Toronto, I’m told, can be a tough place for a scrappy lo-fi garage punk band. Hell, Canada is a tough place for any band without a glockenspiel, a plaid shirt and a penchant for twee, overly-angsty major key songs about trees or canoes or assorted grant-worthy Canadiana BS. To play harsh, dissonant rock and roll is to enter a dark, subcutaneous layer of band-dom that rarely pierces the walls around our nation.
This slightly bitter preamble is to reinforce part of my mission here on The Big Takeover’s blog; to report to all and sundry that top-drawer underground and DIY rock/psych and punk is alive and thriving in Canada. That all our scenes are not of the Broken Social variety. Which brings me at last to this review: Ladies and gentlemen, meet The Soupcans .
Everything that you love about completely over-driven garage punk is white hot on The Soupcans first release, a cleverly packaged casette on the tiny DIY Cramped Spaces Cassette Registry label. Recorded live to two track, the six tunes blast some straight up red-line psycho trash blues straight into your veins. Garbled and delayed inconsequentia vocals are growled over huge and gnarly guitar tone and obligatorily neolithic drumming. The spartan rock duo, though built on a distant foundation of Deja Voodoo ‘s drooling swampabilly manages to sound fresh and snappy. Side one burns through your membranes quickly with the opening rocker “Red Eye Death”, and keeps it in 5th gear till the closer riff rocker “Lonely Moan”. Side two features some Bob Log III -esque slow burn on “Apocalyptic Cinder Garage” before giving way to the infectious pound of “I Don’t Wanna Be A Soupcan”.
Rumoured to be at work on a second release, the lucky few who get to see The Soupcans rip up a stage live should grab this wee treasure while they last. For those who like their rock and roll served raw, lo fi and smothered in awesomesauce, put them Soupcans in your musical pantry!
http://www.myspace.com/theesoupcans
