specific scales, these boys worry about harmonies and rocking hard.
The band started about two and a half years ago when Jesse Hill, 19, was playing in the Fo!ps, and Cole Woods, 18, and Rob Gardiner, 18, were in the Playing Cards.
Over a coffee in the Exchange on a soon-to-be bitter autumn evening, Jesse said, “We played shows with each other, and then we became friends, and we started jamming.”
Woods added, “And then Rob and I have been friends for a long time, been playing together in bands for a long time.”
“Well, he was just Rob’s brother,” said bassist Alan Gardiner, 16. We all cracked up.
Tease each other as they might, they still have faith in each other. Jesse said, “If I’m stuck with a song, that’s like the perfect time to bring it to Right Through, because I’m really confident in these guys’ abilities to take something I have and make it way better.” They can most definitely read each other, and when they play, they’re in the same mind-space. I picture them swinging their arms and pounding their guitars among mostly barren trees and snow-dusted ground , much like a world presented in their promo photos.
They’re careful not to–or perhaps it never even crossed their minds to–name-drop any influences, but their brand of loud-quiet-loud indie rock is somewhere between Pavement and post-rock, limited to two guitars, one bass and a drum kit.
Late in October, the band will be releasing their first full length album, titled the sun hot. They recorded it themselves, with the help of Jesse’s brother, getting all of the instruments done in a couple of days, but then doing the vocals over a much longer stretch–the next six months.
It was quite vexing for Jesse. “I’m a pretty big perfectionist, so just the fact that I was on my own recording my vocals, over and over again, I got really obsessive about it… It was just really stressful. And it probably would’ve been less stressful if… uh… we were in…”
“In a real studio?” Cole offers.
The CD release will be on October 23 at Crescent Fort Rouge United Church, a venue the band plays frequently. If you’ve never been there, you should also know it’s one of the better venues in the city. The sound carries like a dream, full and dramatic, and always compliments Right Through’s drastic shifts in dynamics, from slow strums and muttering to gut-wrenching and screaming. As Hill says, “We try to be as quiet as we try to be loud.”
This remarkably assured album from the Brooklyn-based band The Antlers is all about space and atmosphere. What started out as a lo-fi solo project for Peter Silberman has evolved into an epic collaborative project over two years in the making. Though not a particularly difficult record, Hospice rewards patient listening with a tightly bound narrative about isolation and terminal illness. Melodically, it’s a pretty straightforward chamber-pop record, and at times it even sounds a bit formulaic, but on a song like “Kettering” (which, on its own wouldn’t be all that interesting) there’s so much going on thematically, and such a careful texturing of sound, that the track takes on a new life, slowly building into something almost raucous, almost hopeful. “Bear” features the same sort of upbeat flickering, with a cutting chorus (“We’re too old / We’re not old at all”) that disappears as quickly as it emerged. This haunting quality is the most powerful aspect of Hospice, which teeters between vacuous drones and lush flourishes, and finds The Antlers at their best in the echoes and whispers of songs like the beautiful “Shiva” and the inspiring “Wake.” Hospice is pretty heavy and perhaps a bit too serious. As one critic has said, it’s “music for people who like hospitals,” which doesn’t strike me as a compliment. Indeed, it will be interesting to see where yhe Antlers go from here, to see if there is, after all, life beyond hospital walls. (French Kiss, www.frenchkissrecords.com) Jonathan Dyck
They say you can never really go home again, but since Brandon hosted this year’s Western Canadian Music Awards, I returned to the Wheat City—where I haven’t lived for over a decade, but where I spent my formative years—to take in the sights and sounds at showcases and sessions held during the weekend of September 17-20.
As the weather starts pushing Winnipeggers back indoors for the winter, a new televised concert series is set to bring live, local music to your home television set. Live at the West End captures six performances by Manitoba-based acts and is the brainchild of Johnny Marlow. He’s been a record store owner and an indie label rep. Now he’s working in a new venue: on-demand TV.
