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After many delays, most of them my fault, the Sheer Agony 7” is finally at the plant and Fixture has it up for preorder on their website. Rich White mastered it at Breakglass Studios (which is a crazy place - as Wayne once said, if you have the means, I highly recommend it).
These songs were mostly recorded before the Unruly Sisters stuff, and there’s a new mix of “She’s an Artist.”
Anyways, we’ll probably have a few of them to hawk on our west coast trip. All of these dates will be with the on-top-of-their-game Montreal Powerhouses, Each Other:
June 14 - Victoria - Lucky Bar
June 15 - Nanaimo - Crace Mountain
June 16 - Victoria - Rob’s House (write me for address)
June 17 - Vancouver - Zoo Zhop
June 20th - Edmonton - Wunderbar
June 21st-23 - Sled Island Festival/Parties
I’ll have to get them to credit Franto on that Sled Island Website
if you want to go see the band that inspired this inspiring photo, you’ll have to go to calgary for sled island.
Beer On My Boat Shoes: Sheer Agony - The Unruly Sisters EP -
A nice review/blog of The Unruly Sisters EP. It’s true, brews have been quaffed by the SA:
You might have noticed that I’ve been vibing to Canadian guitar pop pretty hard lately. Not sure if any B.O.M.B.S. readers are digging it, but how can I know? Also, how can I care? I am B.O.M.B.S. Or at least half of it. So you’re going to have to put up with yet another stellar guitar…
We just put three new songs and one slightly older song (ahem, see below) on our bandcamp. There’ll be more new ones soon - we’re releasing a 7” EP on Fixture Records in early May - the release show will be announced in the next couple of days. Link is in title or here: http://sheeragony.bandcamp.com/album/the-unruly-sisters
We wrote and recorded a track a few months ago for the second Khyber Compilation. “Theme From ‘Tortoise and the Hare’” is our contribution - all 43 seconds of it. I wanted to make the shortest song possible that still felt complete.
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Photo: Tessa Smith
I interviewed Hannah Lew before their Pop Montreal performance with the Raincoats last fall, and although it didn’t end up getting published by the festival as I was told it would, it did lead to me and Christian putting on a secret show for them with Freelove Fenner and Cousins at Christian’s loft. Here’s the interview, gushy intro intact:
A few years ago, I saw San Francisco’s Grass Widow play to an almost empty room on a rainy night at Lab Synthèse. In spite of the circumstances, they played the best show I’d seen that year, so I bought their record, which also turned out to be one of my favorites from that year. They have a bass-led, intricately arranged sound that harks back to the early records by the Move, the Ventures, and the K Records stable. Since then, they’ve put out an EP, another full length on Kill Rock Stars, and a 7” single, and it’s all been exceptional, so it’s a real thrill to me that they’re playing with the not-dissimilar-sounding Raincoats on Sunday, September 25th at Cabaret du Mile End. I exchanged emails with bassist Hannah Lew a few days ago and her replies were too thoughtful for me to chop up, so here they are in their entirety:
J: You direct a lot of your own videos, and I remember talking to you about attending film school a few years ago. I love the “Fried Egg” video in particular, and the continuity between it and elements of the album art. I was wondering where you shot it, what your visual/filmic influences are, and how important is the visual presentation of the band to you?
H: Yes, I dropped out of graduate film school. I had attended for a year or so, and then my life got really hairy when my dad passed away and I decided grad school was too much. Also, Grass Widow started touring more and my schedule just got too demanding. I continue to make films though, which is good. The music video feels like a perfect format for me. It’s sort of a visual song, so I approach it in a similar way as I do song writing. Editing is very musical and humor is all about timing, which is very much in the same part of the brain as song structure. I think having an outlet where I don’t compromise at all is important. All three of us in Grass Widow have things we work on outside of the band and I think these two modalities are vital to one another.
One of the most feminist things I can do is make images to add to a realm of representation that seldom includes women in the audience. I think women have an opportunity right now to redefine the role we have in our world. A lot of this work starts within the context of visual culture. Most images of women in pop culture cater to ideals about femininity that stem from some pretty twisted societal values. I think there should be more space for women to express desire, but there’s a lot of emphasis on appearance and sexualization when really we’re just trying to make music that we care about and express our individuality, transcend some of these norms. Not all women have these same goals; in fact a lot of current female musicians have goals of validation based on their appearance as part of their craft. It can be frustrating when we get lumped in with those bands —as if because we are all female we might have the same goals.
“Fried Egg” gave me an opportunity to visually represent our band. I wanted to somehow visually express who we are in the video and I think that comes across. It was a challenge because I wanted to do us justice. My handwriting is on the back of our album covers–so the use of that writing in the titles for the video is a thread–but also the cover for “Past Time ” is based on some visual concepts that we were dealing with within the album, and those concepts are definitely present with “Fried Egg”.
With the passing of my father the year we created the album there was some pretty inescapable subject matter and it is prevalent in all my musical/visual output from that year.
I watched a lot of film board of Canada clips when drawing inspiration for this video actually, particularly the work of Norman Maclaren and Grant Monroe. We shot the video at Hunter’s Point in San Francisco.
2. What is the songwriting process for Grass Widow? I notice on the latest record that the vocals have gotten even more intricate, and I was curious about whether this was just a result of having sung a lot together, or whether it was a conscious choice? (Probably both, I guess I’m just curious about the writing and arranging methods).
H: Our songwriting process is always mutating based on what our creative needs are at the time-but one constant is that we all three contribute equally. Sometimes when we write a song one person will bring a concept and each person will write lyrics that mean something to them based on that concept, and then we’ll sing from our own vantage points all at once. I guess it would make sense that there was extra multiplicity on Past Time because we were trying out so many narratives to try to land on some solid ground during a very difficult year. Honestly it’s been hard for us to play a lot of those songs out lately because a lot of the album is so sad for us. We have been working on a lot of new songs, though. We’ve been consciously writing songs with messages that we need to hear ourselves yell about every night on tour.
3. Who are your favorite current bands?
H: My favorite current band is The Mantles. Their song “Don’t Lie” is maybe my favorite song ever. Otherwise there’s always Nature, Rank Xerox, Nose Dive, Broken Water, Weird TV, White Fence, etc…
4. Are you excited to be touring with the Raincoats?
H: Yes! We are so excited! It’s a dream.