Octopi Entertainment Presents, VIET CONG Live in Halifax at Gus' Pub - September 16th 2015
Press release provided by Octopi Entertainment
http://www.8pi.ca
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GREYS
http://www.8pi.ca
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Octopi Entertainment is pleased to present 2015 Polaris nominated
VIET CONG live in Halifax at Gus' Pub on September 16 with support from
Toronto based GREYS. Local support to be announced next week. Tickets
will be on sale Friday, July 10th at 1PM AST at http://vietconghfx.bpt.me/ for $10 advance. Remaining tickets will be available at the door for $14.
VIET CONG
It
takes less than sixty seconds of album opener “Newspaper Spoons” for
you to decide that Viet Cong is a winter record. The album has barely
begun, and the guitar doesn’t snarl until the end of that opening
minute, but it still presents a palpable iciness in just a few short
moments. It’s bitter. It stings. But once you’re in it, and you’re
bracing yourself and charging ahead, “Newspaper Spoons” moves from a
punishing, almost militarized drumbeat to a melody that’s still menacing
but also delicate, almost celestial.
That
instinct for humanizing a stone-cold song is Viet Cong’s greatest gift
and sharpest weapon. It’s harsh, but exhilarating. Themes of
deconstruction and disintegration, of hardening and crumbling seem to
come from every direction. But time and again, they are rescued by
something—a little bit of humor, a cathartic moment, even a basic human
goof. In fact, as the members of Viet Cong worked through the songs that
make up this record, they erred on the side of keeping those moments
that save Viet Cong from being overly mechanized. “There have to be
strange little goofups and stuff that’s sometimes intentional, sometimes
not,” bassist and lead singer Matt Flegel explains. “I have a bleak
sense of humor, too, so some lyrics might seem funny to me even though
anyone else might think they’re desperately hopeless.”
Recorded
in a barn-turned-studio in rural Ontario, the seven songs that make up
Viet Cong were born largely on the road, when the four-piece embarked on
a 50-date tour that stretched virtually every limit imaginable. Close
quarters hastened their exhaustion but also honed them as a group. With
all four members traveling in one car, the mood conflated with the
soundtrack, the soundtrack with the cities around them, and so forth.
There was repetition, but it was all different. This combined with the
grey, chilly emptiness of Calgary rendered a record with a viscerally
rugged vibe, one that Flegel even describes as “shit earth.”
As
Viet Cong pushes forward, the six-minute “March of Progress” is when it
begins to really take flight. A lengthy, almost industrial march chugs
along for a full three minutes before the floor gives out underneath it
and gives way to a spare little riff and the album’s first real melody.
“That’s the one where I thought ‘that’s what I want us to be doing.
Finally,’” explains Flegel. “That was the sound that I had heard in my
mind before we even got started.” Later still, that negative space gives
way to a richer melody, and it’s here that Flegel sings “we build the
buildings and they’re built to break,” a declaration that is in many
ways this album’s thesis.
The repetition
throughout Viet Cong hypnotizes but it also softens, leaving a space
that is deceptively personal. “Continental Shelf” orbits a thousand-watt
hook with a thick crackle and a battering-ram drum line. It’s so
arresting that you barely notice it doesn’t have a chorus, and then in
comes a line like “if we’re lucky we’ll get old and die” and you can’t
believe Leonard Cohen (or Trent Reznor, or Nick Cave, or Sinatra) didn’t
get to it first. “Silhouettes” is a tripwire of a song, opening with an
almost Joy Division-esque exposition and moving at breakneck speed -
frantic and pitch-black at a thousand miles an hour - until before you
know it they are howling. Actually howling, and maybe you are too.
You
can designate records as seasonal, and you can feel Viet Cong’s
bleakness and declare it wintry. But the only way you get a frost is
when there’s something warmer to freeze up. So yes, Viet Cong is a
winter album, but only until it is a spring record, then a summer
scorcher, then an autumn burner, then it ices over again. They build
these buildings, and they’re built to break.
GREYS
Greys
are a loud rock band from Toronto. Feel like you’re up to speed? As
self-appraisals go, it’s a bit sparse, but it tells you all you need to
know about the band without the pretentious accouterments. It’s short,
fast, and to the point – much like their debut album, If Anything.
There
are plenty of other adjectives one could associate with the band:
Caustic. Brash. Noisy. Abrasive. Dissonant. Melodic. Sarcastic.
Explosive. It’s immediately apparent that the young quartet graduated
from the School Of Noise Rock, Class Of ‘93, and their professors were
guys like Reis, Denison, MacKaye and Cobain. So have many others, sure,
but where Greys differentiate themselves is their economic distillation
of those lessons into a funhouse mirror reflection of punk rock.
Check out other Octopi Entertainment shows at http://www.8pi.ca
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