Shoemaker Levee head for the sonic and stylistic Hinterlands in their high-flying and adventurous new single — showcasing today on Tinnitist.
A bracing challenge to our very notions of being, the latest song from the Newmarket, Ont., rockers — and a preview of their upcoming album Between The Lines — paints the existential dilemmas facing every one of us in this highly uncertain era:
“End times calculated
Learn the math
Algo-generated epitaph
Page writes for me
Flash burn lies
Why so angry
Don’t you realize?
That I’m awake
And I need something, I need something more
To make sense of what the future has in store
How am I not myself?
How am I not the ghost of someone else?”
The words may be esoteric, but there’s nothing ambiguous about the music. Huge guitar chords rise from the mix like monoliths while lead singer-guitarist Kevin Rogers Cobus squeezes the meaning out of every syllable with dramatically deliberate enunciation, setting the dramatic stage for a cathartic wah-wah freakout from lead guitarist Dave Broadhead.
“When we’re recording, we don’t like adding layers we can’t pull off live,” explain the band, whose lineup is rounded out by four-stringer Matt Brown and drummer Dwayne Cardoso. “When we play live, it’s just four of us: Two guitars, bass and drums. It means something to us to keep that live feel and sound in everything we lay down on tape.”
That’s typical of the Shoemaker Levee oeuvre, which trades in anthemic, introspective rock steeped in everything from classical to progressive to alternative to folk. Influenced by The Tragically Hip, Led Zeppelin, Rage Against the Machine, Nine Inch Nails and Iron Maiden. If you’re getting the idea this is no timid bunch of navel-gazers, you’re right; heaviness was one of Cobus’s key priorities when he formed the group in 1998. Since then, they’ve written albums’ worth of emotionally and musically weighty material, a treasure trove they’re not even halfway finished sharing with the public.
Why the delay? A protracted band hiatus that started in 2004 and lasted nearly 12 years due to a tsunami of outside complications, from cancer to addiction to more mundane interruptions like work and family. But being gone from the scene for the music-business equivalent of the wait between actual comet visits didn’t completely quash their momentum. They kept writing all the while and refined their lineup with the additions of Broadhead in 2016 and Cardoso a year later. Since then, they’ve released two albums, Phase Of The Days and Another Round, earning praise from listeners and the industry.
The is bound to continue when the band’s next record, Between The Lines, sees release later this year. It’s a 10-song collection that represents the best of all possible worlds for Shoemaker Levee, drawing on their rich backlog of compositions while benefiting from a newly collaborative approach to the finessing and arranging of a number. “Some of the songs are revitalized versions of songs that were written over 20 years ago, and the lyrics still fit what’s happening today,” the group marvel.
Two songs from the forthcoming album are already in their live set, with Hinterlands in the prime position of show opener. That’s a strong and obvious vote of confidence, and it portends great things for Between The Lines when the record drops.
Check out Hinterlands above, hear more from Shoemaker Levee below and spot them on their website, Facebook and Instagram.
