To announce their forthcoming debut for hip Indiana record label Secretly Canadian (home to Damian Jurado
Suuns’ Zeroes EP is maybe not what you’d expect of a band from Montreal; the EP, named in honour of the band name they had to forsake for legal reasons, has more in common with the lo-fi analogue sound of cult British band Clinic, famous for wearing surgical masks and not selling many records.
The fuzzy, dubby one note riff of EP opener The Disappearance of a Skyscraper sets the tone, before giving way to a play-school simple, insistent drum beat and the stiff-jawed mantric mewl of singer/guitarist Ben Shemie.
Hello, this sounds a bit different. It’s also a bit good.
Nnnnnnn and Optimist leap about with a proggier, post-rock sensibility, frayed guitars clambering over staccato beats and stabs of wobbling keys, and Arena, with its walking bass-line and rippling synths is almost a funky sort of shoegaze. Shemie’s voice remains a constant however, his whispery whine filled with a dreamy dread and menace.
Mudslinger is good marker for the tone of Zeroes, full of dark thrust and distorted intent, it is a strange and compulsive noise, like someone buried a good tune alive and we're listening to it trying to claw its way out.
Standout track though is the closer PVC, an oblique perpetual chorus which put me oddly in mind of Scott 4
More to come certainly, but a very promising, distinctive introduction.
You can sign up for the free download at http://secretlycanadian.com/suuns/.
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