The Wooden Sky, Casper Skulls

Friday, March 29th Tickets on Sale Friday, January 11th.
$15 +tax in advance, $20 at the door

http://www.thewoodenskymusic.com
https://casperskulls.bandcamp.com

Swimming in Strange Waters is The Wooden Sky’s fifth album. The Indie Rock band has been a favourite across Canada for the last 10 years. The band (made up of Gardiner, multi-instrumentalists Simon Walker and Andrew Wyatt, violinist Edwin Huizinga and drummer Andrew Kekewich) started writing and recording demos in a small farmhouse in rural Quebec in January 2015, but then put them aside as they embarked on a year-long tour in support of their previous album, Let’s Be Ready. When they resumed work on the album in March 2016, Gardiner says the band caught a severe case of “demoitis”, a condition wherein “you fall in love with the scrappiness of the demos.” So rather than completely re-working them, they decided to record the album in the same way as the demos: in Gardiner’s home studio, using old tape machines and live off the floor.

The resulting album is a sonic maelstrom that sees the band exploring unchartered waters, where textural psychedelia inspired by the Paisley Underground movement melds into quiet, acoustic cyclical guitar melodies, before once again transforming into a bombastic, Johnny Cash-esque rally against the XL Keystone pipeline in Canada. While Let’s Be Ready found the Wooden Sky writing a pure “rock and roll” album, Swimming in Strange Waters sees the band experimenting once again. “I feel like we’re back on track,” says Gardiner.

On every album, the Wooden Sky’s aim is to somehow capture the band’s live performance, to compress that adrenalin and vigour into a collection of songs that’ll inevitably be played through headphones and crappy computer speakers. It’s a tall order, considering the Wooden Sky has become known for both high-energy, sold-out rock shows and their charming, unconventional pop-up gigs – like 2014’s series of three acoustic record store sets in three hours, where they biked to each shop with instruments slung over their backs.

Swimming in Strange Waters marks the closest the band has ever got to this coveted goal. To achieve that energy, Gardiner had to let go of any insecurities and garner new confidence, part of which he found after speaking with an opera singer friend and working with legendary producer, Angello, and part of which came from encapsulating that energy himself.

Casper Skulls

Casper Skulls was formed in 2015 by Neil Bednis and Melanie St-Pierre, musicians and romantic partners from Sudbury who moved to the Toronto area when St-Pierre started studying art and design at Sheridan College. They added bassist Fraser McClean and drummer Chris Anthony, and began performing in Toronto venues. In 2016 they signed with Buzz Records and released their debut EP Lips & Skull.

In 2017, Casper Skulls performed at the River & Sky festival and co-headlined our New Year concert at The Townehouse Tavern. That year they released their full-length debut album Mercy Works in 2017. During their tour to support the album, they were involved in a vehicle collision en route to SXSW, and launched a crowdfunding campaign to assist in paying for a new tour van. The band members themselves were uninjured, and were able to get to Austin to perform their scheduled set.