The Harlots
The Harlots know it’s
time to dig in and get their hands dirty.
 The
members of the Winnipeg-based quartet know this is their chance.
“We’ve been handed this opportunity and it’s
up to us to make the most of it,” says singer and guitarist
Buck Garinger.
The opportunity Garinger is speaking
of is to leave behind the relatively safe lifestyle him and
his band have in Winnipeg and hit the road to see how far
they can take their new CD, Crawl Spaces (Gift Shop/Universal).
They have major label distribution and have landed management
that has guided the careers of, among others, Hayden and ex-Weeping
Tile country rockers Luther Wright and the Wrongs.
Locally, the band has been a hit, with
their first CD selling out quickly, and the new one being
hotly anticipated around Portage Ave. When Crawl Spaces
was finally released, the response was huge.
“Ours was the number-two-selling
CD in Winnipeg the week it came out,” says Garinger.
“We beat out bands like the White Stripes.
So what is it that Winnipeggers know
that we don’t?
Well, the songs on the CD betray the
same lunchpail approach as their attitude towards promoting
it. Each song is well thought out, with lots of hooks, changes
in direction, and surprises that keep the listener interested.
For a bunch of guys who used to play in a band with Robin
Black before he moved to Toronto, the CD is not as heavy on
glam as you might expect. There’s more of an emphasis
on progressive pop structure, big harmonies, and emotion-charged
energy.
“We try to cut the fat out of
our songs,” explains Garinger. “Sometimes music
can suffer from self indulgence where you play the same riff
over and over again. We wanted to make a cohesive strong record.
All the parts are there for a reason and we don’t have
anything there that shouldn’t be.”
This attention to detail is displayed
best in songs like “Alien”, the CD’s first
single, and “Below”, which are intense, haunting
numbers that recall a little of bands like Braid or, God help
me, a teensy-weensy bit of Linkin Park; “Afraid of Mice”
has a little bit of amped-up T-Rex, with a glammy bubblegum
chorus that’s immediately catchy. Other standout tracks
include “Hypnotized” a big-chorused song that
wouldn’t sound out of place played after an early Oasis
track, and “Up on the Roof”, which relies on heavy
harmonies to drive the song where it needs to go.
And now that the work of writing and
recording the record is over, they want people to hear it.
The band is shedding its big-fish-in-small pond security and
plans to introduce their music to the rest of the country.
Garinger says the band is committed to it.
“We’ve been handed this
opportunity and we’re gonna [take advantage of it] even
if it means sacrificing our job and touring and eating Kraft
dinner. The band is what we want to do and if it means we
live meagerly it’s worth the sacrifice,” he says.
“We really want to shine as a
live act. And expose our CD to as many people as possible,”
Garinger continues. And tour to places they haven’t
been before. Not only because of the band, but a side benefit
of being in a touring band is that you get to see many places
you haven’t been to before, he says.
-- Keith Powell
Related: www.theharlots.com
Back to Shred Home
|
