There is a common misconception when it comes to power pop that I feel I need to set the record straight on. Many equate the shimmering Alex Chilton guitars or the crunch of a Cheap Trick banger to bright sunny days by the oceanside. But it’s my estimation that real heads know that this is music for the “Dog Days of Summer” and the crisp autumn winds that blow your heart away like a deflated beach ball. This is music for when the nights are cool enough to wear a paisley shirt underneath your jean jacket or as I’d like to call it: The Sweet Spot. Toronto’s Motorists understand this, as the band released their debut power pop opus Surrounded—on Friday, September 3rd, via We Are Time/Bobo Integral/Debt Offensive—just in time for leaves to change.
Surrounded is jam packed with perfect pop nuggets, trimmed of any unnecessary fat or tassels and honors the tradition of those artists mentioned above with an added sense of the mystic post-punk found on R.E.M’s early I.R.S. albums.
The trio formed by longtime friends guitarist and vocalist Craig Fahner, bassist Matt Learoyd, and drummer Jesse Locke have all played in their fair share of bands before starting Motorists, but the group began recording these songs in their shared practice space around two years ago. It was a process that came in handy as our world was upended. “Craig has gotten really good at recording in mobile settings like that. We just did the whole thing ourselves, which was awesome,” said Locke, who co-runs the label We Are Time with downtown New York music legend Chandra Oppenheim.
The homespun quality of the record gives the album a timeless bite that can sometimes be missing from power pop records of the ‘80s and early ‘90s which tend to rely heavily on candy-coated studio sheen. In the first three singles off of the album — “Vainglorious”, “Through to You”, and “Surrounded”— the band shot themselves playing in front of a blue backdrop with the faded film quality to mimic the classic ‘70s German musical television show The Beat Club. That show famously took beloved bands of the era and delivered undoctored, raw performances straight to the fans. For Fahner, it was an extension of what they were able to get down on tape during their practice space recording sessions.
“There’s definitely some moments where we would playback something that we had literally just done off the floor,” he explained. “Pretty much unmixed, no overdubs and we were like, ‘This is it. This doesn’t need anything else.’ So, I think that kind of restraint and economy of elements, like not throwing more in and just using these basic elements has been a really big part of the way we constructed the songs and the record. Knowing when to say this is ‘done’ and this is everything we need to get this point across without embellishing too much.”
Ahead of our conversation I was embarrassed to realize that even though I grew up close enough to the Canadian border to get the signal for MuchMusic, my knowledge of Canadian power pop was pretty limited outside of the works of A.C. Newman and Sloan. So during our discussion, I had all three members of Motorists take me to school with some of their favorite Canadian power pop songs that may have influenced the band.
Craig Fahner’s Picks
The Diodes – “Tired of Waking Up Tired”
Toronto, Ontario
Album: Released (1979)
This struck me as being like, a very motorists kind of song in the sense that it’s got these kind of like post-punky guitars. I think it’s like the catchiest Canadian punk song. I’ve heard The Best of The Diodes, but I remember I heard [this song] on a mixtape and it was stuck in my head for a year straight. It maybe speaks to another kind of weird thing about the sort of isolation of Canadian music and CanCon (Canadian Content) from American audiences. I was really shocked to find out that this apparently was not a hit song anywhere but in Canada. Whereas, to me, it’s like an “Echo Beach” level classic Canadian punk song. They’re emblematic of one of my favorite kinds of punk rock origin stories. Which is the sort of Talking Heads-style thing where it’s all these freaks who met at art school and then they formed this band out of their shared desire to be exactly like the Ramones but then wound up being this totally different thing. They’re from Toronto and they were really coming up through this artists-run center scene, which is also like a very Canadian kind of concept. There’s all these federally funded but independent arts institutions sprinkled across Canada in different cities that are nonprofits that support art. They were jamming at these places and shot their videos there. I was reading that they opened a venue called The Crash and Burn. It was amazing reading about this because it was a DIY basement hole that they invited The Dead Boys and bands like that to play in. It was located right below the Liberal Party of Canada headquarters and apparently they complained so much that they shut it down. I could totally imagine that exact same scenario happening in the Toronto of 2021. Numerous venues that have been started by people in punk bands have suffered a similar fate to the hands of the NIMBY crowd. All of that aside, it’s just the most incredibly catchy, angular punk song that I think deserves a place in the Canadian power pop lore that we are now writing.
The Flashing Lights – “High School” & “Elevature”
Halifax, Nova Scotia
Album: Where the Change Is (1999)
I remember seeing this performance live on TV when I must have been like 12 or 13. It was on this show Jonovision, which was kind of a teen oriented talk show that would air after school that was on CBC, Canada’s public broadcaster. It was hosted by Jonathan Torrence, who is known better to Americans as “J-Roc” from Trailer Park Boys. But back then he was just like, cute, teen host you saw at the beginning of the video. That performance is just wild. It’s just such a beautiful song but so hard rocking. Specifically that first one, “High school.” It’s a perfect example of the Calegonian desire to actually try to be like Cheap Trick and try to emulate these bands, but not quite being able to shed this “sweetheart” sort of element. There’s something really kind of like “sweetie” about it. That’s the best word I can find [laughs]. It can’t be tough enough, but it’s such an incredible performance with so much like over the top swagger and very similar to another Halifax band that I really love called Thrush Hermit.
Matt Learoyd’s Picks
Cannon Bros – “Totally Crushed”
Winnipeg, Manitoba
Album: Dream City (2015)
This absolutely shreds! They definitely don’t have an elaborate backstory or anything like that. It is a band from Winnipeg, from the mid 2010s, who I know because I was playing with Lab Coast I just fell in love with them. I bought their record and became obsessed with their record. They were the backing band of this artist named Shotgun Jimmy, who is like another one of these beloved Canadian acts, also from Halifax, who makes rootsy, indie rock very much like Joel Plaskett. Again, he’s an artist that would only really be known to Canadians. But the people that know him just like love Shotgun Jimmy. He’s somebody that is constantly touring the country back and forth. So they were his backing band for a time and they put a couple records together and were great. But this Cannon Brothers record, it just hits the sweet spot for me for my own personal tastes. I’m really into super more “twee” stuff. Craig is more into punkier stuff and Jesse’s into weirder stuff. It rocks hard enough that I really feel like I would characterize it as power pop. It has these saccharine sweet hooks, but it also has like a million hooks. One after the other. Every song was a minute and a half long, like Guided by Voices style. I actually can’t remember which track I chose, but it’s just a record that I go back to very frequently.
Lab Coast – “Walking on Ayr”
Calgary, Alberta
Walking on Ayr (2013)
We’re all originally from Calgary and Lab Coast is like a Calgary band. They’re all our friends and they’ve been around for about a decade just making that sort of Guided By Voices tip. Their big bands for them were like Guided By Voices, Teenage Fanclub, Felt, stuff like that. The kinds of stuff that’s in our wheelhouse as well. They’ve just been cranking out absolute mega hits. They have maybe five records and they’re all just incredible. They’ve always been a favorite of mine when I was living in Calgary. As I mentioned previously, I very briefly got to live out my personal dream and play in Lab Coats for about six months when their regular bassist couldn’t make a cross Canada tour. I remember the first time I heard them play “Walking On Ayr” and it just blew my mind. I couldn’t believe what a huge huge hit it was. And then a couple years later being able to play that song, my favorite Lab Coast song with the band was kind of a dream come true. So it kind of holds a special place, I would say. Just the most delicious hook maybe of any Lab Coats song. So I had to include it for sentimental reasons and also just objectively it is an extremely tasty hook.
Jesse Locke’s Picks
The Modern Minds – “20 Years Old”
Edmonton, Alberta
Album: The Modern Minds (Collection, 2007)
I decided it would be funny to pick two bands with “modern” in their names, just as a fun thing. The Modern Minds is Moe Berg who went on to be the singer of The Pursuit of Happiness, who had that song “I’m An Adult Now.” I don’t know if that made it down to the U.S. or not. But it was a rock hit, produced by Todd Rundgrenl. But, Modern Minds was his first band when he was a teenager in St. Albert, Alberta, which is this town between Calgary and Edmonton. They just wrote really great kind of angsty teen, love songs. This song was recently used in Bruce McCullough’s TV show Young Drunk Punk, which is about his life growing up in Calgary as a teenager and a punk fan. I just love it. You know, like the chorus, [sings] “I woke up this morning, I was 20 years old.” It’s just so good and the way he just repeats that line over and over and over again, at the end of the song, I think it’s a great example of repetition as a hook. Which is something that I like about a lot of power pop.
Modernettes – “Barbra”
Vancouver, British Columbia
Album: Teen City (1980)
This is an amazing song. They were part of this scene, revolving around Quintessence Records, which is this really cool label in Vancouver. They did The Pointed Sticks, The Young Canadians, The K-Tels, and UJ3RK5. All these really amazing Vancouver bands from the late 70s. I just picked the Modernists because I think the music video is really cool and the song is super catchy. I like that they had Mary Jo Kopechne, a woman in the band, which was not always very common in the punk and power pop scene. I just love that song. “Barbara,” it’s so catchy. It was released as a 12-inch, which I think is really cool. You don’t often get 12-inch power pop singles.
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Check out Motorist’s full Canadian power pop playlist below and make sure to listen to Surrounded, out now via We Are Time/Bobo Integral/Debt Offensive.