BART with ELSA, PANIC, HANK, DREAMSPLOITATION, NOT OF, SEVERAL FUTURES, FAKE PALMS, DIRTY FRIGS and many others as part of Long Winter at the Great Hall (1087 Queen West), Friday (March 13), 7 pm, all ages. Pwyc-$11. torontolongwinter.com.
Christopher Shannon did have a certain yellow, adolescent male Simpsons character in mind when he named his new band Bart.
“There’s an implicit mischievousness to the name that made me feel like the band could sound like anything and get away with it,” explains the Toronto musician.
And get away with anything they do. Their four-song debut EP, released in November, has stacked harmonic vocals courtesy of Shannon and co-founder Nathan Vanderwielen, mathily ricocheting rhythms, psych-prog songcraft, ambient studio textures and plenty of guitar-fuzz fun.
“Nathan and I were just trying our best to please ourselves because at the time we didn’t think Bart would ever play live. But Jay [Anderson], Andy [Scott] and Lane [Halley] all seemed genuinely into the music when they heard the recordings, so it was easy to get them on board for shows.”
At times the music nods to late-70s progressive rock, a genre often derided for its overblown, over-indulgent tendencies. But Bart members weren’t concerned about that kind of blowback during the record’s making.
“Our strategy was to lay it on as thick as possible until it started to sound worse. Also at that time I was really into music that could be described as ‘vocal porn’ – so I think the record was an attempt at making something within that category.
“None of us has that kind of big personality, so hopefully we’ll be able to avoid seeming like excessive human beings forever.”
Though Shannon says he “wouldn’t mind doing Bart full-time,” the members are in myriad other Toronto bands: Biblical, Doctor Ew, Marker Starling, Comet Control, the Bicycles, Hooded Fang and Fake Palms.
Their favourite albums, meanwhile, include Caribou’s Andorra, Nils Frahm’s Felt, Slint’s Spiderland, Jennifer Castle’s Pink City, Bo Hansson’s Attic Thoughts, Thomas’s When I’m Weak, I’m Strong, and self-titled efforts by McDonald & Giles and Karma.
With such varied influences and musical history, it’s hard to guess what the new band’s dream gig might be.
“I actually dreamt that we played a show with Deerhoof, who were the backing band for God, and we were in the movie Hot Tub Time Machine – the original. Is that taking ‘dream’ too literally?”
carlag@nowtoronto.com | @carlagillis
