Lonely Parade’s Buzz Records debut ‘The Pits’ is due out in just under a month (September 14th), and now the band are providing another preview of the record with Olive Green. Following Not Nice, Night Cruise and I’m So Tired, the track foregrounds the more propulsive side of the band’s wiry post-punk. Augusta Veno’s cascading guitar line is underpinned by an off-kilter rhythmic emphasis, performing an unusual call and response with Charlotte Dempsey’s bass line, before giving way to a driving wordless chorus, it showcases the high wire intensity that has endeared the band to audiences on their recent tours with artists like Weaves, Nap Eyes, Ought and PUP. Take a listen to Olive Green via YouTube below.
Following their first ever set of US dates with T Rextasy in July, the band are announcing a fall North American tour. Full details can be found below.
Lonely Parade spent the end of last year commuting back and forth between Toronto and Montreal as they worked on their Buzz Records debut with producer/engineer Josh Korody (Fucked Up, Weaves, Dilly Dally) and Shehzaad Jiwani of Greys at Toronto’s Candle Recording Studio. The resultant LP, entitled The Pits, refines the technically complex instrumentation and hooky fuzz-blasted songwriting upon which the trio have built their budding reputation, drawing on influences ranging from the warped punk hooks of Uranium Club, to the guitar interplay of cult Canadian band Women, to releases from Lonely Parade’s now Buzz Records label mates Weaves and Dilly Dally.
Appropriately for a band who have rapidly and publicly developed their idiosyncratic prowess, the album embodies an irrepressible spirit of self-discovery, both in its constantly probing and inventive construction, and in its subject matter, which concerns the collapse of the band member’s place in the small-town where they grew up. Written quickly and unsparingly, the album captures the band’s lyricists, Charlotte Dempsey and Augusta Veno at a time when their understanding of their world was rapidly evolving. Steeped in a biome of scene drama (Dempsey says the album’s central narrative began to emerge “when people from our town started dating each other and found out how shitty they were”) but buoyed by clear-eyed observations and a penchant for grounding details and turns of phrase, the album’s 10 songs display a compositional faculty and wry humor that communicate a remarkably fully realized vision for a band making its first steps into the wider world.
“I don’t think there’s any way we could write another album like this now,” laughs Dempsey. “It’s charged with a very specific negative energy. We were friends with almost everyone in our tiny scene, and now no one talks to each other and nothing feels as penultimate as how it did in Peterborough then. It’s so tiny there that if you fuck one thing up with someone and then go downtown, everybody knows. It just started feeling really small.”
The sense of ex urban ennui permeates the record, but the subject matter contrasts pointedly with the band’s imaginative musicianship and technical prowess. While the lyrics dwell on topics like bad room mates in shit hole apartments (New Roomate), joyrides around town with a crush where the only place to go is a fast food drive-through (Night Cruise), and punching through numbness and exhaustion to rediscover self-worth (I’m So Tired), Lonely Parade strike a balance between grungy guitar pop and math rock adjacent post-punk that’s both immediate and cerebral in its construction. Melancholy, but never dour; technical, but always engaging; sincere, but never self serious, the record provides an antidote to so many of the ideas that dominate the post-punk landscape and serves as a statement of purpose from a uniquely exciting band.
Lonely Parade’s ‘The Pits’ will be out via Buzz Records on September 14th. It’s available for preorder here.
Tracklist
1. Weekends
2. Olive Green
3. Bored
4. New Roomate
5. Not Nice
6. Night Cruise
7. Grilled Cheese
8. I’m So Tired
9. My Death
10. Index Finger
Tour dates
09/14 – Toronto, ON – Duffy’s (LP Release)
09/15 – Ottawa, ON – Black Squirrel
09/28 – Sudbury ON – Cosmic Dave’s Basement
09/30 – Burlington, VT – Gloom Garden
10/02 – Boston, MA – Once Lounge
10/03 – New York, NY – Trans Pecos
10/04 – Philly, PA – Cafe Blamp
10/06 – Washington, DC – Songbyrd
10/10 – Atlanta, GA – The Drunken Unicorn
10/13 – Dallas, TX – Transit Bicylcle CO
10/19 – Chicago, IL – Subterranean downstairs
10/22 – Pittsburgh, PA – Club Cafe
