Eric's Trip - Love Tara

Eric's Trip - Love Tara


I had a chance earlier this year to see Eric’s Trip in concert. I didn’t, because it was at some club that requires membership to get in and it seemed like a pain in the ass to go through and they wanted five bucks or so for membership, but if I had, you can sure bet it would have made an interesting story to recount here.

Oh well. (True story too!)

Eric’s Trip was a Canadian indie rock band hailing from the listless shores of New Brunswick. They formed in 1990, and, after a number of demo tapes, were signed to Sub Pop records at the peak of their post-Nirvana influence. In 1993, they set out to record their first album for Sub Pop, ending up with Love Tara, a collection of garage-rock influenced, lo-fi love songs. They broke up in 1996, but have reformed multiple times throughout this decade to tour and play particular events.

I first found out about these guys a few years back while doing random searches as inspired by awesome songs (As you may as well have gleamed, I have no good stories about finding out about bands. Just random shit I found online while I was bored. Stay tuned for a future post in which I tell you about that one time, at the bank, when I deposited a check and the teller gave me a dirty look and I’m like what? and yeah pretty cool right). I figured hey, anyone who would name themselves after a Sonic Youth song with some of my all-time favourite lyrics probably has good enough taste in music to make some good stuff themselves. And lo, I was right. I just didn’t expect them to be this good.


Eric’s Trip’s sound is not the hardest to describe. Think of stereotypical folk-inspired indie rock, from the time before it became popular to emulate crappy post-punk from the 80’s and call it indie regardless of what label they’re on (no disrespect to all the good bands who were emulated as well). Add in conditional use of the electric guitar, and fill the recoding with all the crackling distortion of an overplayed vinyl record, and voila: pure, heartfelt lo-fi indie glory. This is music that you could imagine listening to before a roaring fire on an Autumn day; delicate enough to set the mood, but not content just to linger aimlessly in the background as first-date muzak. Singer/guitarist Rick White described their sound as "sappy melodic pop music on top of thick distortion”, and that’s probably a good way of summing it up. It’s a very simple formula the band uses, combining the softness of folk and the noisiness and anguish of grunge, but they utilize it to perfection. In fact, I’d go as far as to call Love Tara one of the best indie records of the 90’s, an all-too unknown masterpiece, and put Eric’s Trip well ahead of their more well-known contemporaries such as Pavement and Built to Spill.

Much of what makes this album great comes in the vocals, which are shared between Rick White and Julie Doiron with White taking the brunt of the duties on this album (also, both share guitar/bass duties alongside fellow guitarist/bassist Chris Thompson). Both White and Doiron display a great amount of tenderness and care in their deliveries, which does well to enhance the sincerity in lines like “looking around for an extra person in my life to call my friend” and “how come it upsets you so/shouldn't it be me who feels uneased”. The lyrics tend to fit into a very conversational style, with the songs mostly being person-to-person tales of love or regret, communicated with a muted sadness by the band’s vocalists. That they come off as so genuine can be put on White and Doiron themselves (especially White), who sing in very soft and melancholic tones, almost to the point of whispering at points (“Behind the Garage” being an excellent example). The way this album is produced is notable too in this sense, as the sound fashioned here takes on a very warm and personable style. The background noise on “May 11” for example, suggests a real-world atmosphere, as if the singing is just one half of a conversation we’re not getting all of. When White or Doiron sing, the clearness of their vocals in the otherwise often distortion-fueled mix helps communicate the band’s message as heartfelt and honest. Another example of a strong effect utilized by the band is showcased in the song “Frame”, which pits White’s soft croons against a very jagged riff, placing the delicacy of his delivery against the overlying sharpness of the guitar. The ensuing contrast is quite powerful, as White’s fragile voice is swallowed up by the strident waves of distortions, overcome by the power of the amplifier.


With Love Tara, Eric’s Trip not only put out an outstanding debut, but a lo-fi indie classic. The distortion, the folksy warmth, the emotional, utterly personal song-writing, all standards Eric’s Trip would uphold throughout their career, but possibly none used to the same success as on the band’s debut album. What we have here is marvellously minimal indie rock, adorned with lyrically relatable feelings regarding love, alienation and friendship. Put it on, sit by the fire, and watch the leaves envelop the ground outside your window, as they desert the now barren trees from which they fell.


Love Tara

Pere Ubu - The Modern Dance

Pere Ubu - The Modern Dance


Named after a French proto-surrealist play, and coming off about as artsy and pretentious as that would imply, Pere Ubu was first formed in 1975 in Cleveland, Ohio. Combining art-punk sensibilities with a delightfully absurdist take on song-writing, the band created a dense and murky form of post-punk that took cues from the garage rock of the 60’s and bordered heavily on avant-garde. On the subject of Ubu, it was once written:

“Pere Ubu will be looked back on as the most important group to have come out of America in the last decade and a half. Either that or they will be entirely forgotten”

And whether you’ve heard of them or not, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise how that one turned out. But it’s a shame really, because this attitude was very much indicative of how the band was viewed. Either you love them or disregard them as too weird, too out there, or too subversive to remain consistently listenable. While these are legitimate complaints, it rarely overshadows the insane greatness that the band was often capable of conjuring. Between David Thomas’ warbled cries, the off-key dancing of the guitar and bass, and synth-wizard Allen Ravenstine’s incredible infusion of any number of background noises, Pere Ubu channeled the bizarre to create the phenomenal. On their first album, The Modern Dance, they fully showcased this peculiar concoction, creating an influential and seminal work in the process.


Although they would eventually move into more New Wave territory, eventually landing on the other side of the pop music spectrum, make no mistake about it – The Modern Dance is very much a rock record, albeit a very arty one. The garage rock influence shines through even the densest of distortion, as the opening guitar line on “Street Waves” would certainly attest to. But it is where Pere Ubu departs from their predecessors that they become interesting. A variety of multicultural influences abound, as the band veers between any number of styles, from areas as diverse and musically different as Middle-Eastern and rockabilly. Part of this is in the tuning of the guitar; it holds very little strength here, even being overshadowed by the bass at times, much less the calamity of noise contributed by Ravenstine. As such, it sounds less like the usual Western styles of the electric or acoustic guitar, and sort of like a more twang-y version of the sitar at times (emphasis on “at times”).

Atmosphere is a big part of the Pere Ubu sound, and The Modern Dance exemplifies this through the synthetic arrangements of Allen Ravenstine. Ravenstine’s part comes in through his creation of setting that underlies the rest of the music, be it through the occasional waves of triumphant applause in “Chinese Radiation”, the industrial rhythmic clanging of “Real World”, or the ominous, air raid siren-lite sounds of “Over My Head”. His influence on this record isn’t as great as it would come to be on future releases, but it is still a big part in formulating Pere Ubu’s unique musical direction. The synths on this album work to create a very distinct atmosphere in a very different way than they would later be used, mainly through the channeling of background noises and atmospheric musical cues, rather than the dance-y synth arrangements that would later come to personify New Wave.

However, this is in many ways David Thomas’ band, as the founder and only constant member throughout Pere Ubu’s career, so I’d be remiss if I didn’t spend some time focusing on his odd, almost surreal caterwauling. Imagine an especially noisy hawk. Now, imagine that that hawk is dying, possibly due to internal bleeding, and just won’t shut up (god, this is a really bad metaphor). That’s kind of what David Thomas sounds like, a dying hawk, squealing and squawking incessantly in a high yet somber pitch as it slowly dies. Or maybe a drunken homeless man on the street, muttering to himself about whatever he pleases, and occasionally raising his voice in delightful inebriated glory. Whatever he sounds like, Thomas’ vocals are easily the most noticeable and recognizable thing about Pere Ubu, and they work to fit the eccentricities of the music seamlessly.


With The Modern Dance, Pere Ubu created an underground classic, an experimental slice of ‘avant-garage’ (Thomas’ term to placate music critics looking for a trendy expression to use in their reviews) that doesn’t disappoint. Few bands can create the same blend of abstract weirdness, much less pair it with any number of interesting musical ideas. Absurd, surreal, and only a tad disjointed, The Modern Dance stands as another important step in the ultimate merger of music and art. To this date, it remains important in its influence, even if not nearly as many people remember it as they should.

The Modern Dance