The Trews
About The Trews
By the beginning of 2010, the Trews were feeling a little uncertain.
The band had been on an upwardly mobile streak since “Not Ready to Go” first came pumping
out of Canadian radio back in 2003. They wasted no time piling success on top of success,
watching their stature grow with multiple hit singles and an incomparable live show, courting
exhaustion while they fanned out across the world and carved an eccentric and stubborn path
through an industry demanding that they always “compete.”
The tensions were audible on 2008’s No Time for Later. The band’s third album was its most
accomplished and satisfying. But as a formal exercise in broadening their songwriting chops
while making a hermetically perfect studio recording – all while shoveling enough hits into the
mouth of the beast – it emerged uptight and dark, maybe even a little claustrophobic. Not
insignificantly, the second single was called “Paranoid Freak”.
As the first leg of touring wrapped up on their sidelong 2009 Acoustic – Friends & Total
Strangers retrospective, for the first time in years the Trews found themselves facing time off
and a blank canvas. As Colin MacDonald bluntly puts it, “We didn’t really know what to do.” The
rest of the tour was months away. The band had forward momentum but nowhere to go.
Enter Gord Sinclair. The Tragically Hip bassist surfaced amidst this rare period of suspended
animation and offered the Trews a little shelter at the Hip’s fabled Bathouse Recording Studio.
He said they could cool their jets, make some demos. “And I’ll hang out for a couple days, drink
some beer, and listen to what you guys have got going on,” he suggested. It sounded like a
holiday to John-Angus MacDonald.
“We were just looking to run away a little,” the guitarist admits. “And we wanted to do something
fun, organic, be a band again, all that stuff.”
And so bassist Jack Syperek, drummer Sean Dalton, and the two MacDonald brothers faded
into the bucolic splendor of Bath, Ontario, where they had so much fun and got so organic that a
couple months later, the Trews had a new album – Hope and Ruin. Or maybe it should be
called Order Out of Chaos.
In any event, the band insists that it all happened by accident, or “guerilla style,” in Colin’s
words.
“It was like anything was up for grabs,” continues John-Angus, “And we just needed to get a
hold of where we were at, which is why we retreated to Bath. We went there to try and figure out
what kind of record was in us.”
So what kind of record was in them? In contrast to the cinched, vaguely political alt-rock of No
Time for Later, the Trews swing low and loose on Hope and Ruin, which Sinclair unexpectedly
found himself co-producing with John-Angus. Their customary wall-of-guitar is there on tracks
like the explosive and somewhat insane “People of the Deer” – albeit bigger and more visceral
than ever – and “The World I Know” puts a perverse twist on the kind of Aerosmith redux the
band accomplishes in its sleep. “I’ll Find Someone Who Will” is their patented classic-rock,
power-pop hybrid, and naturally more fun than a sugar rush after a blast of nitrous.
But title track and single “Hope and Ruin” is something altogether different, superimposing
chiming guitar and Colin’s reflective-yet-triumphant lyrics onto a pumping disco beat, while the
guitar atmospherics of “Stay with Me” are redolent of a certain world-devouring, ‘80s rock giant.
Opener “Misery Loves Company” suggests an alternate universe punk version of Cheap Trick
while “Dreaming Man” is even more outré; a lambent, silky shuffle that the band whipped up
over breakfast one day. Equally, “Burned” goes from a funky, clavinet-goosed intro to an
inspired jam that Colin wanted to sound “like Little Feat at 2 am at some big, summer festival.”
Ditto the way piano dances around John-Angus’ super-reverbed slide on “Love Is the Real
Thing”.
And perhaps most striking of all is the album’s centerpiece, “If You Wanna Start Again”, where
the Trews actually find a credible détente between the grandeur of mid-tempo Foreigner and
their own reliably good taste. It should be mentioned that their drummer was the force behind
this particular masterpiece, right down to its ecstatic “woo-hoo” chorus. “It’s so killer,” says
Colin. “That was Dalton.”
John-Angus puts it best: “It was like our first record again,” he says, of the band’s most
collaborative, exploratory, and intuitive effort in years. “When you make your first record, you
don’t know who the songwriter is. Those roles aren’t established yet. The band is just trying to
be the best band they can be. And we were back there.”
This meant building each song from scratch, on a day-to-day basis, until the four of them were
ready to hit record and take “the Jimmy Iovine approach” to tracking. Which, John Angus
explains, amounts to “just playing it till it feels right.”
Notwithstanding that what you’re reading here is a band bio and a therefore a big, obvious
marketing tool, let it be said that only a deaf person, a fool, or a damn liar would argue that
Hope and Ruin feels anything but right. If the Trews were tired when they walked into the
Bathouse, they were rejuvenated by the time they walked out, having found hope in ruin. This is
the record where the Trews sound like they’re having a flat-out gas.
“It was glorious,” reflects Colin. “I hope people like the record because if they do, I’ll be, like,
‘Yes! We can have fun while we’re doing it!’”
Wednesday 14th September 2011: The Great Northern – Newcastle NSW
(02) 4927 5728 or www.thegreatnorthern.com.au
Thursday 15th September 2011: The Brass Monkey – Cronulla NSW (Acoustic show)
(02) 9544 3844 or www.oztix.com.au or www.brassmonkey.com.au
Friday 16th September 2011: Old Manly Boatshed – Manly NSW
(02) 9977 4443 or www.oztix.com.au
Saturday 17th September 2011: Sydney Fringe Festival, Notes Live – Newtown NSW
(02) 9557 5111 or www.oztix.com.au or www.noteslive.net.au
Sunday 18th September 2011: Beaches – Thirroul NSW
(02) 4267 2288 or www.beacheshotel.com.au
Thursday 22nd September 2011: Jive – Adelaide SA
(08) 8211 6683 or www.oztix.com.au or www.jivevenue.com
Friday 23rd September 2011: Cherry Bar – Melbourne VIC
(03) 9639 8122 or www.oztix.com.au
Saturday 24th September 2011: Cherry Bar – Melbourne VIC
(03) 9639 8122 or www.oztix.com.au
Sunday 25th September 2011: Cherry Bar – Melbourne VIC
(03) 9639 8122 or www.oztix.com.au
Wednesday 28th September 2011: The Great Northern – Newcastle NSW
(02) 4927 5728 or www.thegreatnorthern.com.au
Thursday 29th September 2011: The Vault – Windsor NSW (Acoustic show)
(02) 4587 8146 or www.vault146.com.au
Friday 30th September 2011: Old Manly Boatshed – Manly NSW
(02) 9977 4443 or www.oztix.com.au
Saturday 1st October 2011: The Brass Monkey – Cronulla NSW (Acoustic show)
(02) 9544 3844 or www.oztix.com.au or www.brassmonkey.com.au
Thursday 6th October 2011: Byron Bay Brewery – Byron Bay NSW
(02) 6685 5833 or www.byronbaybrewery.com.au
Friday 7th October 2011: The Zoo – Brisbane QLD
(07) 3854 1381 www.oztix.com.au or www.thezoo.com.au
Saturday 8th October 2011: Spotted Cow – Toowoomba QLD
(07) 4639 3264 or www.spottedcow.com.au
Wednesday 12th October 2011: The Great Northern – Newcastle NSW
(02) 4927 5728 or www.thegreatnorthern.com.au
Thursday 13th October 2011: The Brass Monkey – Cronulla NSW (Acoustic show)
(02) 9544 3844 or www.oztix.com.au or www.brassmonkey.com.au
Friday 14th October 2011: Old Manly Boatshed – Manly NSW
(02) 9977 4443 or www.oztix.com.au
Saturday 15th October 2011: The Gaelic Club – Sydney NSW
www.oztix.com.au or www.thegaelic.com
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