{"id":5202,"date":"2012-09-14T08:21:24","date_gmt":"2012-09-14T14:21:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stylusmagazine.ca\/?p=5202"},"modified":"2012-09-14T08:21:24","modified_gmt":"2012-09-14T14:21:24","slug":"the-gunness-wavers-in-the-beat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/2012\/09\/14\/the-gunness-wavers-in-the-beat\/","title":{"rendered":"THE GUNNESS :: Wavers in the Beat"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n

\nBy Taylor Burgess<\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n
photo by Mike Latschislaw<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you think not giving a damn and relentless self-expression can only come in the shape of a rowdy four-piece punk band, how shattered you will be when Alana Mercer takes the stage by her lonesome as The Gunness.
\nSince she\u2019s already played major roles in The Quiffs and The Blowholes<\/a>, handfuls of bands today are looking to share a bill with Mercer\u2019s new solo act, especially if her bass drum, guitar, and throaty voice bring a rowdy night to a sombre, brooding halt.
\nMercer explains, \u201cSpecifically [the bands] have explained to me\u2014what they like so much about what it is I do\u2014it\u2019s just not giving a god damn, and playing whatever I want. Like, I\u2019ll play in the middle of a night after two full bands. I don\u2019t care.\u201d
\nIt\u2019s an attitude that she\u2019s carrying over into recording her upcoming album which will be released on Transistor 66 Records<\/a>. Together with engineers Craig Boychuk (L\u2019viv<\/a>) and Joel Mierau (Self Interest), they\u2019re deliberately avoiding studio perfection for The Gunness\u2019 debut, opting to capture Mercer\u2019s buoyant aura and to keep true to her solo performance.
\n\u201cCraig and I, we\u2019ve had long discussions about our love for PJ Harvey and Rid of Me. Not just the album itself, but the way it was recorded,\u201d Mercer explains dutifully. \u201cYou know, there\u2019s coughing in the background, and she screws up a couple times but she keeps it because the whole take itself is good. It was that kind of element that I knew Craig totally got.\u201d
\nThis ethos of theirs was really put to the test once they set Mercer\u2019s instruments plus recording gear in the street-facing gallery of Negative Space. The engineers set up in the back, leaving Mercer all by herself. Well, she was sort of left alone.
\n\u201cPeople would walk by the window occasionally and peer their faces in at me as I\u2019m trying to play and keep beat. They\u2019re just cracking me up\u2014you can hear traffic going by and a train at some point. It\u2019s awesome! I just want to keep it all.\u201d
\nMercer has laid down all of the bed tracks of her album so far, leaving just the vocals to be done later this summer, once Boychuk comes back into town. Throughout recording her solo debut, Mercer says it has been helpful that Boychuk and Mierau are musicians, and have been acting as more than just engineers.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s weird to have been in so many bands with so many people, and now to play by myself I don\u2019t really have anyone to bounce ideas off of. Craig and Joel were really awesome in that way. I\u2019d be like, \u2018Feedback! Is this too much? How does this sound?\u2019\u201d
\nEvery band that Alana Mercer takes part in, whether it be the ones no longer with us (The Quiffs, The Blowholes, and The Gorgon are all now defunct) or any of the five which she\u2019s currently in, they have this awesome feeling of immediacy, the total opposite of sterility, regardless of how slick or how shit they\u2019re recorded. It\u2019s like these songs have been bounced off a number of friends\u2019 heads before ending up at the stage.
\nSo it might be a bit of a surprise that Mercer started The Gunness, but it\u2019s really stuck. \u201cI would play my kick on my practice pad at home just to keep the beat. And one day I said, screw it. I\u2019ll put on a show. C\u2019mon<\/a> were coming through town, so they played too. It was at the Death Trap. It was really great. It was a good start.\u201d That first show was only about a year ago, but it has worked out well for her\u2014she earned a top spot in Uptown Magazine\u2019s Best of Winnipeg 2012 as Best New Local Solo Artist.
\nSo Mercer has proved that she doesn\u2019t necessarily need a band behind her, leaving her alone with her determination and her particular tastes. However, taking a page from the golden era of rock \u2018n\u2019 roll, she admits she\u2019s human\u2014and even revels in it.
\n\u201cI\u2019m kind of notoriously not perfect in my timing,\u201d she admits, with a bit of a grin. \u201cNot like crazy, but it has been known to happen, if I\u2019ve had a couple drinks, the song will end up a lot faster than it started.\u201d
\nAnd even though she likes dance music, it just doesn\u2019t have that same unspeakable charm as records that let their flaws show.
\n\u201cLike early Stones recordings, where Mick Jagger screwed up his tambourine, and he has to count himself back in. And there\u2019s wavers in the beat. Or the Shirelles were off key a little bit. I miss it!\u201d
\nThat extends back to the first Winnipeg band she was in, The Quiffs. She says part of what made The Quiffs so appealing was how raw they were, yelling at one another mid-song to figure out what they were playing.
\nBut in the present day, Alana Mercer\u2019s human passion is paying off in spades. Besides The Gunness\u2019 album which will drop in the fall, she\u2019s in four bands which are releasing albums this year. The High Thunderers have released a cover of the 1987 album Trio<\/em>, originally by Dolly Parton, Linda Rondstadt and Emmylou Harris. Mercer has just replaced Bill Northcott as the drummer for the Angry Dragons, who are recording and releasing a full length. Phlegm Fatale, Mercer\u2019s dance band which is named after an Archagathus song, are all done recording their album which just needs some mastering. And finally, Lazy Horse, in which she plays bass, has a 10-song record coming out on Eat Em Up Records, but needs a few more guitar solos first.
\n\u201cYeah,\u201d says Mercer, \u201cafter three years of hibernation, it\u2019s all going to burst out at once, like a horror film.\u201d<\/p>\n

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By Taylor Burgess photo by Mike Latschislaw If you think not giving a damn and relentless self-expression can only come in the shape of a rowdy four-piece punk band, how shattered you will be when Alana Mercer takes the stage by her lonesome as The Gunness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[32,563,968,1033],"class_list":["post-5202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","tag-alana-mercer","tag-local","tag-the-gunness","tag-transistor-66"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5202\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}