Music

Odonis Odonis’ full spectrum

by Richard Trapunski

Music critics love it when bands make their job easier, so it’s no surprise that just about every review of Toronto trio Odonis Odonis includes the phrase “industrial surfgaze.”

Industrial surfgaze: a term that skirts the line between legit genre shorthand—electronic drums mixed with noisy garage hooks and joyful reverb rock melodies—and lazy _____-core jargon so expertly, it seems almost too perfect. And it kind of is. The guys from Odonis Odonis invented it themselves around the release of their 2011 debut album, Hollandaze, as a joke.

“Everybody loves it!” laughs lead singer/guitarist Dean Tzenos, over Toronto patio beers with his bandmates.

“We kind of wear it like a badge of honour,” chimes bassist Denholm Whale.

“It actually comes up every time we’re at the border,” says drummer Jarod Gibson. “We tell them we’re a band, we’re on tour and the question always comes up: ‘So what kind of music do you play?’”

“‘Industrial surfgaze. You heard of it?’”

You’d think any band that can be pigeonholed in a three-word slogan will inevitably end up hating it, but Odonis Odonis are surprisingly cool about it. They’ve attempted to amend it to “industrial punkgaze,” for their new EP, Better, mostly to no avail (once it sticks, it sticks). But fans and critics have noticed the shift in sound on those six songs: darker, more aggressive, suddenly heavy enough to fit right in on a recent U.S. tour with fellow Toronto noise-makers, METZ, who are known for their pummeling, sweat-drenched live show.

“The long-term goal of the band isn’t to stick to one sound vibe,” says Whale. “It’s to really spread out across different ends of the spectrum.”

“That’s what’s cool about it,” agrees Tzenos. “This is what it is right now, but it’ll be something totally different next and something totally different after that. As the project develops, you’ll be able to see the layers of the onion unfold.”

It’s easy for Tzenos to take that longview approach because most of it has been planned out long in advance. Not only has he had the next album, Hard Boiled, Soft Boiled, sitting on his computer ready to go for at least three years, but he also has enough for the next two follow ups. He wrote, recorded and stockpiled the glut of Odonis Odonis material in Vancouver all in one fell swoop, all before he put the band together or knew what it was going to be.

“It was that classic rule of three: broke up with my girlfriend, lost my job, didn’t have a place to live,” he recalls. “So I just got on E.I., worked on music, and that was it. I decided to try to write as many songs as I could every day and just get better at it. So it was like ‘Oh, this would make a cool album,’ put that aside and then work on something else, put that aside and work on something else. Now I’ve got hard drives full of it. It’s literally out of control.”

If it seems Tzenos must be the most patient man in the world, Better is actually an attempt to break that cycle and put out something totally fresh. Recorded relatively recently, the “rager” is the first Odonis Odonis record to feature contributions from all three members of the band. The heavier tinge comes from the trio’s live chemistry, developed after reworking the material that Tzenos originally recorded solo.

“Originally we took sounds directly from the recordings and tried to play them live, but we discovered pretty early on it just didn’t work,” says Gibson. “So we accepted, okay, this is a different thing. Let’s figure out what it is. Figuring it out solidified us as a band, and we built this rapport. That’s what led to this EP.”

As for the next LP, Hard Boiled, Soft Boiled, they’re aiming to have it early next year. Just like Better, it’ll introduce a new element to the group’s sound: female vocals, courtesy of New Pornographers singer/Vancouver-based solo artist Kathryn Calder. The band briefly added former Spiral Beach guitarist Maddy Wilde to fill that void, but she became too busy with her main project, Moon King. Will they consider expanding again?

“Who knows?” says Tzenos. “Nothing’s off the table.”