This Halifax-based trio, who also answer to the abbreviated GGMU, know how to pack a lot of power into small packages. Their new album Zombies!!! runs a lean thirty-four minutes but it’s loaded with tense riffs and awe-inspiring guitar passages that refuse to pull any punches. Adam Warren recently gave some time to discuss the public and critical response to Zombies!!!, as well as the story behind - SCQ’s favourite track - ‘Mountain Town’.
SCQ: Every list-lover's favourite question: what are your top albums of 2010? Feel free to include any older yet worthy records you discovered this year.
AW: Favourite albums of 2010 - Arcade Fire, The Suburbs, The Roots, How I Got Over, The Sadies, Darker Circles, Wintersleep, New Inheritors. I also recently got my hands on a copy of Wilco's Summerteeth, which was in my car stereo for weeks and weeks, and Gavin wants me to mention that he loves Marvin Gaye's What's Goin' On.
SCQ: What were you listening to a lot of while recording your excellent Zombies!!!?
AW: The year we recorded Zombies!! we all shared an apartment (along with my girlfriend, Amelia -lucky her ha) which also served as our recording studio, and the regulars on the stereo were Radiohead (In Rainbows had come out the fall before), Wilco, Wintersleep, The Roots, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Deerhoof, Snailhouse. Motown stuff would come out to party too. The three of us share pretty similar tastes for the most part - of course there are some differences in opinion (for example Gavin's love of George Michael is not exactly universal among the three of us) but we can all agree on something to listen to most of the time (which helps when spending hours and hours in a minivan).
SCQ: Be cocky for once in your life: what was the finest thing you did all year? That moment where you actually thought "shit, I nailed that..."?
AW: I would say the successful release of Zombies!!! has been our finest hour - the response to the album has well exceeded any expectations we might of had for what was essentially a home recording (although, a well mixed home recording... thank you, Andrew Watt), and our record release show in Halifax was great. It was awesome to have so many people come out to Gus's Pub on a Thursday night, and we had one of our favourite Halifax bands playing with us (Jon McKiel) which made it even better!
SCQ: Effect and Cause: I was house-sitting my parent's place and getting prepped for a all-day party with some long-lost hometown friends when 'Pop Song Atomaton' first rattled my brain. I can't tell you the last time I blasted Myspace tracks all morning. Okay, your turn: confess a true tale that inspired one of the songs from Zombies!!!.
AW: True story - my older brother worked in Syria for two years teaching english as a second language, and while he was living there I went over to visit him for two weeks. I had no idea what to expect, really, but I found that within hours of being there it occurred to me how bizarre the perception of Syria and the middle east is in Canada, and the US. It is a military dictatorship, so obviously there are some negative aspects to living there (extremely limited personal freedom?), but the people I met there were wonderfully friendly and welcoming, and certainly not the Westerner-hating terrorists that many in our culture claim they are. I remember being consistently surprised at the way the place challenged my pre-conceived notions of what it would be. I wrote Mountain Town about halfway through the trip, sitting on my brothers couch.
SCQ: If all the reasonable and implausible ideas in your head came to fruition in 2011, what would they be?
AW: GGMU world tour! Ha, maybe not just yet, but expanding our sphere of influence beyond Ontario and into western Canada, releasing another record. Working more on music, less on feeding ourselves. In all likelihood, releasing another record.
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