Mounties

To crib a line for the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Canada is big. Really big. If you tried to draw a chalk line joining the birthplaces of Hawksley Workman, Steve Bays, and Ryan Dahle—all of them prominently Canadian, all from separate corners of this enormous country—well, you couldn’t. It’s too big. Here’s another thing that’s big: “Headphones”, the deliriously catchy first single from Mounties, a band that started as a chance meeting between the three men at the 2009 Juno Awards, and became a spectacular, improvised two week recording session three years later. Accompanied by a funky, homemade video assembled by Bays himself, the casually brilliant single reached #9 at Alternative Radio and #12 at Modern Rock (BDS) in early 2013, while clearing the path and prepping the troops for live appearances and an album set to come later in the year. Dahle describes “Headphones” as “pretty unique”, at least compared to the other 30 or so tracks that the trio, commandeering three separate studios in Vancouver, blurted out over that inspired fortnight of recording. In all of its six-and-a-half minute glory, the beefy, apocalyptic “If This Dance ... more...