For 15 years, David Vertesi has appeared as an integral part of some of Canada’s most exciting indie-rock projects. Whether he’s playing in Hey Ocean!, Shad, Dear Rouge, Hannah Georgas, or Said the Whale, producing Haley Blais, Noble Son, Ashleigh Ball, or Riun Garner, Vertesi brings a uniquely sensuous and brooding sensibility, an intricate sonic depth that multiplies the layers of a song. 

In his solo work, these dramatic flairs ignite on full display. Vertesi has an equal command over choreographing lush technologic atmospheres of instrumentation as he does squeezing the naked emotional core from a piano, steady bass drum, and the soft plucking rhythm of a guitar. But it’s his own voice that distinguishes these spectrums of rough-and-tumble and tightly polished stories of confusion, loneliness, death, and ennui. Vertesi’s growling inimitable baritone deepens the tender poetry and sense of humour as he emerges centre-stage as a fully formed front-man of his own musical expression.

“This song was born out of the individual and collective renegotiation of self that I have witnessed since 2020 and the beginning of the pandemic,” Vertesi explains. “With my band of 15+ years [Hey Ocean!] on indefinite hiatus, I was attempting to do this for myself, however, I couldn’t help but notice pretty much everyone around me was doing the same: leaving jobs, moving cities, ending relationships. But whether mourning or celebrating the loss of our old lives it seemed like we were all asking ourselves the same question.”

If the pop-punk onslaught of the ‘90s and early 2000s left you with the impression that punk music loses its edge with the introduction of melodies and hooks, New York City quartet The Underbites are here to remind us all that accessibility and grit don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Founded by veteran guitarists and veteran listeners Jon Fox and Kurt Feldhun, The Underbites may have formed in 2020, but their origins date back to when Fox and Feldhun witnessed the halcyon days of punk first-hand. 

Their new EP, Four Songs About Girls, makes its debut today.

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When Fox and Feldhun actually met at NYU at the dawn of the ‘80s, punk was branching out into thrilling permutations like post-punk and hardcore. “Kurt and I,” Fox explains, “really bonded over Bad Brains and GBH, but we didn’t actually play in that style when we started playing together.” The Underbites sound so energized in part because Fox and Feldhun spent their entire careers up to this point—in groups like Baby Tapeworm, The Cogs, The Behoovers, and Upchuck—playing other styles. 

For Fox and Feldhun, The Underbites is a return to some of their earliest musical loves. But you’re just as likely to hear a passing flash of, say, Attractions-era Elvis Costello in Feldhun’s playing as you are a chugga-chugga riff. In fact, for a band that describe themselves as “unrepentant traditionalists,” The Underbites give themselves lots of headroom to draw from whatever they feel like dialing-up. 

Listening to the band’s full-length debut Sort It Out alongside the new EP Four Songs About Girls, one is reminded that the music from the classic CBGB, SoCal, NYHC and Warped Tour scenes were all highly distinct from one another. But The Underbites possess such fluency with the punk canon that all the music flows as if from the same source. The Four Girls track “Sincerely Jemma Jane,” for example, started out as a Rancid-influenced anthem, but it ended up landing closer to Social Distortion. 

Further afield, Michael Hoffman‘s snare figure at the start of the Sort It Out cut “Che Guevarra,” nods to John Bonham’s iconic “Rock and Roll” intro, but he executes it with sufficient finesse to recall Los Lobos’ Louie Perez channeling lendgary Meters drummer Zigaboo Modeliste.

Lyrically, Fox draws as much from The Beach Boys, Squeeze and Robyn Hitchcock as he does from the Sex Pistols. With Sort It Out, The Underbites proved that provocative music can provoke thought in the best sense of the word. Whether tackling activist posturing, consumer culture, economic decline, racial division, the sleazy machinations of politics, or polarizing figures like Donald Trump and Michael Moore, Fox is masterful at jolting listeners with an initial shock that, on closer inspection, reveals layers of thought. 

“How To Move Forward” is the new single by British keyboard player and producer Sebastian Reynolds, it features a guest appearance from ex-Navy Seal and motivational public speaker Jocko Willink. How To Move Forward will be released via the PinDrop label on 1st September and follows the Fetus single on 11th August and the Cascade single on 21st July with all tracks taken from Reynolds’ debut album, Canary, due on 29th September 2023. How To Move Forward comes with a video cut from footage taken during a night raid in Afghanistan captured by ex-army operative and YouTuber Funker530.

Watch and listen here:  

How To Move Forward follows on from the recent Cascade single, encapsulating the feeling of dread in the face of encroaching catastrophe. “Keep calm and figure out how to move forward” is an injunction from decorated Navy Seal Jocko Willink and in this context the army maxim of “keep your world small” is held up as a self-help doctrine of the simplest and highest order. Even through the hardest times self-betterment is always possible, and there is a quasi-religious overtone to it when rendered as a mantra. Musically How To Move Forward was inspired by the claustrophobic dystopia of The Eraser by Thom Yorke, and has a nod to cult stars such as Akira The Don, famed for his innovative use of sampling from stars of podcast culture.

Sebastian Reynolds has released a string of EPs and singles over the last decade including the pair of EPs Nihilism is Pointless / The Universe Remembers, Athletics EP, the Thai EPs Mahajanaka / Maṇīmekhalā and the trio collaboration records Solo Collective Pt 1+2 with Anne Müller and Alex Stolze. Alongside his own releases, Sebastian continues to work on commissions for Neon Dance, whose work that he scored, Puzzle Creature, has completed two tours to Japan and across the UK. He co-produced and scored the Thai dance and music collaboration piece Mahajanaka Dance Drama and is currently working on a film commission for Oxford University.

Fetus was composed and produced by Sebastian Reynolds in collaboration with Mike Bannard at Safehouse Studios, Oxford. Mastered by Andreas [LUPO] Lubich at Loop-O, Berlin.

Today, Toronto outfit Elephants And Stars sharetheirnew EPrelease Get Your Own Army with the leadoff single “Bled Out at the Scene,” a Cars/Springsteen-influenced rocker that once again showcased the band’s uncanny ability to find the dark heart beating away at pop music’s gooey center with a chorus that gets in your head and stays there. Frontman Manfred Stittmann‘s meditation about an acrimonious breakup made it easy to pump your fist and cry into your beer—maybe even at the same time. 

With the EP’s second single “Gimme Ketamine,” Elephants And Stars deliver the ultimate summer anthem with an infectiously catchy rocker that sees the band wearing the influence of groups like The Gaslight Anthem and The Goo Goo Dolls on its sleeve. 

Again, though, surface impressions can be deceiving, with Stittmann exploring the tension between individual conviction and social pressure, offering biting lines like “Let’s crucify everyone who disagrees” in a way that one just can’t help but sing-along with. 

“If you look at a mega-popular hit like ‘Every Breath You Take’ by The Police,” says Stittman, “just think how many people have played that song at weddings and occasions like that thinking it’s this heartfelt love ballad, when in truth it’s sung from the point of view of a stalker. I listen to a lot of really dark, heavy stuff like death metal and punk, but those lyrics don’t connect with me as much when the words and the sound align too closely. They end up canceling each other out. To me, death metal is almost party music even though I take the playing very seriously.”

“On the other hand,” he continues, “bubblegum pop usually doesn’t do it for me. I need some contrast—that feels more lifelike to me because, if you think about it, life is contrast. And I feel like that’s what we’re craving in art that seeks to be more than just entertainment, at least I do. I like to be entertained too, but I like to think this band can do both. You can sip your beer and play our songs at a cookout, or you can put them on to dwell on whatever you need to dwell on. I’m not the most profound songwriter, but I like to think our music can be there for you at whatever level you need it to be in the moment.”

The band’s follow-up to their 2022 full-length Last Chance Power Drive, Get Your Own Army was produced by Steve Chahley and mixed by Ron Hawkins of alt-rock legends Lowest Of The Low. Elephants And Stars is the third project formed around the long-running creative partnership of Manfred Stittmann and bassist Mike MacMillan, both of whom also formed the core of the late-’90s/early-2000s groups Soap Opera and The First Time. 

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