Megan Nash, SPECTRES, and Wine Lips
Megan Nash
Soft Focus Futures // Acronym Records
I am having a hard time putting my thoughts about Megan Nash’s newest album, Soft Focus Futures, into words. More specifically, I am having a hard time putting my emotions and experience with these songs into full thoughts. I have admired Megan since the first time I heard their music, and continue to grow fonder of every time a new track is released into the world. I struggle to find words for the same reason my admiration grows – Megan manages to take their most personal and raw experiences and somehow make the listener feel as if they are experiencing it too. I have never listened to an artist that makes me feel more at home than Megan Nash, and I believe it is a result of their ability to articulate emotion not only through poetry, but in powerful and creative instrumentation. Each song is beautifully constructed with words that spark your mind, and sound that grazes your bones
Alright, now that I’ve shared my obvious bias towards everything Megan creates, let me tell you what I think about their new album. These ten tracks are heavy and raw, being a vessel for release after their divorce. From the first song to the last, which happens to be a reprise of the first track, Megan moves the listener through somber and intimate memories.
The album opens with “Table For One”, an acoustic ballad about being alone again. I think this might the best song they have written, both creatively and skillfully. Going back to what I wrote earlier about their ability to create emotional instrumental and poetry, this song is a perfect example. The acoustic guitar is simple and lets the words hang onto silence, almost mirroring the loneliness of the lyrics. If the mood set by the acoustic guitar is not enough, Megan’s voice enters singing a melody line that hangs onto one note for the most part and falls at the right moments, creating the feeling of sad nostalgia. The lyrics do not shy away from honesty and set the musical atmosphere for the rest of the album.
Although I think “Table For One” is their best written song, “Artifact” might still be my favourite. “Our love is an island where we used to live … it was swallowed by the ocean.” What a line. I just love how many water references and metaphors are included in this song. In addition to the lyric references, the percussion almost sounds as if it’s mimicking waves crashing, specifically when the song really picks up during the second half. It is another beautifully written track.
I could attempt to write my scrambled thoughts about Megan Nash and Soft Focus Futures for pages, but I will leave it at those two songs. Other highlights on the album include the subtle disco-track “Quiet”, powerful song (and recently named one of our Best Music Videos of 2021) “Chew Quietly / Clean Slate”, and collaborative track with Digawolf “Table For One Reprise”. Seriously check this album out folks. Megan Nash is both a wonderful human and an amazingly creative soul that continues to blow me away.
- Holly-Anne Gilroy
SPECTRES
Hindsight // Artoffact
Nothing makes you feel young quite like reviewing a new release by a band who formed when you were 10 years old, but then SPECTRES wouldn’t have as special a place in underground Canadian music if they started any later than they did. The Vancouver band is among the earliest in the country to bring the familiar stylings of post-punk into the 21st century, and they continue to draw from that nostalgia more than 15 years later with their new album Hindsight.
When I first picked out the album for review, it was after skimming through only the last two tracks (the only ones available for listening at the time). After getting the complete release, I was taken aback when I started listening from the very beginning. Instead of the polish and dark glamour of “Tell Me”, I was greeted by the garage recording quality, naive politically charged lyrics and barely contained rage of “Cold War”, which continued until “Complications”. Then came “Pattern Recognition”, and suddenly there was a shift: the guitar tones were driven more by chorus and reverb than distortion, synthesizers appeared, and the composition took on a new wave-like complexity and deliberation. It only got even more new wavey from there, with the subsequent track “Provincial Wake” replacing the shouting vocals with more standard 1980s British-style singing and an unabashedly pop feel reminiscent of Modern English.
By this point I understood the album’s intention: it’s a brief history of British post-punk’s evolution, from its punk-for-people-bored-with-punk roots in the mid to late 1970s to its transformation into the more accessible new wave of the mid-1980s. “Tell Me” is where this comes to a head, making the full transition into synth-pop complete with the clearest vocals of all the tracks and lyrics on the tried and true topic of love gone wrong. I’m not the first to compare the track to New Order, but that’s only because that’s exactly what it sounds like (with perhaps a bit of Erasure also thrown in there).
With this retrospective approach to the post-punk and new wave genres and a trilogy of live session recordings that fit well with the studio recordings, this is a satisfying album (as a new wave fan) in ways I did not expect. I will say however, as someone who loves airy reverb and chorus effects, I’m definitely biased towards the second half.
- Ty Vanden Dool
Wine Lips
Mushroom Death Sex Bummer Party // Stomp Records
Mushroom Death Sex Bummer Party, other than being really fun to say, is a really quite spectacular album from Toronto based, psychedelic garage punk band Wine Lips. There’s been a reported buzz around this group and it isn’t hard to see why. They’re exciting, fast, and viscerally catchy. Even after writing this review I will be yelling to the tree tops “EXECUTION, TAKE ME FROM MY LIFE!” The vocals are probably what most people will be mesmerized by, and rightly so. The performance given is consistently breathtaking, and rather engaging as well, a certain amount of incomprehensibility is found on this album, which really contributes to the punk sound at play, a true appreciation for the lyrics would require a few listens, whereupon you can then appreciate all the other absolutely incredible pieces of the puzzle here. The strong and hard punk guitar work is a siren’s song that entices and pulls you in with every strum. The drums, a raging concord yet to be emptied of its anger, beating on, perfectly synchronized, and well placed. The bass guitar quietly grounds the whole album in reality and ties together the album fantastically into perfect cohesive incohesiveness.
The punk feel of this album is present throughout and adds a fun dimension to the whole piece with the innovations of such an interesting and historical genre. And while it is certainly punky, it isn’t so hardcore that it should deter any more lighthearted listeners, I truly do think this album can be enjoyed by many many different kinds of people, as long as they can appreciate the artistry and fun of it.
My personal favourite off this album is the second song “Tension” at three minutes and fifty one seconds, it’s longer with heavy strumming, solos, breakdowns, and interludes, this song evokes a strong punk feeling that I’ve been missing. It’s simple, it’s primal, it's gorgeous.
This album is something to behold in its artistry, talent and raw splendor, and is truly something that I want to see live, as soon as humanly possible.
- Kaden Peaslee
