“Brahs Go Erin.” on new surf n turf film The Crest

The Crest: Surfers Dudes Get Into the Mystic  

10 November 2017By Christine Leonard 

“Brahs Go Erin.”

You don’t have to be R.L. Gates to take an interest in genealogy. In fact, looking up one’s distant ancestors has become one of the fastest-growing hobbies around the world. Of course, everyone who embarks on such an archival investigation must hold out some hope that they are related to some historical figure of import, say a pharaoh or at least an everyman hero. More often than not a rummage through the family tree will reveal a tale of syphilis and slavery, or at best industrious middle-classness. It may then seem odd that two young men from different parts of the United States should find themselves united in a search for their common genetic past. 

Enter golden-haired, Cape Cod surfer-dude, Andrew Jacob. Yeah, he says Jacob just like you’d think. Soaked. But actually, he seems to be a really amicable and down-to-earth kinda guy with a knack for creating beautiful graffiti. Andrew catches wind that he has a cousin in Florida who is living a parallel life as a surfer and surfboard designer. A cousin who can also trace his lineage back to the King of The Blasket Islands, the quasi-mythical “An Ri” of the rocky archipelago off Ireland’s south-western coast.  

Drawn together by the discovery of a fiddle left behind by their common ancestor Mike the Fiddler, Jacob and his eastern counterpart, the bedroom-eyed Dennis “DK” Kane, travel to Ireland to rediscover their roots and share their love of hitting the waves. 

As luck would have it their discovery of each other’s existence coincides with The Gathering 2013; a tourism initiative that invited Irish descendants from around the world to, ahem, descend on the Emerald Isle to partake of some 3,000 family reunions and national celebrations. Meeting for the first time, the two immediately set about finding a spot to baptize the surfboards they had toted along just for the occasion in the chilly Atlantic. 

Not just an account of the chain of events that brought the two together, the story at the heart of The Crest is one of heraldic pride mingled with an admiration for how those that went before lived and died by the waters that surrounded them.  

A quaint and mellow-paced documentary, The Crest revolves around Jacob’s contemplative attempt to record the uniqueness of the people around him while seeking a portal of connection to the past. Equipped with an easy to enjoy Celtic music soundtrack that ranges from traditional romantics to punked-up romps, The Crest is more about museum moments than catching the perfect rip-curl. Impeded by the same rough (gnarly) seas that kept their forbearers isolated and pining for the opportunities they knew awaited in America, Jacob and Kane make the most of their time in the Dingle Peninsula by tipping pints with assorted local characters and fellow Kanes who have rallied for the festivities.  

More of a walk down memory lane, or a forage through Granny’s attic, than an azure-tinted surfgasm, The Crest makes the most of pushing into uncertainty by getting hands-on with the details and going back to the basics of storytelling, much in the way of the rugged fisherman-poets of The Blasket Islands.  

The Crest will screen Nov. 17 as part of CUFF Docs at The Globe Cinema with director Mark Covino in attendance.

The Weir sheds the ties that blind with their new EP Detached

The Weir: Defining Gravity 

08 November 2017By Christine Leonard 

There are few things in heaven and earth that have not been dreamt of in The Weir’s philosophy. The Calgary-based doom-metal quartet has been exploring the heavy-dreadful landscape since the manifestation of their debut release, Yesterday’s Graves (Pint-Sized Records), back in 2012. Vast and suspenseful, The Weir’s deadly drone required a modulation of the ballistic tempos that dual guitarist/vocalists Jim Hudson (Breathe Knives, Oxeneer, Snake Mountain) and Sergey Jmourovski (WAKE, Snake Mountain), drummer Mark Schmidt (On Lock) and bassist/vocalist Eddie Dalrymple (Oxeneer, Fuck Off Dad, Deadhorse) had grown velocitized to as members of their respective punk bands.

“We all had a background of playing pretty fast music and when we first started out we were bad at playing slow,” says Jmourovski. “Our first test demo was friggin’ rippin’, so we had ‘SLOW DOWN’ written on Mark’s snare and my volume pedal as a reminder. It became a sort of mantra and over the course of the years it evolved in a general attitude towards the band.”

Recalibrated to a sin-definingly slothful pace, The Weir would dive into the deep end of the sludge-core spectrum with the release of their ominous 2015 LP Calmness of Resolve, released via Sunmask Records. A challenging album for musician and listener alike, the album spawned life-altering moments and discoveries that resulted in significant changes to the band’s makeup and artistic approach.

“Eddie joined half-way through the writing of Calmness of Resolve and contributed a lot to that record,” Jmourovski explains.

“After the CD came out we decided to write something more and he became an integral part of the writing process. So, I feel like there was a transition between that record and whatever was gonna come next. We thought doing a new EP was evidence of logical fucking progress. And a cool step forwards.”

Thus, Dalrymple found himself charged with penning lyrics for The Weir’s forthcoming EP, Detached (Hearing Aids Records), due for release in November of 2017. It was a task he accomplished by distilling his innermost thoughts through a carbon filter of the darkest poetry prior to spilling ink on to page and stage. Exceeding all expectations on Detached’s titanic twin tracks, “Weak With Rage” and “Below The Surface,” The Weir’s bone-chilling lingual oblations bespeak a renewed sense of immediacy and intent.

“My lyrics are about a lot of personal situations but run through a thesaurus. Not to disguise them, but to make them less specific,” Dalrymple elaborates. “There are three singers in the band, so it makes it something that the other guys and the audience can see in their own light and interpret for themselves. It’s a literal representation of larger events, so it becomes fantasy. I try to write about very specific ideas from a non-linear, non-sequitur, non-narrative position.”

Another benefit of flexibility afforded by adding Dalrymple’s tributary parables to their songwriting process is that it has enabled The Weir’s other architects to concentrate on contributing their own brutal algorithms to the communal incantations. A welcome respite for a foursome that is lauded for the intensity of their compelling live performances.

“There have been shows where I’ve been totally fuckin drained and not rejuvenated. Like I left a lot behind. Like you turned yourself inside out. It’s nauseating, but it’s also very satisfying,” Jmourovski deduces.

“That led to a couple of cathartic shows until I was like ‘Fuck, dude! I cannot expose myself like that anymore!’ Because it’s tiring. It’s too much. And then it loses its meaning. And what’s the point of doing something that doesn’t have a meaning to it? And, we can talk about the whole professional band thing; at some point, your purpose is going to inform your art and, no, it shouldn’t work like that!” 

The Weir release their new EP Detached via Hearing Aids Records in November. 

Silverstein holds a mirror up to reality with Dead Reflection

Silverstein:
Through the Looking Glass 

02 November 2017By Christine Leonard 

Named for the scary-looking children’s author who turned words on their ear and penned the lyrics to “A Boy Named Sue,” Burlington, Ontario’s Silverstein has been pumping out post-hardcore tunes since the band’s inception in 2000. By 2002, the upstarts had made enough noise to attract the interest of Victory Records and in 2003 the renowned punk rock label released Silverstein’s first full-length album When Broken Is Easily Fixed. Featuring 10 energetic tracks, including six songs from their early EPs, the introductory LP launched Silverstein into the public eye, ultimately selling 200 000 copies. 

Swept up in a whirlwind of international tours and press engagements, Silverstein enjoyed an upsurge in popularity that carried them through the next decade and saw them produce another half-dozen records. Notable for both their consistency and longevity, Silverstein has become a mainstay of Canada’s emo scene and Warped Tour royalty along the way. A pair of distinctions that lead vocalist Shane Told, rhythm guitarist Josh Bradford, lead guitarist Paul Marc Rousseau, bassist Billy Hamilton and drummer Paul Koehler have accepted with a sense of gratitude and responsibility.  

“It’s always challenging to write another record and with this being our eighth studio album there was even more pressure because we want to honour the long-time fans, but we also want to reach a new audience,” says Koehler.

“I think with this album we did a good job of balancing both of those things. It doesn’t get easier, it’s still a stressful process and we work through it as best as we can. It was a pretty insane beginning of the year; writing and recording it. In the end, we’re really happy with it and I can say it’s probably my favourite record that we’ve put out. And that’s a hard feat after seven previous albums, to be able to top it, but I feel like we did.” 

Rolled out with the singles “Retrograde” and “Ghost,” Silverstein’s latest effort, Dead Reflection, appeared via New Damage Records in Canada in July of 2017. An examination of the tribulations endured by frontman Shane Told, who also performs solo under the moniker River Oaks, the album surveys the group’s darker side but from a more mature perspective than ever before. 

“It’s a little bit about showing what we’re capable of,” Koehler confirms.

“We switched up the personnel for this record, which also resulted in a more modern production sound. It keeps the band feeling current and helps to showcase these songs in the way they were intended to be heard. So, that was the main motivation for it. Lyrically, Shane took a real deeply personal approach with that. Musically, we tried different tunings and tried to punch up the hooks and chorus to be bigger and better than ever and we also wanted the technical aspect to be more complex.” 

Despite being a well-conditioned melodic hardcore entity with a considerable amount of experience under their belts, Silverstein’s in-studio performances still benefit from harsh scrutiny. Their own worst critic, the group’s guitarist Paul Marc Rousseau rose to the rank of producer and assisted noted Toronto engineer/producer Derek Hoffman on polishing Dead Reflection to a mercurial lustre. 

“In the studio, the producer is always the one to say ‘that was good but you can do better.’ You’re pushing your muscles as far as you physically can to create the take in the studio, but when someone says ‘you can do better!’ that’s when you reach inside yourself and realize if there’s one bit of energy left I’m going to push it out and that’s when you get those extraordinary performances,” says Koehler.

“In the moment you can be dripping with sweat, beat-up and exhausted, and you don’t know that you can do better. And sometimes it takes that third party who’s sitting in the control booth to be critical about the performance and interactions. On Dead Reflection we were really pushing the performances. We pushed it further and came out with a better performance.”

Watch Silverstein perform November 9 at The Needle (Edmonton), November 11 at The Rickshaw (Vancouver), November 16 at Marquee (Calgary) and November 17 at The Exchange (Regina).