Toronto garage rock group returns to Saskatoon June 19
The Ketamines, a spacey garage rock band from Toronto, Lethbridge and parts unknown, will be releasing a 7″ single on Saskatoon label Leaning Trees Records.
The 7″ is the second release as a part of a four-part series.
The first single, released on Toronto’s Pleasence Records, has already been dropped digitally on The Ketamines’ Bandcamp site. Full of sleazy retro hooks, the song is a total pop masterpiece, albeit in a total screwy way.
Ominocity recently caught up with Ketamines mouth-piece Paul Lawton on the 7″ series, Saskatoon and why working with pals is the best.
And if you haven’t already, you should probably check out our interview HERE with Lawton on how he became The Most Hated Man in Canadian Rock.
Ominocity: Tell me about The Ketamines singles series.
Paul Lawton: I had this idea for a while ago. We were working with this artist in Montreal who does this really great collage work for our tour poster. And we had this idea about doing this package where you could collect all the 7” singles and put them together to make the bigger piece of artwork. So we are working with four different labels to put out a new 45 every two months for the rest of 2013. The first one is about to come out on Pleasence Records, and they had put out the last Slim Twig record. They do a lot of really interesting avant-garde Toronto bands.
The second record is coming out on Saskatoon’s Leaning Tree records in July or August. Kaley is a really sweet dude and I like the records he puts out. The goal of this series is to work with labels that are a little bit more obscure – maybe we can all help each other out. It’s always better to work with your friends.
We are also going to put one out on Mammoth Cave Records and maybe Hosehead Records. And then we are going to put out our new LP on Southpaw Records, and it’s going to be called You Can’t Serve Two Masters.
We’re still working as partners, which is me in Toronto and James in Lethbridge. He records stuff and sends it to me and I work on it and send it back. We ping-pong these songs back and forth across the country, which is sort of how we were working before in Lethbridge anyway.
OM: Speaking of which, who is all in the band now anyway?
PL: I forgot to mention that we are touring with/as Zebrassieres. It’s the same four people in both bands but we switch instruments. I’m pretty excited about that. The new Toronto lineup rips! Jesse Locke (Weird Canada’s editor, former Dirty Beaches drummer), and Andrew Payne / Sarah Foord from the Ottawa band Zebrassieres join, but they were in the band Tension Slips who were on Bloodstains Across Alberta. Al Boyle from Chains of Love/You Say Party was our guitarist for a bit, but he moved back to Vancouver. Newcomer Alexandery Hamlyn is a guitar whiz.
The band is decidedly less punk than the last time we came to Saskatoon during MoSoFest. It sounds a lot more like the recordings.
The Ketamines will be appearing in Saskatoon on June 19 at Vangelis, along with CROSSS and locals Shooting Guns. Off the chain.