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Carpenter and the Cougar
By Sam Sutherland
“Mid-’90s hardcore is the music that changed our lives,” says Daniel Sioui, guitarist and vocalist for Vancouver’s Carpenter. “So I remember talking to friends when this band started and telling them that John Cougar was my biggest influence at the time, and they would stare at me in disbelief. Or they’d outright tell me it was going to be terrible.” A veteran of bands like the under-appreciated All State Champion (“Super angular, no repeated parts”), Sioui returned from a 2005 tour with Sparta to find his current band broken and bloody. Then he found Mellencamp’s American Fool, booked some studio time, and decided to make a new band. “I purposely wanted to write these pop-rock songs that were more straightforward,” he says. “Listening to Bob Mould’s stuff with Sugar, and John Cougar, those songs are timeless.”
By bringing together former members of West coast punk and hardcore heavyweights like By a Thread and Daggermouth, Sioui's vision wasn’t likely to end up being American Fool 2.0. “I wanted to be able to take that, and translate it into a different version,” says Sioui. “We play John Cougar before we go on at every one of our shows. At our last show, some promoter friends of ours bought us this huge backdrop with ‘John Cougar is God’ on it and a huge picture of his face. It’s crazy, dude! It's ten by ten!”
Carpenter’s outrageously earnest enthusiasm for a guy that’s low on the cool-to-name-check list (as opposed to Springsteen, punk’s dude de jour) is matched by an equal dedication to the roots of’90s post-hardcore and early emo. As much Avail as Mellencamp crops up in the band’s anthemic, driving tunes, and Sioui's upper-range holler connects as clearly to Piebald as Tom Petty. But Carpenter has taken more from Mellencamp than just his backdrop likeness. His dedication to supporting struggling small farms has rubbed off on Sioui in a big way.
“In terms of the punk and hardcore community, I don't know how many bands are down with farming,” Sioui says. “Agriculture is fundamental to everyone and yet no one talks about it. There’s a lot of information on our CD, and we’ve been working with some different groups in town to help promote their work and their message. I want to be a farmer — that's what I want to do with my life.” That themes of agricultural struggle run through the band's debut full-length is no surprise. Law of the Land, recorded with no label, management, or support to speak of, is a huge, bombastic statement that straddles genre lines without flaunting its uniqueness. And people are taking notice.
“It just seems like finally we're getting some help,” says Sioui, whose band now boasts the support of Smallman Records and Underground Operations Booking Agency. “Everyone in the band, in my mind, has paid their dues. These guys have slugged it out for years, done a lot of really hard tours. I think we’re just really appreciative of what's happening to us right now. It’s one thing to have word of mouth in your town, but to get emails from all over is surprising. We hoped we would get some help, but we were planning to do this all ourselves. We just really believe in this so much, and I think that comes across.”
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Gonzales, International Man of Mystery
 Success does not define an artist; failure does. Instead of moving from one triumph after another, the ability to bounce back from a faceplant — and to be able to laugh about it — is a much greater artistic feat.
The man who calls himself Gonzales thrives on this trajectory. For a guy who h...Read More
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Lal Face Deportation
 As the music industry carries on convulsing and bloodletting at its presently dissipating margin lines while gallons of ink is spilled pronouncing its apocalyptic demise, it gets harder and harder to view music as anything but another consumable product created to turn a buck. Fortunately, you’ll st...Read More
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The Cool Kids Look Good
 Refreshingly modern, yet reminiscent of ’80s hip-hop, the Cool Kids have found a sound that’s completely their own. Dubbed the poster children of retro-rap, the collective of two are multi-talented lyricists and producers bringing BMX bikes and rope chains to the forefront.
As a twist of fa...Read More
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Feuermusik Are Winners
 Don’t call Feuermusik a novelty band. Their new album, No Contest, proves that the sax and plastic bucket assault of 2006’s Goodbye Lucille was no serendipitous one-off. Reed player Jeremy Strachan and buckateer Gus Weinkauf have progressed even further with their lush saxscapes and sy...Read More
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The Mole Loves To Dig
For anyone who’s seen a room fall under the spell of the Mole, it’s no surprise that his long-awaited debut As High As the Sky (on Mathew Jonson’s Wagon Repair label) is as good as it is. Colin de la Plante, the master sampler behind the Mole, has had long enough to rise to the occasion.Read More
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Zaki Ibrahim On Her Own
The word is out on Toronto-based rising star Zaki Ibrahim, capturing well-tuned ears with her combination of captivating personality, powerful voice and ambitious outpouring of R&B, hip-hop, electronic and South African influences. But while the threat of buzz overkill would be a serious issue for...Read More
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His hilarious first two features were genre parodies: Shawn of the Dead (zombies) and Hot Fuzz (buddy cops), but in Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, director Edgar Wright is inventing a whole new film genre: the videogame/comic/action mash-up, with great success.
Base...
Full Review
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