Recording: Freak Heat Waves

Artist: Freak Heat Waves

Song: In the Dip of the Night

Recorded at The Garrison (Wavelength Winter Festival 18 – Night 2), February 17, 2018.

Freak Heat Waves - In the Dip of the Night

This year's Wavelength birthday celebration was more restrained than usual, sticking to one venue for three nights and having no extra daytime activities. That left the work to transforming the events to something more than just a "regular" night at a show to scene-setters like General Chaos and Roxanne Ignatius. Night 2 was nominally the "rock" night, with electronics giving ways to amps and drumkits — though the night's final two acts each tugged at those distinctions in their own ways.

Victoria's Freak Heat Waves have virtually been a different band each time I've seen them, so it wasn't a total shock to see that a taut postpunk unit had been reduced to a Suicide-esque duo for this show. Witnessing Thomas Alfred Di Ninno operating his MPC2000XL in realtime was amusingly akin to watching someone sending a fax, so it was left to Steven Raymond Lind's looming presence to keep the audience focused. Their brand new Beyond XXXL is just out on Telephone Explosion.

[Freak Heat Waves will be playing Telephone Explosion's "Year Ten" celebration, Friday, June 8th at Lee's Palace. The next Wavelength Festival is already on the distant horizon, with Camp Wavelength once more contained to the mainland and landing at Garrison Common on August 18th and 19th. Meanwhile, the next few monthly shows, co-productions (as well as a cool Toronto Post-Punk in the Early ‘80s Music Talk) are all announced.]

Recording: Freak Heat Waves

Artist: Freak Heat Waves

Song: Dig a Hole

Recorded at Smiling Buddha, July 23, 2015.

Freak Heat Waves - Dig a Hole

This Victoria group, currently touring as a five-piece, now sounds not unlike Mark E. Smith fronting Six Finger Satellite. Guitarist Steven Lind's vocals are the most consistent thing here — a sort of dry-witted monotone anchor for the group to hang a variety of postpunk grooves on. Some of the slower stuff felt a little stuck-in-place, as if the band were borrowing the wrong things from drum machine-era Wire. But when letting loose at higher tempos, that carefully-cultured awkwardness was overshadowed by some tasty, sweaty grooves. That attention-to-groove shifts the group towards being something increasingly distinctive, if not quite yet more than just the sum of their influences. But there's progress: to be honest, coming into this show I'd totally forgotten I'd first seen 'em a couple years ago — but this time they'll stick out in my mind more better.

[The band is passing back through town this week (Thursday, August 6th), stopping at Double Double Land for a show alongside Whimm and Mimico.]

Recording: Freak Heat Waves

Artist: Freak Heat Waves

Song: unknown^*

Recorded at Izakaya Sushi House, October 7, 2013.

Freak Heat Waves - unknown

Full review to follow. It's perhaps too easy to make fun of Victoria's Freak Heat Waves, what with their "black is what we wear cuz black is how we feel" sartorial choices, and for disappearing (more, as far as I can tell, than on their recordings) down the Ian Curtis gloom-vortex — one song even started with vocalist Steve Lind intoning "DES-PER-AYYY-SHUN". This runs the risk of shooting past being stoically mopey and right into self-parody. On the other hand, the rhythm section of Thomas Di Ninno and James Twiddy are so locked in against Lind's guitar that the music usually managed to trump the signifiers.

^* Does anyone know the title to this one? Please leave a comment!