Amaro
Some Party is a newsletter sharing the latest in independent Canadian rock'n'roll, curated by Adam White. Each edition explores punk, garage, psych, and otherwise uncategorizable indie rock, drawing lines from proto to post and taking some weird diversions along the way.
Bibi Club"Amaro"
Watch on YouTube - Preview and purchase at Bandcamp
Given that it ended up on the Short List this year, I became pretty familiar with Feu de garde, the 2024 record from Montreal avant-pop duo Bibi Club. I came to rely on it as a headphone record, and one that, despite the language barrier, felt intimate—a glimpse into the private musical world of its married principles, never overly precious but clearly the product of a shared headspace. Reviewers often cited Stereolab.
What I saw on stage at the Polaris Gala felt like something else entirely. The band performed "Le Feu" and "Shloshlo" with abandon, stomping through the tracks with an aggression I never perceived on the recordings, leaning into their off-kilter qualities with the volume cranked. Post-apocalyptic wasn't the vibe on record, but you could feel it in person. It was utterly compelling. I'm not sure if it comes across in the CBC's recording, but I walked out of Massey infatuated.
The band is capitalizing on both the critical momentum and that stylistic twist with the announcement of Amaro, their third album due early next year through Secret City Records. The record's first single is in line with that Polaris performance, re-casting Bibi Club as a darkwave duo, set to a thumping, club-ready beat. The label's announcement is evocative, painting the title track and the record it heralds in epic language:
"On their third album, Amaro, Bibi Club invites us to brave the dark beasts that shadow us beneath the surface, and to devote ourselves to the healing power of a fierce will to live. It explores the liminal spectrum between the here and beyond, pointing to love, nature, and community as the unifying purpose. The songs draw a map of a world of its own, following the trajectory traced by the Bibis in recent years. Now out of the living room, we dance in a mental space overloaded with grief and fear in their rawest forms. Following the death of two loved ones in the last year, the mantra 'I want to love, I want to live' resonates intensely in each melody; if the heart is a place that never dies, we must reach it as quickly as possible."
Vocalist/keyboardist Adèle Trottier-Rivard and guitarist Nicolas Basque (Plants and Animals) recorded the new LP with contributions from singer-songwriter Helena Deland and saxophonist Dimitri Milbrun. The band self-produced the record, with Seth Manchester (METZ, Tunic) mixing. Look for the 11-song full-length in stores on February 27.
Leanne Betasamosake SimpsonLive Like The Sky
Watch "White Kites and Sky Blue" on YouTube - Preview and purchase at Bandcamp
It's easy to frontload a discussion of Leanne Betasamosake Simpson with her culture and credentials, but that feels like a disservice to the medium. Context is essential, but leaning on it projects a sense of academic sterility that's very much at odds with Live Like The Sky; it implies a prerequisite self-seriousness that supersedes the gut-level engagement music demands. So yes, the new album indeed boasts the intellectual depth its creator's known for, but it's also pretty fucking fun. The record genre-hops nimbly from dream pop to goth to cerebral new wave, finding common ground in 80s post-punk and what became indie rock. It's easily Simpson's most accessible work.
In a discussion with Constantines guitarist Steven Lambke, who co-wrote the track "85 Dollars an Acre," Simpson delved into the dichotomy between the album's sound and its message:
"...I think that pairing serious lyrics about serious issues with music that doesn't necessarily reflect or amplify that, and that provides kind of a counterpoint, for me that opens up an interstitial space between the aesthetics of the music and the aesthetics of the poetry or the lyrics that is an opportunity to layer more meaning. And so, I think a lot of times that the fun music or the music about Indigenous joy can pick up the energy of resistance to whatever the struggle is. We need joy in this moment. Joy fuels movements."
The album finds Simpson working with a host of familiar faces, including Ansley Simpson, Nick Ferrio, Jonas Bonnetta of Evening Hymns, Boyhood's Caylie Runciman, and Tanner Paré. Bonnetta produced at Port William Sound, with Holy Fuck's Graham Walsh mixing. You can see the album's opening track, "White Kites and Sky Blue," showcased in a video by Rana Nazzal Hamadeh. Simpson describes that track as "a reluctant protest song naming and narrating our shared present - one of live streamed genocide, climate collapse and fascism."
Simpson's an acclaimed scholar and writer of the Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg, descendants of the ancient peoples who inhabited southern Ontario as far back as the Archaic and Paleo-Indian periods. She last released Theory of Ice in 2021, which critics shortlisted for the Polaris Music Prize. Live Like The Sky, featuring 11 new songs, is available through You've Changed Records.
Simpson's on the road this month supporting the record, with shows upcoming in Ottawa, Montreal, Hamilton, Guelph, and Toronto. All dates feature Boyhood, with Zoon joining in Hamilton, Guelph, and Toronto.
GUV"Let Your Hands Go"
Watch on YouTube - Preview and purchase at Bandcamp
Young no longer, Ben Cook's solo vehicle GUV, is set to return with Warmer than Gold, a new 12-song LP due January 30 through Run For Cover Records. The news arrived alongside "Let Your Hands Go," a song that underlays the artist's proven mastery of jangle-pop with some compelling shoegaze haze. Keeping with his recent records, Cook remains immersed in Britpop, but that influence never feels overly derivative or mined for nostalgia. Directors Fred Joseph and Andrew Pitrone showcase the single in a kaleidoscopic new video, visualizing its hypnotic momentum through shifting geometric patterns and oversaturated colours.
Warmer than Gold marks a fresh chapter for the project, now rebranded from Young Guv. Cook addressed the change in his stage name, joking, "I'm not so young anymore, three letter band names are cool, and I'm tired of being mistaken as a rapper."
Performers on the record include Cook's longtime collaborator James Matthew VII, Australian artists Darcy Baylis and Hatchie, and Meg Mills of the world conquering Turnstile. In a press release, Cook reflected on the personal journey that led to the new album:
"I've tried to open up to the world and let it speak back to me. Slowly, I've been rediscovering myself, and now gratefully back to releasing music. In the end, I've been searching for ways to bring the fleeting into focus, to make the invisible parts of myself real, hoping they might connect with something greater. Warmer Than Gold is another step in that journey of rediscovery."
The new record follows 2024's GUV III and GUV IV, the concluding half of a pandemic-era album cycle that found the artist transcending the quirky synthpop of their earlier efforts. When not dabbling on the lighter side of the spectrum, Cook's known as the frontman of Toronto bruisers No Warning and formerly played as a guitarist in the hardcore titans Fucked Up.
Papal VisitThe Capsize Party
Preview and purchase at Bandcamp
Lo-fi east coast rockers Papal Visit are back with The Capsize Party, their fourth full-length and first since 2021's sprawling Five Fathom Hole. Available now through Monopolized Records, the new album finds the New Brunswick quintet trending towards a darker, heavier sound, captured with a raw edge that befits their garage origins. The band convened over four years at various studios to record these songs, primarily to four-track cassette. Cory Bonnevie mastered their noisy results at Monopolized's studio in Saint John.
While I suspect they'll forever worship at the altar of Guided By Voices, The Capsize Party finds Papal Visit taking a few compelling detours into straight-ahead punk rock ("Love By the Numbers"), psychedelic folk ("Ringin' In"), and even sludgy stoner rock ("Weird System"). The band even takes a rare francophone turn on the simmering post-punk tune, "Angry Young Computer."
Papal Visit features the distinctive warble of vocalist Adam Mowery, backed by Pierre Cormier on bass, Chris Braydon and Penny Blacks' Jason Ogden on guitars, and Geoffrey Smith drumming.
Plastic War"Cold Air Experiment"
Preview and purchase at Bandcamp
That's not all from Jason Ogden, as the Penny Blacks principal recently shared a new one-off single as part of the Toronto-based three-piece Plastic War. The occasionally active band resurfaced this fall with "Cold Air Experiment," a moody post-punk cut that builds deliberately over five and a half minutes, finding a groove amidst the slow-burning tension.
Plastic War features Ogden with Blair Phillips (Halo, Born Under Satellites) and Alex Teixeira (Zero Bars, The Steady State). The band recorded at The Rehearsal Factory in Toronto. "Cold Air Experiment" is the band's first new material since their self-titled 2016 EP.
DeposedDownhill
Preview and purchase at Bandcamp
Drummerless Toronto "punk impostors" Deposed resurfaced in September with Downhill, their third digital single and the follow-up to last year's Dumb it Down. The title track takes its inspiration from graffiti scrawled on the rehearsal room wall at Toronto's Houndstooth bar: "It's all downhill from here." Paul Kelly shared:
"It's about the big rip-off, you know, the big, cosmic, existential one. Or maybe it's about retirement planning (we're getting up there). I think it sounds a bit like Wire (conceptual overall structure, chorus like their 'Heartbeat') but a friend tells me it's just a 'Born in the USA' rip-off."
The A-side is backed by the sardonic "E to C (Post-punk school)," which I couldn't let stand without demanding an explanation. Paul, thankfully, obliged:
"On the surface, E2C sounds like an old man who lived through the original post-punk era scolding the young, but it's really about bands that aim at pastiche rather than the all-important (and genre-transcending) RIFFS. It also has some jabs at the Canadian music industry. Many, many great post-punk songs were based on that minor 6th interval: 'Villiers Terrace' by Echo and the Bunnymen, 'M' by The Cure, 'Here Today' by The Chameleons, 'Third Uncle' by Bauhaus (OK, by Eno, but you get the point)."
The song features an interlude that references "A Matter of Gender" by Scottish band The Associates, with Kelly attempting to mimic their vocalist, Billy McKenzie.
Deposed features Paul Downes and Paul Kelly. The pair recorded with Colm Hinds (Lammping, Rosseau) at Dining Room Sound. He plays piano on the title track.
Rec CentreSquash
Watch "Polly and Andy" at YouTube - Preview and purchase at Bandcamp
Last month, Alex Hudson's Toronto-based indie pop project Rec Centre issued Squash, an 11-song set of home-recorded, synth-driven tunes. The album kicks off with "Polly and Andy," a track that contemplates "the strange paradox of seeing people every day but knowing almost nothing about their lives." You can see it in a video, shot with early-2000s point-and-shoot digital cameras, that follows the artist to their local convenience store (run by the titular couple). The song exemplifies the record's warm sound and refreshingly small-stakes observations, set against "a backdrop of buzzy synth bass and the blissed out jangle of circa-2009 blog rock." You can find a similar visual aesthetic at work in the video for "Undying."
It's a direction that feels well-suited to Hudson's longtime collaborator Jay Arner. The pair have a longstanding creative partnership, with Hudson playing bass in Arner's namesake outlet before relocating to Toronto in 2017. Arner serves as producer on Squash and contributes instrumentally on several tracks (proceeds from the album's Bandcamp sales are going to Arner's transition fundraiser). Shout Out Out Out's Nik Kozub mastered the new set in Edmonton.
The new songs follow up on 2022's Maxxed Out, which saw Rec Centre swerving towards straightforward garage rock. Squash loosely clocks in as the sixth proper full-length from the project.
