Tunic, Ducks Ltd, and Slow Down Molasses
Tunic
Quitter // Artoffact Records
From the niche scene of noise-punk is Tunic, a prolific Winnipeg-based group that incorporates unconventional song structure, quick pounding drums, agonized screams, and a whole lot of distortion into a sound that will take back even the seasoned noise-punk listeners in just how hard it is. Now, Tunic’s not just about messing with time signatures and experimentation, there’s a lot of importance to the lyrics as well. This is encapsulated in their newest release, Quitter, released on October 15th.
Frontman David Schellenberg puts himself (the good and bad), full force in the lyrics. It displays a certain rage and malcontent we have inside us all, and this open heartedness shows our human nature in a way that speaks a critical truth. For example, the theme of Quitter is, of course, quitting.
The concept of quitting can come in different manifestations. From Schellenberg becoming sober and quitting intoxicants, to him quitting his denial of mental illness and seeking medication, and even the titular track is written about the former bassist and co-founder who quit the band after production.
There aren’t many out there who would be comfortable admitting addiction, mental illness, and to air out grievances with old band mates, but Tunics exploration of these subjects shows that there is no shame in being expressive and truthful. They use their distortion, hard hitting sound to convey a sense of destruction, similar (but not really) to the car smash stage in Street Fighter II: Turbo. The point is that the only way to rebuild one's foundation is to tear it down. You can’t build upon a disintegrating ground floor.
To those that enjoy the hardcore, heavy sounds, and to those and enjoy the experimental and unpredictable, and even to those that don’t like either, Quitter is an album that will drop your jaw in the first 30 seconds, and by the end leave you with a mind pried open.
- Brandon Kruze
Ducks Ltd.
Modern Fiction // Carpark/Royal Mountain Records
Next up for review, we have Toronto’s Ducks Ltd. (formerly Ducks Unlimited), the duo of Tom McGreevy (lead vocal, guitar, bass, keyboards) and Evan Lewis (guitar, bass, drum programming), who met at a Dilly Dally show around the time they were both applying for permanent residency and playing in different local bands, quickly recognizing something in each other: a relentless love of underrated ‘80s indiepop a la Sarah Records (specifically for Tom, U.K. groups like Close Lobsters, the Marxist band McCarthy, anything on Cherry Red Records; for the Australian Evan, The Go-Betweens and Flying Nun Records). I had the good fortune of catching the Ducks Ltd. show recently put on by Transmit Presents in Toronto. The band had great energy and had the crowd bobbing along to every song.
The pair started writing and recording together in 2018, taking the time to discover their musical identity: a whole EP was recorded with outside producers and scrapped, never to be released. “It came out sounding good,” Tom explains, “But not like us.” Their critically acclaimed debut EP, Get Bleak, released on Madrid indie Bobo Integral (Tim Cohen, Massage) in 2019 and re-released on Carpark/Royal Mountain Records in 2021 with three additional songs, was initially recorded with live drums—“We’ve had rotating members ever since we’ve been a band. We’ve got Spinal Tap-level drummers at this point,” Evan is quick to point out. That EP, too, was redone—and with a drum machine, built from demos recorded in Evan’s bedroom, revealing the key to Ducks Ltd.’s sound: simple charms, just like the music that inspired it, and a project best served when it’s just the two of them trusting the intensity of their creative relationship. It’s worked out: Ducks Ltd.
Modern Fiction kicks off a bouncy note with "How Lonely Our You". This song is a great opener, introduces the album well, and previews the Ducks Ltd. trademark bop. Modern fiction continues its danceable, depressive fun with some relief: in “Always There” and “Sullen LeeringHope,” Modern Fiction’s faithful heart.“There’s a tendency in my writing, because of my world view, to be very bleak.” Tom explains. “A quality I don’t always see in myself and appreciate in others is the courage to go on.” And yet, the record manages resiliency—enough for pop fans all to love.
Writing the album was intimate. Tom drafted the nucleus of a song on an unplugged electric guitar and brought it over to Evan’s apartment, where the pair sat in his bedroom, placing percussive beats from a drum machine under nascent melodies, passing a bass back and forth, adding organs and bridges where necessary. “It’s computer music trying extremely hard not to sound like computer music,” Tom jokes. Fearful that limited and expensive studio time would kneecap the project creatively, eroding their charming naivete, the pair re-recorded the album in a storage space owned by Evan’s boss. Ornamentation through collaboration followed: there’s Aaron Goldstein on Pedal Steel in the Go-Betweens’ “Cattle and Cane”-channelling interlude “Patience Wearing Thin,” Eliza Niemi on cello (“18 Cigarettes,” a song loosely inspired by a 1997 Oasis performance of “Don’t Go Away”), and backing harmonies from Carpark labelmates The Beths (on an ode to friendship at a distance, “How Lonely Are You?,” “Always There,” and on the sped-up Syd Barrett stylings of “Under The Rolling Moon.”) While in his native Australia due to COVID-19, Evan worked closely with producer James Cecil (The Goon Sax, Architecture in Helsinki) on Modern Fiction’s finishing touches—at one point, in the mountains of the Macedon Ranges in Victoria, recorded a string quartet (featured on “Fit to Burst,” “Always There,” “Sullen Leering Hope,” “‘Twere Ever Thus,” “Grand Final Day.”)
- Earl Donald
Slow Down Molasses
Minor Deaths // Noyes Records/Divine Schism
Since their emergence from the prairie indie music scene of the mid-aughts, Saskatoon music scene mainstays Slow Down Molasses have evolved through many lineup iterations (with as many as 14 active members at one point) and some dramatic differences in sound, from folk-pop to indie rock to blistering post-punk. But if by chance you caught Slow Down Molasses at a festival some years ago and think you know what to expect from a new album, it’s definitely past time to drop any preconceived notions. The version of Slow Down Molasses heard on Minor Deaths is a new and an exciting one — a leaner and meaner noise rock 4-piece that comes baring teeth, and seems more inclined than ever to experiment with heavy distortion, purposeful discord, and polyrhythmic chaos.
While still a natural extension from their previous release, the 2016 shoegaze-leaning 100% Sunshine, this new album captures Slow Down Molasses wandering out a bit further from their indie rock nucleus as they trundle into weirder and darker sonic landscapes. While the band can absolutely still craft a catchy hook, they seem to be approaching such moments with a purposeful brevity, and are just as likely to instead set upon fixatations of amelodic angst, or to collide into walls of feedback, crashing cymbals, and coursing distorted drones. Contradicting moods are scattered across Minor Deaths, in turns either building anxiety and unease or providing the release, however briefly, of anthemic indie rock grandeur.
An illustrative example of the moodswings of Minor Deaths can be found in the transition from “Revisionists” — an angular post-punk excoriation of #MeToo-era macho bullshit that closes with a pizzicato violin creep — into the guitar-splashed and boisterous “Son of Titanic”, which indulges in lively alterna-rock for just barely more than 60 seconds. Or take instead the jump from the mechanical riff of the foreboding “Please Stop Paying Such Close Attention” to the highly danceable “Street Haunting”, a track anchored by a stupidly simple and plainly brilliant bass groove. Single “Some Fine Action”, a pragmatic take on a modern love song, represents the whole of Minor Deaths well, and balances the same tension heard across the record; listen for the signature wistful lilt of guest vocalist Kacy Anderson (Kacy & Clayton) while the track builds to a triumphant finish, fit for an arena rock high-kick. But it’s the juggernaut “Hot Furnaces Are Hot!” (10:29) that might serve as the best exemplar of this brand of Slow Down Molasses — unfolding in several changing movements, from jagged noise rock anguish to nearly four minutes in the jubilant grip of a single chord, and a cacophony of an ending that feels like an ambient fever dream, complete with horror-movie string and sci-fi synth textures.
Minor Deaths is Slow Down Molasses at a new experimental and aggressive zenith, skillfully playing the discomfort of raw jangled nerves and creeping self-doubt against the euphoria and assertiveness of indie rock escapism. With its compelling layers of contrast and variation, it’s also absolutely an album worthy of repeated listens.
- Julie Maier
