By Nick Laugher
Photo: Ryan Walter Wagner
CALGARY — There are times when achieving any amount of recognition or notoriety in the wild and disparate landscape of music is so arduous and slow-going, it’s like pulling teeth. However, there are those beautiful, providential instances where it just bowls you over like a force-ten gale. For Calgary’s angular art rockers, Viet Cong, the past three years have been nothing short of an absolute whirlwind. Launched fast and hard into the hearts and minds of the indie music blogosphere and landing in the good graces of heavy-hitters like Pitchfork, the band has come a long way in a relatively short amount of time.
You could argue that Viet Cong had been poised for greatness from the start, composed of four members who’d been playing in up-and-coming Calgary bands for years – most notably Matt Flegel and Mike Wallace, members of the now-defunct show-stoppers and critical darlings, Women. It’s no secret that that particular connection has allowed Viet Cong to rise above the rest as fast as they have, but thankfully it’s not something that they’re resentful of — quite the opposite.
“Having part of that legacy has definitely made the initial stages of this band go a lot easier,” says guitarist Scott “Monty” Munro.
“I wasn’t in Women but I think they were a great band and I loved both of their records. We’ve got some good press and got people out to our shows that wouldn’t have been there if not for the strength of Women. I think it’s inevitable that people will talk about both bands together for awhile, especially since the way Women broke up was really publicized. In a way, this is people’s first chance to ask about the whole situation. I do think the questions about Women will die down over time though.”
Photo: Colin Way
The two bands are often mentioned in the same emotional breath largely because of the tumultuous nature of Women that provoked a tour cancellation and became a very public affair, followed by the tragic passing its guitarist Christopher Reimer— the latter a strong catalyst for all members of Viet Cong who very close to Reimer.
“Up until Chris passed away we had been working pretty casually on music,” says Munro. “When he died, though, it was kind of a wake up call for us to get on it in a more serious way.“
And infamous Calgarian music-maker and frequent collaborator, Chad VanGaalen, that the idea of Viet Cong began to rise from a primordial soup of criminally catchy riffs and half-finished song ideas.
“When Women broke up, Matt [Flegel] re-joined the Chad VanGaalen band on guitar,” recalls Munro. “I’d been playing bass with Chad since Matt quit to play with Women in the early days. During the Chad tours we started throwing around the idea of starting something.”
While in Germany, drinking late into the night, Munro and Flegel pledged to do just that when they returned to Canada. Working with a drum machine they began trading riffs and building songs, which would morph into a cassette recording and demos that provided the foundation for their first full-length, self-titled release. They also asked good friends, Mike Wallace (former Women drummer) and Daniel Christiansen (guitar) to join the fold rounding out the band.
“Most of the songs on the cassette are just Matt and I playing all the instruments ourselves and trying to get something together. Once Mike and Danny joined, I think the sound of the band changed and got a lot more solidified. I think the cassette is an interesting document of us trying to find our way to something.”
Although the cassette was originally produced as promo and merch to sell on tour, the analogue recording quickly spread like wildfire through indie music blogs receiving glowing reviews from some of the bigger tastemakers and music magazines. What was designed to make some extra cash on the road was then picked up by record label Mexican Summer and given a deluxe vinyl reissue.
“They originally asked us about putting out a 7-inch of whatever two tracks [off the cassette] we wanted,” says Munro. “But in our discussions, that turned into a 12-inch single with four songs. We just suggested that they re-release the whole thing, which they did!”
With a boatload of other material in addition to the cassette recordings (known as Cassette), the band made the trek to Holy Fuck’s Graham Walsh’s barn in Ontario to track nine songs they’d shaped and moulded over the past couple of years.
“We knew Graham through his partner Julie Fader who used to play in Chad’s band when I first joined,” explains Munro. Ian [Russell, Viet Cong’s manager] suggested him[as well]. And when we heard that Metz record he did, then we were sold.”
The sessions were definitely a world apart from the low-key, basement tinkering of the cassette. With Walsh, the band was mostly tracking live off the floor, capturing the acerbic, frenetic energy of their live show. That energy is immediately palpable. The record is positively feral, with wiry guitars splayed out all over, and an underlying sense of insanity and reckless fervour.
Photo: Colin Way
“We had full recordings of the songs from my studio. For some of the tracks we mixed in elements of those recordings to the ones from the barn in Ontario,” says Munro. “During [the making of the] cassette it was mostly just Matt and I in the basement drinking beer and playing around with drum machines. The LP sessions were definitely more concentrated. Plus we were all living in the studio for the LP so we’d just wake up and start working.” With the popularity of Cassette and the red-hot anticipation for their debut, Viet Cong are one of the torchbearers of a new scene that’s emerged in the last decade in Calgary —a scene merging from a community-driven, collaborative affair that then propels local bands and artists unto a global stage.
“The scene in Calgary itself has been on a good steady upswing for the past few years I feel,” reflects Munro. “There are lots of great bands and venues here now and I feel like when I was playing shows 10 years ago, it just wasn’t as good. As far as being out of the city, when we tour overseas people know about Calgary pretty much wherever we are and have heard of at least one or two other bands from there. The profile of the city as a good music scene has definitely changed internationally in a really positive way over the last bit.”
A lot of this has to do with a close-knit musical league of brothers and sisters in Calgary, along with the Flemish Eye label which has released records by Chad VanGaalen, Women and now Viet Cong. Started by Ian Russell merely to release Chad VanGaalen’s music, it has grown into an exceptionally popular and critically lauded boutique label over the years.
“I’ve known Ian for quite a few years from playing in punk bands and stuff,” says Munro. “His old band Fake Cops was a favourite of mine, and my old band Günther used to play with them quite a bit. I’ve known Chad for about eight years or so too, through playing improvised/drone music, so we’ve been buddies for a while. Now my friend Chris from the band Lab Coast is working for Flemish Eye too! It’s all friends for sure though. I know that we’d be hanging out even if we weren’t working together.”
Even with the release of this highly-anticipated LP, Viet Cong are still very much finding their sound. The future of the band is a blank page. They’re scribbling all over it, enjoying the freedom to do so and taking it as it comes.
“We have a pretty busy year coming up and we’re figuring out stuff pretty far in advance at this point,” Munro muses. “We have another record mostly written too, so we’ll need to take some time this year to jam those new songs to play them live as well as find some time to record. The new things that we’ve been writing have a lot more keyboards and electronic elements. But who knows where they’ll be once we play them live for a while and get into the studio again. I feel like we’re not far enough along to say what we sound like ‘as a whole.’ We have plenty of room to do whatever we want with it.”
See Viet Cong with Burnt Shrines and Fist City on Sat., Feb. 28 at the Commonwealth Bar and Stage.
Viet Cong: Sonically Speaking – Web Extra
Photo: Colin Way
BeatRoute: The Cassette; the recording that set Viet Cong in forward motion, while terse and driven, has a definitive, over-arcing pop feel. It possesses the orchestration of Pet Sounds put through a throbbing industrial process. Is there a difference between the Cassette recordings and what’s on the new album?
Scott “Monty” Munro: Absolutely. When we first started working on the songs, it was just Matt and I, and not any idea what we wanted to do at all. The A-side to that cassette has some ‘60s vibes, riffs and bits of songs that we had floating around from other projects. But once the whole band started jamming together, it became pretty clear where we were going when it was all four of us.
BR: The sonic structure of Viet Cong is experimental, progressive art rock. An oscillation between open spaces filled with articulate guitar staccatos to rolling slabs of noise and pulsing rhythms that are bleak, haunting and enchanting all at once. Quite inviting despite its grey-zone starkness. While some of the trippy passages are reminiscent of Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd, and Matt’s vocals sometimes channel an early Ian McCullough with Echo and the Bunnymen. No argument that Viet Cong is thoroughly in the now, at the same time there’s strands of the past. Do you feel you’re an extension of a particular period, art form or movement?
SM: We all like aggressive music, metal and punk. When we get together we kind of lean towards that. I also like minimal synth music. Pretty ‘80s stuff, early goth, The Cure records. Pop music in a certain way, which The Cure is. Absolute pop, with lots of hit singles. Early Echo and the Bunnymen? Oh yes! We love those records. That’s classic stuff for us. As for being an extension… Yeah, I think it’s hard for any rock band not to be. It’s hard to make any art that’s really original. You’re always borrowing from other things that have already happened.