Ok, so because I’ve yet to come up with a better title for these dispatches, this clunker will have to do for a little while longer.
With that said, welcome to the first post-launch STANDARDS newsletter! We’re really happy with where we’re at two weeks in, and the overall reception has been great. We are galvanized by the enthusiasm we’ve seen from pockets of our community, and we’re already eagerly planning our next season of videos. Truly, thank you for the support, it means a lot.
Last week, we published our first full Field Sessions video, capturing the tender, thoughtful work of folk artist Clara Sanchez, and featuring some gorgeous pedal-steel from Alex Dobson. Clara currently has only a handful of tracks released, so it’s a particular privilege to be sharing a slightly larger glimpse into her song craft.
Clara also recently released a pair of new songs on the Flutter & Hiss Vol. 2 compilation, including a spare, spectral take of “The Kind of Love I Give,” a song you’ll also find in her Field Sessions set. The recordings are really special, and I recommend y’all give it a listen.
I need to level with you here, this newsletter is still very much in its conceptual infancy. Because this is an unpaid side project for everyone involved, the pace of iteration will be slow going initially, especially on a fortnightly publishing schedule. Approaches may change from letter to letter, and you’ll likely see a lot of tentative steps taken, and then walked back when it comes to format. Trust that we’ll get there.
Fundamentally I want this letter to be a platform for artists and folks operating in Vancouver’s DIY space to say their piece, whether or not they typically think of themselves as writers. To wax on any topic that touches – even tangentially – on the wider world of independent music. This should take on wildly different forms, tones and perspectives as it passes through different voices. Some of those voices will be featured guests and some will, hopefully, be recurring and help shape the future of this thing.
And so, I’d like to introduce you to Sam Coll. Sam is a writer and musician, who notably performs in local post-punk band Aversions (check out their recent video for “Undecider” below.) He’s also a STANDARDS Field Sessions collaborator whose camerawork you can see in the stark video for danes’ “Raft Too” on our channel.
For this first edition, Sam’s considering the uneasy feeling inhabiting artists and show goers as they fully reconnect with live music following years of tenuous circumstances. I follow it up with a little bit about how the pandemic altered my listening habits and how I’m trying to find the means of reverting to my old ways. (I promise not all newsletters will be so pointedly topical.) Below that, you’ll find our music recommendations and the STANDARDS Fortnightly playlist!
by Sam Coll
Soon the interval between the pandemic’s unofficial “end” and the present will surpass the period we were actually living through it. Is it too soon to discuss the effect the whole thing had on our show-going lives? Things feel pretty normal, but I can’t shake the feeling that this version of normal is pernicious.
In 1965, the literary critic Northrop Frye coined the term “Garrison Mentality” to describe how the national (European settler) Canadian mentality – and therefore its cultural output – was shaped by living in a freezing, hostile landscape. Margaret Atwood expanded on the idea by suggesting that Canadians were even more cloistered by the cultural subjugation of the United States. To these forces can we add the pandemic’s literal garrisoning as a third shaping force on the culture?
If so, are we culturally better equipped to make something out of all the disruption, isolation and opportunity loss? I want to keep this idea in the back of my mind as I go to shows and talk to bands, because I can sense in my travels that while musicians strive to resume the rhythms of their artistic lives, there’s an uneasiness – if not an urgency – that the stakes and risks, both material and metaphysical, are higher and more profound.
A few days ago, as I drove alone through the hilly back country of Quebec’s Outaouais region – on the banks of the Gatineau river, in a worryingly dull and pretty haze of wildfire smoke and late afternoon sunlight – I remembered how to listen to music.
Before moving to Vancouver, I lived in Montréal and frequently visited my parents in the small town of Cantley, in the Gatineau valley, a modest two hour drive away. I didn’t realize it at the time, but so much of my consumption of – and rumination on – new music happened during those car rides. I’ve always enjoyed music at home of course, or while on public transit, but those focused four hours are where I really sat and absorbed an album. I remember exactly what stretch of the 417 I was on when I first heard the glorious, chiming guitar riff that brings Deafheaven’s “Dream House” to a close, forever cementing it as one of my favourite songs. On the highway 15 off-ramp to the westbound 50, Bill Callahan told me “the real people went away” and forever rewired my brain. There are countless moments like these for me, and I suppose I took them for granted. And then as our world got weirder and briefly shutdown, I moved to a different coast and no longer had an excuse to go on long drives.
But this week, as I passed through a foundational landscape towards a familiar destination, I listened to Militarie Gun’s new record Life Under the Gun, and just effortlessly absorbed it – understood its dimensions, its character – in a way that I hadn’t been able to tap into in forever. It’s a great album by the way – though perhaps no Apocalypse or Sunbather.
So I guess what I’m trying to say is that I need to develop new rituals that allow me to rekindle this relationship with active music listening. Especially as STANDARDS takes off (and this newsletter finds its focus) I’ve given myself the goal of being a better listener, in all that entails.
See you in a few weeks, and write in to contact@standards.fm if you have questions, comments or if you just want to say hi. Take it easy.