Jun. 11, 2008 - Issue #660: Hot Summer Guide 2008
Prevue - Women
Pat Flagel crystallized a mantra of sorts from his dealings thus far with
the media: “No matter what you do, you’re going to sound like a
douchebag,” laments the guitarist and vocalist for Women, the latest
feeding-frenzy band to emerge from Calgary’s fertile
scene.
Flagel’s metaphorical thickening of the skin is a necessity: his
quartet has the honour of being the first non-Chad VanGaalen musical entity
to be recorded by the man himself and released on his and Ian
Russell’s tasteful nano-label. Patrons of CVG’s topsy-turvy
psych-pop have turned their searchlight ears on Women, looking for the next
mind-blowing sonic experience. As they take their self-titled debut on the
road across Canada with band-friends Mt Royal critics and bloggers are
anxiously leaning close to the speakers to listen for CVG’s
influence.
“Expectations?” Flagel shrugs. “Maybe. But we’re in
good company, so who cares?”
Flagel and his bandmates—a pair of childhood friends (also in Azeda
Booth) and his brother Matt—started playing together well before they
could legally drink, recording and touring under another aegis with a
rather different sonic thumbprint than their current project.
“I grew to hate a lot of things we were doing. It all started to
sound like shitty metal,” he growls. “It was competent wanking,
but who wants to do that? It’s like sports—demonstration
rock.”
That first band laid the groundwork for Women, though, giving them a
fearless proficiency and a near group telepathy. They went their separate
ways, gorged themselves on oddball independent music like Xiu Xiu and Hella
and casually started playing together again one night, glad to discover
they were once again all on the same page, reinvented as Women. Some early
demos (“very shoddy—no vocals or drums”)`found their way
to Russell, who passed them on to CVG.
“We spent three months in Chad’s basement,” Flagel
marvels. “Everyone’s playing weird instruments on the record,
sometimes we’re all drumming, and the parts where I sound really
good, he doubled my vocals and sang too. We also did some total
guerilla-style stuff: half my vocals were recorded in an outdoor wildlife
culvert. I’m laying in the snow by a frozen river while Chad’s
dangling a mic halfway down the entrance of this thing ... it was
surreal.”
The patient nerderie coaxed a stridently original sonic tapestry from Women, one that would bedevil any critic. In some places, the record sounds like sunny Beach Boys pop was dragged into a dark alley and gleefully mutilated. The album shifts in mood and tempo with the ease of a jazz master and eagerly pursues its ambitions down any handy rabbit hole, displacing the nu-folk crowd from their stranglehold on the “freak” tag. This is freak-rock, nursed on psychedelia and prog, but without pretense.
“We still don’t know what we’re doing,” Flagel shrugs. “When I listen to it, all I can hear is that—but something is happening, at least.” V
Sat, Jun 14 (8 pm)
Women
With Paul James Coutts and Chains, Mt Royal
Velvet
Underground, $10
http://www.myspace.com/womenmusic
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