Little You Little Me’s new album is something we should all be proud of.
By Matt Carter @m_j_c73
Little You Little Me wholeheartedly embrace their hometown’s lineage of loud noisy guitars and gritty rock and roll on their latest full-length release, I’d Watch The Day Til It Died. As one of Saint John, New Brunswick’s new breed of noisemakers, LYLM are taking the city’s hard forged musical identity, built by pairing heavy riffs with infectious melodic overtones, to new strengths and distances while continuing to follow the path they set out on with their 2014 full-length debut, What Have You Been Doing With Yer Time?.
I’d Watch The Day Til It Died is made up of 14 tracks that embrace all the hallmarks of the band’s earlier material that helped to establish them as one of the province’s must-see acts. Except this time around, things sound a lot more polished. The songwriting is stronger, the band is tighter and the recording is spot on.
The album’s recording took place at two locations with engineer Mark Gosselin recording the initial bed tracks to 2” tape at Atlantica studios. The remaining tracks, vocals and overdubs were recorded by guitarist/vocalist Corey Bonnevie at his home studio.
While the band had originally hoped to achieve a live-off-floor feel on their new album, the closure of Atlantica complicated the process slightly. A setback, yes, but a challenge the band tackled with full confidence.
“Because I was recording these tracks, we were unable to properly record completely live off the floor,” said Bonnevie. “That being said, most of the songs were done with drums, bass, and a guitar live, with only a couple done to click tracks.
“I think the way we recorded gave the mixes some life,” he said. “We tried to keep things live feeling, so most things we recorded with the monitors blaring and having things bleed. The vocals were even recorded with a dynamic mic and the monitors pumping.”
The finishing touches were done with Noah Mintz at Lacquer Channel in Ontario. Mintz also mastered the band’s debut full-length.
“We were happy to work with him again,” said Bonnevie. “This time around we got to go for an actual lacquer master. The album was treated for the different mediums. The CD/Digital masters were compressed like most modern records. The vinyl master was treated with less compression and intended to sound more natural. People buying our LPs are getting the proper vinyl experience.”
The album opens strong and maintains its strength throughout. Tracks like Fuckushima, Racket in My Brain and Wrong highlight LYLM’s well-establish brand of noisy rock, and I Lift My Gaze Upward & Turn Myself Out Towards The Universe might be the best LYLM song to date.
But the maturity of this release goes far beyond the surface. It’s Awkward and Caught Between Us are two other stand-out tracks that show the band isn’t afraid to step slightly off centre to hammer home a great song, even if it means channeling a little Driveby Truckers or Dinosaur Jr. once in a while.
LYLM give us all hope. In some ways, they’re a throwback to the days of Eric’s Trip, The Monoxides or NFA, back to a time when bands formed, honed their craft and set out to see how far it would take them. While “making it” has become less of an aspiration for a lot of musicians over the past decade or more, LYLM seem hell bent on giving it their best shot. And they just might do it. As 2015 draws to a close, the band caps off a banner year, which included performances at Canadian Music Week, Pop Montreal and Sappyfest, with a solid set of tunes on their latest release.
“We did try to shop the record to labels, with no luck,” said Bonnevie. ‘We decided to release it under my label, Monopolized Records. By doing this, we were able to release it in November and look onward. We hope to grow our scene and perhaps expand to the rest of the universe.”
I’d Watch The Day Til It Died is a great capper on a pretty good year for New Brunswick music. It’s an inspiring work of art, even if the rest of the country remains late to the party.
https://soundcloud.com/matt-21-1/little-you-little-me-04-racket-in-my-brain/s-ewZd0
I’d Watch The Day Til It Died will officially be released Friday December 4, 2015.
Little You Little Me + Tortue + Laps | The Capital Complex | December 5, 2015 | 10:30p.m. | $6
