Slow Down Molasses – Street Haunting

Since their debut record in 2008, Canadian outfit Slow Down Molasses have blended anxious post-punk attitude with a certain pop charm, constantly trespassing over genre lines in order to evolve their noisy, catchy and often chaotic sound. With the release of the last record 100% Sunshine, the band honed their craft and all its contradictions, drawing on the conflicting conditions of the surrounding prairies in order to bring into relief the paradoxes of modern life. A place where constant light hides a looming darkness, and the prevalent images mask the loneliness and dread on the ground.

This month sees the return of Slow Down Molasses with a brand new single, ‘Street Haunting’, ahead of album Minor Deaths this autumn. Inspired by the Virginia Woolf essay of the same name, the track continues to develop the style that marks the outfit, using visceral sounds to explore sophisticated themes. “The song ruminates on the casual, but oft-underappreciated beauty of the urban environment and the predictability of a person’s daily tasks,” frontman Tyler McShane explains. “A place sometimes overflowing with creative energy, but where it’s often necessary to remind oneself of the casual brilliance of one’s peers and the places we typically tend to haunt.”

But Woolf haunted London, walking the streets of Westminster, Trafalgar Square and Regent’s Park. Slow Down Molasses position themselves within less renowned Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. The song therefore serves something of a dual purpose, finding that the ‘rest’ of which Woolf speaks is still present in the smaller urban spaces, while also exploring the strange isolation inherent in places so far removed from traditional centres of culture. This is captured in a taut, twitchy sound, McShane’s vocals fighting against growing disorder as peals of feedback threaten to unhinge the track. Though just as it rises to breaking point, the tense rhythm wins out. Just another flash of unease on the ever-spinning world.

A street haunted that’s the missing link for us
Built of bricks and the failing state of man
Tells the story of a secret history of
Something new. Something that won’t change at all.

Let me hide as I walk right past it all
A faded ghost in this new dialectic’s drone
I step aside of the reasons that got you there
Someone lost, or someone set to lose their way

Minor Deaths is out on the 8th October and you can pre-order it now from the Slow Down Molasses Bandcamp page.

Artwork by Brandi Strauss, layout by Chrix Morix