Here comes my series of journals of concerts I went to over the term. The first show I went to was the CITR Shindig finals, which happened on the night of Feb 8th, at Pat’s Pub, near the corner of Main and East Hastings. CITR(at 101.9FM) is UBC’s very own student operated radio. Though the popularity of the radio format has been on a decline, there’s no stopping the independently ran station as well as their events.
Shindig is an annual musical competition hosted by CITR, in which 27 bands enter, and through 3 rounds of 3 to 1 elimination one band will remain in the end as the winner. This blog entry will entail the final night, with 3 bands that have already withstood 2 rounds of battle between bands.
The first band of the night was Sleepy Gonzales. Sleepy Gonzales was a simple four piece band, with the usual guitars, bass, keyboard and drums. Their music was fairly straightforward, one can easily place them right in the newer indie rock camp. It’s easy going, but a touch forgettable, if you like bands like alvvays, you may like them!
Russian Tim and Pavel Bures was quite a surprise, the singer Tim was from Russia, I’m not sure if the rest of the band were Russian as well, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were. They ended up providing one of the highlights of the night for me. Amidst a solid, tightly set of originals, they performed a cover of Boney M’s Rasputin. It was hardly recognizable at first, being covered by in the punk style; though once the chorus hit with ‘Ra ra Rasputin, Lover of the Russian Queen’ it was easily distinguishable. I brought a friend along that’s quite into hardcore bands, during the song he made an attempt in doing a traditional Russian dance where you kneel and hop on the floor during the song, followed by a half attempt at a mosh pit. Russian Tim was a good time, I’d recommend anyone looking for a fun punk band to check out Russian Tim and Pavel Bures.
Last of all, in my opinion the most interesting band of the night was most definitely girlsnails, (pronounced girls nails). Girlsnails was a math rock band, now some of you would think what is math rock? Math rock takes the traditional role of the guitar and completely throws out the window. Gone is the strummed chords (for the most part), replace them with a constant barrage of tapped or picked melody outlining harmony, and you got yourself math rock. The band had two guitarists, 3 horns consisting of sax, trumpet and trombone, a drummer and a singer.
As a seasoned listener of mostly rock sub-genres, while not well versed with math rock, seeing girlsnails is like reliving a long lost dream. The predominantly melodic approach of the guitar makes the harmony hard to make out, which contributes to the dream-like, floaty quality of the music, one can maybe call it polyphonic. Through many revisions of this journal trying to describe girlsnails, it dawned on me that I really can’t solely describe their music without drawing parallels to the American Football. American Football (yes that’s their name) is arguably the quintessential mid-west math/emo band. Everything that I’ve described about girlsnails regarding the guitar playing can be applied to American Football, I’d strongly recommend them.
A Girlsnails song can either start off jumping directly into the verse, or by starting with a more down-tempo intro. In the case of an intro, the guitars would start off playing around each other, slowly painting a vague picture of the song to come, while the drummer starting off sparingly with the drums, this can be heard in If Rodney Were as Cowboy. Droning open strings are used a lot in their guitar playing to create harmony, filling space while melodies while melodies are tapped. With their lightning fast tapping technique, they often throw in ‘glitch like’ phrases that are vibrant while alien.
In a verse they would arpeggiating guitars doing simpler parts in verses to serve as backdrop to the lead vocals. The singing is generally laid back and non-confrontational, the vocals really do carry the same urgency that American Football carried, though it does stand out as Laura brings with her a feminine touch that is different from Mike Kinseller (singer of AF).
The choruses are what you expect from a rock band, but in this case in math rock fashion, a stronger hook is presented in vocals, and counterpointed by melodies from guitars and horns throughout. Horns are scattered throughout songs to heighten the mood and tension, generally later in the verses and throughout choruses, American Football also have horns.
Now you may think this band isn’t original at all, with me constantly comparing them to AF, here’s a key difference: throughout their songs girlsnails would throw in unexpected breakdowns. In a breakdown the tension is brought to the max, it can be performed in a different time signature, often odd. Breakdowns frequently employ dramatic synchronized short pauses, as well as heavy syncopation. The band generally plays as loud as possible during breakdowns as well. These breakdowns are sprinkled throughout their music, though tastefully, as well as well transitioned to and fro other sections of their songs. American Football, to my knowledge, does not employ frequently, though I may be wrong. Talking about breakdowns, this actually allows me to draw attention to another math rock band Hella, to describe Hella simply, every song they have is essentially a series of breakdowns, with a heavy pinch of noise, atonality and glitches. Hella is likely out of the scope of most people in this class I strongly recommend checking them out.
Though I do love their music there is definitely issues, one being that the compositions are mostly guitar and drum focused. Knowing the history of the band, I knew the guitarists have composed a lot of the songs dating from years back, the horns and vocals are added on later to ‘complete’ the song. They did a great job, and the songs flowed generally very well, but often times I did wish things arose more naturally. It’s likely a simple mismatch of my expectations to their music, and I’m just accusing them of a issue rooted in my difference in taste.
I see this journal has gone on for too long, to cap it off, I very much enjoyed girlsnails set, they ended the entire thing with a huge breakdown/crescendo that gave me serious shivers. Ultimately girlsnails won shindig WOOHOO! From which they’ll get a chance to record in a professional studio, I would love to hear something new the band, for now you can find girlsnails music by googling them, which will direct you to a link on bandcamp, this can also be said for the other bands. Thanks for reading! Support local music!