MUSIC

Art d’Ecco gets comfortable in his own skin

By Yasmine Shemesh

When Tears for Fears recorded 1989’s The Seeds of Love, the synth-pop duo was seeking maximalism. Co-founders Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith brought on a sprawling crew of personnel, including Phil Collins, to realize an ambitious production vision that cost over £1 million. Smith was quoted as saying they wanted something “more colourful, something that sounded big and warm.” It was expensive, excessive, and elicited one of the most important pop songs of the 1980s: the psychedelic epic “Sowing the Seeds of Love.”

Art d’Ecco knows the obsession for technical perfection well. When something piques his interest, he immerses completely, a keen student until he becomes a master. So, when the Victoriabased artist decided for his latest studio album, After the Head Rush, he would seek out maximalism—something big, bright, and sparkly like Bob Clearmountain’s ’80s Tears for Fears productions—he dove in head-first. He had been studying new studio techniques during the pandemic, researching albums that he liked, and realized that a lot of these albums were recorded at Vancouver’s Little Mountain Studios, now called Hipposonic.

“I’m a bit of a tone chaser and I like to make a pastiche and a collage of different sounds and areas,” d’Ecco tells the Straight from his home over Zoom. “I’m not trying to be a revivalist, but I’m so fascinated with the old means of production that I want to see if I can run my creativity through that.”

One of the keys to the maximalism universe? Big drums. d’Ecco wanted to get that distinguishing sound Clearmountain achieved by setting up microphones in Little Mountain’s loading bay, adjacent to the drums, for records like Bryan Adams’ landmark, Reckless. d’Ecco asked Hipposonic’s studio owner if the technique was still doable. It was. You can hear it reverberating in the glamstomp of “Only Ones” and building in intensity as saxophones and synths wind through “Palm Slave.” d’Ecco’s discovery of rock music, as a teenager growing up in Victoria, changed the trajectory of his life. Before that, he was well-versed in Beethoven and Bach—he didn’t relate to the mainstream pop of the ‘90s and the classical records were the only ones that didn’t get damaged when the family moved from Ottawa to Vancouver Island. “We’d always put on records and it was this fascinating thing, the turntable and these big black disks and the pops and the crackles,” d’Ecco remembers.

But when d’Ecco was 16, he got a job in a restaurant kitchen. His co-workers— “hard, rough-around-the-edges guys, but this warm gang of misfits that big-brothered me”—had a collection of CDs on rotation, including the Who, Queen, Bowie.

“When, suddenly, someone’s like, ‘Here’s this golden treasure chest, here’s the key,’ and you discover it all at once? It’s hair-raising, goosebump-inducing,” d’Ecco shakes his head. “The melodies just melted my brain.”

Perhaps it’s why moving back home affected d’Ecco so deeply. He left in his late teens to pursue music and lived in Vancouver during his 20s, establishing himself as an enigmatic and avant-garde musical chameleon, in a costume—pageboy wig and glamorous makeup—that played with image and aesthetic much like his musical heroes. d’Ecco selfreleased his debut, Day Fevers, and two studio albums, 2018’s Trespasser and 2021’s In Standard Definition, on Paper Bag Records.

In the midst of all that, d’Ecco met a woman, moved to Sidney, on the edge of the Saanich Peninsula, and got engaged. The relationship didn’t survive the pandemic and d’Ecco found himself back in Victoria. The creative impact was immediate.

“I started seeing all these triggers— positive ones, like, ‘that’s where I used to drink with my friends in a parking lot on a Friday night.’ And you just have all these memories bubble up to the surface. There’s these two kinds of things happening: present tense and past tense all at the same time, like a freight train.”

The dialogues on After the Head Rush—carefree exuberance versus what d’Ecco calls the realization he’s an “aging indie rocker in an industry obsessed with image and youth”—lends a cheeky self-awareness to the record. The “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”-like swing of “Get Loose” captures the sweet excitement of first love (“I can’t believe we made it here, it’s happening tonight”). Elsewhere, “Midlife Crisis” sonically personifies mounting anxiety as squealing instruments create a sense of impending doom, the lyrics cleverly addressing d’Ecco’s debut with the line, “Day Fevers was an album of mine so long ago/I can’t even pick it up off the ground.”

The singer notes he was inspired by writers like the Cars frontman Ric Ocasek who didn’t get famous until their 30s. ”A lot of the Cars’ hits are written from the perspective of this guy who’s an outsider,” d’Ecco says. “He feels way too old to be in this young person’s game of rock and roll. And I felt like I related. But there needs to be a tongue-in-cheek element to it. Otherwise it’s like, ‘who fucking cares, man? Get over it, we’re all getting old.’ There is a wink throughout the album. There’s nothing ‘woe is me’ about this. I’m writing from a pretty honest place.”

It makes sense then that, for the first time in a long time, d’Ecco is without wig and makeup. As he faces himself— past, present, and future—he is bare, raw, in his own skin.

His previous form of expression, d’Ecco says, was a rebellion against this “masculine, laissez-faire, jeans and Tshirt, stubble-faced bro look.” But, with more fans asking about his sexuality and identity, d’Ecco realized times have changed. “I’m like, wait a minute, now, I really am the fraud here because I’m a cisgender heterosexual male,” he says.

He adds, “That’s not transgressive. Who the fuck am I to try and shock people? This isn’t 1975 anymore. It’s time to change and evolve. And that’s why I decided to—” he pulls down an imaginary mask. “And so I did.” g

Art d’Ecco often leaves people wondering whether he’s packing, suffering from screaming indigestion, or obsessively checking for his wallet every six seconds. Photo by Elijah Schultz.

Art d’Ecco plays the Fox Cabaret on Saturday (November 26).

the heart-warming holiday classic returns to vancouver for three nights only.

Queen Elizabeth Theatre | balletbc.com

platinum SeaSon SponSor hotel SponSor media SponSorS Support for Ballet BC haS Been generouSly provided By

artiStS of Canada’S royal Winnipeg Ballet. photo By david Cooper.

MUSIC Bridgers points the way to a better christmas

By Chandler Walter

FOR THE LOVE OF SWEET BABY JESUS, PLEASE LAY OFF THE MARIAH TUNES THIS HOLIDAY SEASON

The days are getting darker, rent is rising, inflation is soaring, the war in Ukraine rages on, we’re heading for climate catastrophe, Twitter is burning, and Vancouver’s forecast calls for nothing but rain rain rain rain rain rain.

So there’s really nothing more infuriating than Christmas revelers insisting on a cheery attitude around this time of year—especially when that sentiment is ceaselessly blasted from grocery store speakers over the next month.

Yeah, bah humbug, whatever.

It’s just tragic that the go-to playlist for store and restaurant managers to throw on the very moment the clock strikes November generally features sickeningly Holly Jolly songs when there are plenty of other seasonally-appropriate (and not yet played to death) tunes on offer.

Especially ones that thematically fit the Sad Girl Fall we’re experiencing as a result of all that doom-and-gloom in the first paragraph.

Case in point: Phoebe Bridgers’ recently released cover of the Handsome Family’s “So Much Wine”, a song from 2000 about alcoholic tendencies around the holidays, which Bridgers—alongside her beau Paul Mescal—transforms from the original’s harmonica-soaked, gothic country into a violin-accompanied dirge that is exactly what you’d expect from the Queen of Melancholy.

And these days it just feels a little more fitting to hear Bridgers’ soul-crushing voice lament on finding the bottom of a bottle of wine than it is to hear Michael Bublé joyously offering a cup of cheer for the millionth time.

That’s the real kicker when it comes to the usual list of songs that are queued up for the long festive season; that the only relevant theme needed to justify a spot on the list is some proximity to Christmas. It’s how we end up with the jarring juxtaposition of slow, smooth classics like Nat King Cole’s “The Christmas Song” being immediately followed by some upbeat, closer-to-a-children’s-lullaby ditty like “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

Throw a few religiously-charged Jesus Birthday Ballads into the mix for good measure and you’re left with a combination of song styles that have no business being in the same room, let alone timezone, as each other. But back to Bridgers.

“So Much Wine” is just the latest in a string of annual Christmas covers that Bridgers has release around this time of year (with proceeds going to charity, I should add), including Tom Waits’ “Day After Tomorrow”, Merle Haggard’s “If We Make It Through December”, Simon & Garfunkel‘s “7 O’Clock News / Silent Night”, and McCarthy Trenching’s “Christmas Song,” all of which make for a refreshing diversion from longstanding Christmastime staples, and are gorgeous in their own right. …And none of which you’ll find anywhere near Spotify’s Happy Holidays collection of playlists, which is what I’m assuming those store managers are playing on loop. The Christmas Hits list (naturally) starts with Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” which is expected to land on, if not on top of, the charts yet again as we get closer to the most merry of seasons.

Carey’s visit to #1 over the past three years with that now-28-year-old song wasn’t enough to secure her the trademarked moniker of “Queen of Christmas,” however, as her application to do so was denied by the US Patent and Trademark Office earlier this month.

The reason? Another quote-unquote Queen of Christmas made a legal challenge to block the trademark. Singer Elizabeth Chan, who has been churning out annual holiday records for the past decade, made the challenge, and called Carey out for the attempt in an August interview with Variety.

“I feel very strongly that no one person should hold onto anything around Christmas or monopolize it in the way that Mariah seeks to in perpetuity,” Chan said in that interview.

“That’s just not the right thing to do. Christmas is for everyone. It’s meant to be shared; it’s not meant to be owned.”

I’d argue that monetizing Christmas in the most capitalistic way possible is actually incredibly in keeping with the most commercialized holiday of the year, but I digress.

Maybe this will result in Carey putting out a new string of Christmas songs to a sadder tune—one that may even rival Bridgers’ haunting covers—lamenting the loss of profit from the failed trademark.

I’d give it a listen. Maybe it’d even find a spot on this Spotify playlist of holiday songs that actually fit together in a cohesively dreary kind of way.

Maybe the manager of the local SaveOn-Foods will discover it and save us all from another *checks watch* 32 days of nonstop Christmas Hits.

But I’m not holding my breath. g

“CHRISTMAS IS FOR EVERYONE. IT’S MEANT TO BE SHARED.

– Elizabeth Chan

Nothing says “Christmas” like a beater with two ghosts in the front seats.

MUSIC Yu Su west coast to the core

by V.S. Wells

Yu Su spent the summer playing festivals across the world, but nothing quite beats coming back home to Vancouver. “I was away for almost four months. And then when I got home, when I landed, I just got out of the airplane and smelled the cedar and the ocean,” she tells the Straight over the phone. “I just started crying. I was so homesick.” Su, one of the city’s most interesting electronic music producers, had an unlikely road to success. She was raised in Kaifeng, and grew up studying classical piano.

“Debussy is a big influence,” she says. “I realized it’s because Debussy’s composition, it’s the closest to, I think, modern ambient music. So that must have really struck me back then.” While Su moved to Vancouver in 2013 to go to university, it took a few more years before she was introduced to the electronic music scene. Right before she was about to graduate, some friends persuaded her to go see British DJ Floating Points (Sam Shepherd) play his first show in Vancouver.

“Some friends took me to this party, this underground party here, which was at the time the first party I’d ever been to in my life,” she recalls. “I went in without knowing anything at all. There was like zero electronic music knowledge back then. So I just went there and stayed to the end, and it was just completely lifechanging.” Su now counts Shepherd—who, interestingly enough, also cites Debussy as a musical inspiration—among her friends. But Su’s inspirations are all over the place: avant-garde artist Laurie Anderson, minimalist composer Terry Riley, 80s icon Phil Collins. Centuries-old trees. The West Coast landscape. Where she grew up.

Yellow River Blue, her debut album released in 2021 after a string of EPs, draws its name from the Yellow River that runs along Kaifeng’s north edge. Her music moves through different genres, but feels perfect for a West Coast November: it evokes winds moaning, rain-drenched landscapes, banks of grey clouds brooding over misty mountains to the tune of moody slow-burn house vibes.

After radio station KEXP asked Su to play a live set last year, Su initially refused. “I don’t really play live, other than site-specific sound art installations,” she explains. But then she got talking to some of her musician friends, and decided to try out playing together to see what happened. “We kind of sat there for just a day and somehow figured out how to translate the album I’d written completely with computer synthesizer softwares into a band form, translating arpeggio sounds into guitar riffs.”

Now the band’s headlining Fortune Sound Club in a hometown show, and Su says there’ll be a mix of old tracks and new songs. Since the band project started, her songwriting inspirations have grown even more.

“Growing up, I didn’t have so much background or access to Western music in general, so everything I’ve been discovering since I got into producing music has been changing. For example, I most recently got into rock music,” she says. “I listened to Nirvana for the first time, Pink Floyd for the first time.”

Working with a band means a second album is taking much longer to put together. Before, she would “go to an island, go somewhere semi-remote outside the city and sit there for a couple of weeks and just write an entire album.” But that’s less feasible with so many other people involved. It’s also the first time she’s added words to her compositions. “I’ve never written lyrics, and English is not my first language,” Su says. “So I was kind of self-conscious about it. But then I was just like, ‘Well, it’s music. Lyrics don’t always have to make complete sense.’ I just write whatever I want.”

Yu Su & Her Band play the Fortune Sound Club on Saturday (November 26). Citlali: Cuando Eramos Sanos (detail) by Debora Kuetzpal Vasquez

Organized in cOnjunctiOn with :

The Americas Research Network

MUSIC opus arise rewards with repeat listens

LOCAL RECORDINGS

OPUS ARISE: THE NETWORK (INDEPENDENT)

e From the opening track, “Inner Skepticism,” on Opus Arise’s all-instrumental second album The Network, you can hear tension between a desire for a quasi-folkish tunefulness and a love of challenging, proggy inventiveness.

Moody synth intro notwithstanding, once things kick into gear, the violins and rhythm section—who share a member in drummer/violinist/composer Matthew Logan—almost channel Russian pagan metal greats Arkona at their most propulsive. It’s catchy enough that you could probably hum along.

Then around the two-minute mark, there are unexpected turns that, on first pass, might cause irritation: unexpected notes are inserted, and the through line is challenged a bit.

That tension between the tuneful and the progressive exists on many of the songs on The Network (though not “Digital Soundscape,” which delivers what the title promises and screams, “get the headphones,” but maybe deserves a more ambitious name?).

Some tracks veer more to one side “Electric Jungle” is a dense cascade of layered ideas that might take more than four listens to make sense of, while “Reminiscence” seems almost sentimental by comparison (though it highlights lead violinist Michelle Gao quite nicely).

But the overall effect is of an ambitious, artful band doing things that no one else in Vancouver is attempting: highbrow art metal for people in university music programs who want to flex their chops and cut loose while maintaining their GPAs. Who could object to that? Just be prepared to give it more than one listen. PUNITIVE DAMAGE: THIS IS THE BLACKOUT (ATOMIC ACTION!)

e Punitive Damage has a special knack for messing with hardcore’s rigid template, even while reveling within it. Take “Fool,” from the quintet’s newly released debut full-length, This is the Blackout.

The track cribs the caveman powerchording of first-wave bruisers Negative Approach’s “Ready to Fight,” and tackles the evergreen theme of sniffing out the status chasers within one’s local punk scene, but few lyricists in the genre would get as pointedly purple over their enemy as Punitive Damage’s Steph Jerkova. This particular fool, she howls, is no mere leech or parasite, but a “social lamprey” desperately seeking clout — a spectacularly unexpected insult to have screamed at 90 mph.

Punitive Damage’s purview, however, extends beyond scene politics. The potent This is the Blackout is a cutthroat battlercry that contends with renoviction-hungry landlords, the unendingly deep pockets of the military state, and the promise of vengeance upon one’s abusers. On the feedbackblistered “Pure Bloods / The Sixth Sunrise” Jerkova is both pissed and poetic, contrasting the uncloaking of supremacists in-hiding with the blossoming of a people rising up to “bite the hands” of the oppressor.

While hardcore-by-nature, This is the Blackout spices up its ugliness through a mix of max-velocity missives (“Nothing”), knuckle-dragging street punk anthems (“Drawn Lines”), and the creepy-crawling, Spanish-sung “¿Que? ¿Me Tienes Miedo Ahora?” — the latter decaying towards a dungeon-echo of morose piano.

On scene-stealer “Bottom Feeder,” the band goes for broke with a mid-section of Johnny Thunders-sleazy string bending and a mashed-ivories performance — punched in by album producer Taylor Young’s piano teacher mom, Teresa. It falls apart exquisitely, as if the player was unexpectedly caught up in a rapturously raw, rock ‘n’ roll moment. This is the Blackout, indeed.

- Gregory Adams ANCHORESS: STAY POSITIVE (EARLY ONSET)

e Sometimes all you can do is breathe slowly and deeply to get through it all, that reality—based on the aptly named Stay Positive—not lost on Anchoress.

Written in the shadow of a pandemic that fucked with the heads of, well, almost everyone, the band’s fourth fulllength is its most meditative outing yet. Having a rough 24 hours, week, decade, or life? Singer Rob Hoover understands, using the distortion-sheened “Anxious Hum”, to howl “Today has been a good day/I wish they could all be like this/ But when you struggle with anxiety/It’s hard to stay positive.”

But hard as that might be, Anchoress is at least up to the challenge, with Hoover sounding surprisingly at peace with it all on the pop-centric “Hydrodynamic”, where he sings “Here I am holding hands with the great unknown/I got too comfortable where I was/I got too used to a too similar view.” Change is good indeed good, especially if it pulls you out of a place where the black days never seem to end.

As far as Anchoress goes, changes include the band’s expansion to a fivepiece, with new member Phil Jones joining Keenan Federico to make a twoguitar attack, the back end held down by bassist Ricky Castanedo and drummer Chris Lennox-Aasen.

The quintet still describes itself as a “punk band formed in 2010, based in Vancouver”, but that’s become a little misleading. There are moments on Stay Positive that hit as thrillingly hard as Wendy Thirteen’s Cobalt on a killer Saturday night—“Peace Lines” kicks off like a protometal cage fight between the Jesus Lizard and Big Black, while “Psychobabble” sticks the landing between angular agitpunk and gang-chant hardcore.

But Anchoress also showcases itself as a band that’s done an admirable job of evolving. The group proves as adept at scream-tinted emo (“Middle Management at the Money Factory”) and it does lumbering, gauze-wrapped post-rock (“Canadian Pastoral).

The ultimate takeaway from Stay Positive—besides that is that Anchoress continues to be criminally underrated? How about this: there are moments that somehow seem important, including the “Psychobabble” lines “You’re out once again in a crowd/Your internal narrator’s way too loud.”

Not only are you not alone, but Anchoress seems to understand. - Mike Usinger

Like its music, Opus Arise’s band house is classier than the average metal unit’s.