After a sold out show at Antje Öklesund earlier this year, We Are The City return to Berlin to celebrate the release of their new record Violent.
We Are the City creates their own brand of pop music. The band’s sophomore release, Violent, is a sonic roller coaster filled with ups and downs, louds and quiets. The title’s implications are both positive and negative, straddling the line between the beautiful and the abrasive and encompassing the full scope of We Are the City’s musical maximalism. Violent has garnered positive reviews from Vancouver Sun, Georgia Straight, Exclaim!, and many more as well as premieres on Noisey, Huffington Post, MuchMusic, Chart Attack, CBC.
High school friends Cayne McKenzie (vocals/keyboards) Andrew Huculiak (drums) and David Menzel (guitar) began plotting this album almost as soon as the first one was done. Their future looked bright, as they won $150,000 in January of 2010 by placing first in 102.7 The Peak’s prestigious PEAK Performance Project contest. Things got put on hold, however, after Menzel left the band in the summer of 2010. The new songs were abandoned, and We Are the City released their stopgap High School EP in 2011. Although not the album they originally envisioned, High School earned rave reviews and helped to expand their following, with The Vancouver Sun giving it five stars and declaring it a mini masterwork.
We Are The City continued to gain momentum when Menzel returned, and the guys resumed work on the follow-up they had previously set aside. Produced by Tom Dobrzanski (Said The Whale, The Zolas, Hey Ocean) at his newly constructed Monarch Studios, Violent is an album of soaring highs and hushed comedowns, with dense syncopations going toe-to-toe with noise-soaked crescendos and delicate pop melodies. King David moves from aggressive distortion to gentle acoustic plucking to swirling ambience, while Bottom of the Lake places marimba tinkles atop a gritty guitar backdrop, and the cerebral Baptism builds towards the album’s most thunderous climax.
Violent will be followed by a feature-length film Violent written by We Are the City and filmed by Vancouver’s Amazing Factory Productions in Norway. With a script penned entirely in Norwegian despite the fact that the band members don’t speak the language this subtitled film is a companion piece to the record; the score utilizes melodic motifs from the songs, while the story shares themes with the lyrics. The film goes as a companion to the record, but it’s not a must-have. They both stand alone.
We Are the City’s restless sense of artistry has led the musicians through years of self-discovery as they have continued to strive for the next creative peak. Now that they’ve finally arrived with Violent and its accompanying upcoming film, there’s no question that the journey has been worthwhile.
