JP Lancaster, Fucked Up, and Status/Non-Status
JP Lancaster
Around Town // Factotum
Around Town is the debut solo album from JP Lancaster. Lancaster is a familiar face to Cups N Cakes and independent music in Canada. He previously fronted the band At Mission Dolores who released a “Pick of the Week” in 2019, he runs the label Factotum, and has been sharing hints of his first solo album with an EP, singles and music videos released throughout 2020 and 2021. Around Town was recorded in the midst of the ever-changing pandemic restrictions. Some songs were recorded live together with other musicians when restrictions allowed for it, and other tracks were recorded in isolated home studios. Lancaster notes in a press release that this necessary change in recording encouraged the musicians to follow their instincts: “The first time we played these songs as a group was when we were recording them. We went with what struck us in the moment and the album captures that instance when a song first comes together”. For a record that features a mis-mash of recording methods, it sounds cohesive and connected.
Focusing on his experiences living in Kamloops and reflecting on the “uptick in violence that has plagued his downtown neighborhood”, Lancaster laces together lyrics related to stories and observations of his neighborhood throughout the album’s ten tracks. The mosaic style cover art is a nice complement to the concept of this album. The opening two songs “West End” and “Televangelist” are upbeat, hooky, psychedelic tinged pop-rock tracks reminiscent of MGMT, Sam Roberts and Zeus. The layers of instruments and vocals near the end of “Televangelist” are trance inducing. Within the first ten minutes of the album, Lancaster introduces you to his well-honed storytelling skills and his ability to blend genres. The third track is an album highlight - “Feeling Strange”. It begins with a simple acoustic guitar, percussion, and Lancaster reflecting on a dangerous, issue laden crescent in Kamloops: “another headline Carson Crescent, violent murder unrelated to the drug trade or its segments...” The song grows in complexity, and ends with a circus-like rhythm that stands out more and more with each listen.
The title track “Around Town” finds Lancaster at his most country-folk sounding, with punchy guitar, straightforward relatable lyrics, “I was just like you once, always angry when I was young, but that’s what happens man”, and a repetitive bell-like keyboard melody that tips its hat towards ‘80’s pop songs like Fleetwood Mac’s “Everywhere”.
Lancaster’s pop songwriting sensibilities are impeccable on this record - knowing when to repeat a lyric like on the fading “brother, brother” outro of “Manic Mansion”, or mixing in repetitive 70’s style harmonizing background vocals “don’t you worry about anything” during the verses of “Televangelist”. Midway through the record, “Southern Cross” opens with a speedy drum-fill before dropping into Broken Social Scene like full-band orchestration.
Throughout Around Town, Lancaster’s vocal delivery is casual, never sounding too pained or exasperated - a smart direction seeing that the album is tied to casual reflections of people and places in his city. Connecting his reflections to stories of the past and issues of the present, Lancaster has crafted a record that picks your brain while you groove along to his skillful songwriting.
- Greg Torwalt
Fucked Up
Year of the Horse // Self Released
Toronto’s ever ambitious Fucked Up add a new installment to their ongoing Zodiac Series. The ninth installment in the series, Year of the Horse is arguably the band’s most grandiose release. Broken into four acts (and further broken down by parts on Spotify), Fucked Up once again thrust their efforts into telling an extremely dynamic and expansive narrative throughout the album. The band speaks of the album as one singular piece of music despite being broken down by acts. For a listener, to listen to the entire piece in one sitting is a daunting task. The Zodiac series differs from Fucked Up’s traditional releases as they take a deeper foray into the narrative and are often made of tracks that reach the 20 minute mark. All together Year of the Horse sits over 90 minutes long. Given the Zodiac series format, the album should be looked at as a narrative piece of art. Like a sonic novel. To break the acts up into traditional songs doesn’t translate very well and is almost a disservice to the piece as a whole. To give the time to listen and appreciate the entire piece as a whole will definitely provide satisfaction for your time and efforts, but if you’re familiar with Fucked Up you probably know that already.
Year of the Horse is a truly impressive piece of art, first in its scope and length but also in its narrative. The story takes place in a darkened fantasy world where death always looms. The story follows Perceval and Young Blanche, seamingly the only two good and pure beings when the story begins. Each share a deep connection to greater beings/realms. A hunt begins which sets Perceval and Blanche on separate journeys where they experience sorrow, hope, and death as they come across covens, and celestial beings (among a lot more). The lyrics read like poetry. The rhythm and cadence maintained throughout different parts is remarkable. There is plenty of symbolism and the vocabulary chosen is simply beautiful. It's to the point where I wish the album had a sparks notes page so I could truly appreciate everything the lyrics and story had to offer.
The way Fucked Up (and an impressive group of collaborators) develop emotion, mood and setting through their soundtrack elevates the narrative to such a great degree. Maybe more than any other release of theirs, the music on Year of the Horse is much more closely dictated by the narrative. As you could expect at this point from Fucked Up, the album scales far beyond their hardcore punk origins. Like 2018s Dose Your Dreams, vocalist Damien Abraham (Pink Eyes) takes a lesser role on the album. A large portion of the album's vocals are dominated by collaborators like Maegen Brooks Mills, Tuke Mohammed, Eidolon , Julien Baker and The National’s Matt Berninger. These added vocal contributions give Fucked Up a lot more range for experimentation. There’s moments dominated by atmospheric synths and ticking vibraphones. Vocal lines accompanied by only whistles and snaps. Mythical moments aligned with beautiful classical guitar accompaniments. All these bits are peppered between heavy moments where Damien Abraham gets to slobber all over the songs with his gut busting screams. Time and time throughout the record these moments verge on thrash metal, most likely a nod to Power Trip’s Riley Gale and Iron Age’s Wade Allison. Both of whom passed away in 2020 and to whom Year of the Horse is dedicated. The format and length of the album affords the band the space to truly experiment beyond the confinements of genre. At times it's as though there’s no place Fucked Up wouldn’t go to serve the narrative, yet with every new part there is something distinctly Fucked Up about it.
While Year of the Horse doesn’t provide much for the casual listener its another incredible piece of art released by one of Canada’s greatest treasures. Though the 90 plus minute run time definitely provides an obstacle for listeners and will probably result in the album flying under the radar, there is so much to gain out of giving the time and attention to the full piece (I’d recommend following along with the lyrics). The scope of a project like this is sort of mind boggling especially given that it never caused an added lapse in time between releases. While it would be thrilling to witness Fucked Up perform the piece in full it’s largely unlikely given that the band just announced a series of tours performing their monumentous David Comes to Life for the albums 10th anniversary. Thus it seems Year of the Horse will probably only be one for die-hards and music nerds. For Fucked Up though it's another impressive highlight in an already stacked career of always being able to one up their past efforts.
- Kennedy Pawluk
Status/Non-Status
1, 2, 3, 4, 500 Years // You've Changed Records
It's taken me a while to find the words to write this essay/EP review. I took on Status/Non-Status' album 1, 2, 3, 4, 500 Years to review prior to it’s May 28th release. Before the discovery of the Kamloops Residential School mass gravesite. The country is in a state of shock and dealing with an overdue reckoning in regard to the injustices and inhumane treatment of the Indigenous peoples our ancestors perpetrated (and let’s be real here... still to this day). It’s not like we as a country didn’t know there was the potential for this type of horrific discovery. Many have just chosen to put their heads in the sand, trying to pretend that our ancestors (white ancestors) weren’t capable of such inhumanity. But it was there. Underneath. Always. We’ve always known.
As has the band Status/Non-Status. Status/Non-Status is the new name for the ongoing musical work of Anishinaabe community worker Adam Sturgeon (Nme’) and his longtime collaborators, formerly known as Whoop-Szo. The band spent a decade carving a path through Canada’s DIY scene before their 2019’s album Warrior Down in which Sturgeon confronts his complex family history and identity. The album was long listed for the Polaris Music Prize among numerous other accolades (like our “Best Albums Of 2019” list).
What follows is a direct quote from the artist’s write-up for their first album as Status/Non-Status, and he tells his story better than I can. Adam explains that he is considered “‘non-status’ as defined by the Canadian government. Adam’s grandfather Ralph made the difficult decision to enfranchise (give up his Indian Status designation) in order to support himself and his family by joining the Armed Forces. In the name of providing a better life for himself and his family, Ralph was required to forsake his Anishinaabe roots, an all-too-common experience for Indigenous peoples across Turtle Island. Acts of colonial violence such as enfranchisement, the residential school system, and the Indian Act have resulted in disconnection amongst generations of Indigenous people from their communities, languages, land, and identities.” I implore you to check out his full essay on this subject here and the album write-up here via the Killbeat Music website.
The first single I heard from the EP "Find A Home" touches on this concept of identity and belonging. The lyrics to “Find a Home” brings it dead-on home for me. “Cause I find myself, Further from the answers, Closer to the truth, To you, do you help?”
“Find a Home” is an anthemic song with it's addictive harmonies. I've listened to the song at least 100 times. It’s the perfect intro song that pulls you in with it’s drum heartbeat and carries us into the rest of the EP, which slaps you in the face with a heavier sound, full of anger and mistrust. “Genocidio” and “Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy” are powerful, harder songs speaking to some hard realities. Rage. Betrayal. Confusion. "Genocide is alive here. Right in your back door." Yeah. It is. And it's time for us ALL to open our eyes to it.
The injustices inflicted on Indigenous peoples are in no way exclusive to Canada and the United States. The band spent two weeks recording the EP in Guachimontones, a small town outside of Guadalajara, Mexico. There they found that the same oppression and discrimination has been felt by Indigenous peoples the world over. The monologue at the end of the EP, “500 Years” is an interview with their Mexican guide Alvaro, speaking about how the “rich, “nice”, white people” took over the nicest areas of the city, and pushed the “people who are rejected by the people that run the city” into the less desirable areas. Nothing has changed in the last 500 years, but their stories, families and spirits live on.
The EP is a short powderkeg of emotion with a social message and viewpoint of gut wrenching truth and reckoning. As Adam says “When we tell stories, we have a responsibility to tell the truth. Do the necessary work to earn trust. Share your experience as one voice within a greater circle … and find a home.”
Man, I sure hope we can.
- Mo Lawrance
