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Music

Unfinished business

GIRLS ROCK CAMP SHOWCASE CONCERT at the Tranzac (292 Brunswick), Sunday (July 20), doors 2:30 pm. $10 ($5 for kids). girlsrocktoronto.org.


Like most precocious underagers, the girls in Unfinished Business have their own sneaking-into-a-19+-concert story. But rather than weaseling their way into the front row, they were actually scheduled to play the show.

“At Izakaya Sushi, they were going to not let us in,” lead singer Sita says over coffee and lemonade at Dark Horse Espresso at Queen and Broadview. “If they didn’t, we were going to sneak in through the back entrance, but it didn’t come to that.”

Since forming in 2010, the band (originally known as Food Fight) has had gigs all over the city, playing alongside Fucked Up, Mac DeMarco and Toronto shoegazers Wish.

The three members – Sita, 14, Layla, 15, and Fiona, 14 – met in a split Grade 4/5 class in elementary school and formed the group about a year later.

As Layla explains it, the project originally seemed like a fun, casual way to learn an instrument and hang out with her pals. “Sita came up to me and said, ‘Hey, Layla, do you want to be in a band and play in my basement?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, sure.'”

Vocalist/guitarist Sita and bassist Layla sharpened their skills at Girls Rock Camp Toronto in 2011, a week-long summer workshop that teaches girls how to play an instrument and write a song as part of a band. This summer’s sessions run July 14-20 and August 11-17, with the newly formed bands playing Sunday showcases July 20 and August 17 at the Tranzac. (Unfinished Business aren’t playing.)

Even though band practice for Unfinished Business is equal parts learning new songs and watching TV (their choice show of the moment is My Strange Addiction), they’re starting to get serious.

Last month they played two NXNE shows to throngs of 20-somethings wearing their kitten-print band T-shirts, and released their debut LP, Mix And Mash (Heretical Objects Cooperative) – a collection of fast and fuzzy pop-punk that focuses on ghoulish themes like Halloween (their favourite holiday) and haunted houses. One subject never broached on the album? Boys.

“It’s kind of annoying when, like, every song you hear on the radio is about the same topic,” says Sita.

They may be our city’s youngest punk band – and originals, to boot.

music@nowtoronto.com

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