That’s It, That’s All: A We Are The City Retrospective

It was bright and brisk on the mid-October afternoon in 2012 when I met We Are The City. The sun held that kind of cool, deep orange glow that only seems possible in the throes of a wet Vancouver autumn and framed the charmingly simple home that housed Monarch Studios in the basement. I was there to meet Tom Dobrzanski, the studio owner and pianist of the Vancouver underground duo The Zolas. Dobrzanski was a friend of a friend, and had agreed to meet me as I – a near high school senior considering my post-high school prospects – was considering studying music production at one of Vancouver’s many overpriced schools. Tom had been through the system, and quickly dissuaded me from wasting my money; “you can spend $40,000 on a year of school,” I distinctly remember him telling me, “or you can buy $40,000 worth of gear, start recording bands, teach yourself and have something to show for it by the end.” Music production didn’t end up being my path, but that day isn’t etched in my memory solely due to the sage advice I received.

After our chat, Tom casually mentioned he had a band recording downstairs in the studio, and asked my Dad (the day’s chauffeur) and I if we wanted to go meet them and hear what they had been working on. We said yes and let Tom lead us downstairs and around the front of the house to enter the studio space through the street-level entrance. As we stepped through the door and reached the end of a short, narrow hallway, I peered through a large window into the spacious live room and then the more compact control room, outfitted with a massive console, stark yellow and black monitors, a cacophonous winding trail of wires and a large sprawling couch occupied by three anonymous young men chatting quietly. They greeted us warmly, and my Dad quickly accosted them about their music as Tom booted up their Pro Tools session. He played us a snippet of a track they were in the middle of tracking guitars for, which I later learned was King David, a track from what would become their 2015 sophomore record Violent. After my dad put in his five cents about the perceived King Crimson influence, he asked what the band was called. The lanky, fuzzy haired blonde who was perched forward on the corner of the L-shaped couch smiled a wide, cheeky grin and told us. “Oh! I know you guys!” I told them.

It had been in ninth grade. One of my oldest and most trusted friends, especially when it came to music sharing, had sent me the music video for Happy New Yearfrom the band’s 2011 release High School, alongside Death Cab For Cutie’s The New Year on January 1st. The song, and eventually the entire EP, fascinated me. The spunky, raw twee garage rock sound was a punch to the gut, and the thundering drum production and starkly simple instrumentation in such a bare bones yet wildly rousing song was hard to grasp. It was bold and fun, but it didn’t sound anything like the rest of the record; the interplay of wispy chamber pop and freak-psych pop on Get Happy, the warping dynamics and shifty groove of That’s It, That’s All and the dark, vivid lyricism and foreboding-yet-gentile sonic nature of the closing one-two punch 1987 / An Angel in White all stood as their own singular creatures. I couldn’t help but be fascinated, and little did I know, the puzzle of We Are The City would continue to be just as enigmatic and inviting as it was then.

There are sprinkles of the We Are The City iconography all over my apartment. The liner notes of High School are tacked up on my wall next to my bed alongside fellow underground Canadian mainstays Stars and The Dirty Nil. My DVD copy of Violent, drummer Andrew Huculiak’s debut full-length film, sits on a narrow shelf underneath the window in my living room. Three vinyl records, bought at a headline show at The Imperial in Vancouver in a package deal for $50, rest in a cabinet underneath my Dad’s old turntable. But it goes further than that. Images the band has conjured up are burned into my head, popping out every once in a while with a bit of prodding or a flash of reminder from a song or sight. The white bags over the band’s heads, the single smashed light bulb and singer/keyboardist Cayne McKenzie hammering away at his keyboard in the Happy New Year music video. The rolling dark green hills and milky morning light emanating around the band as they play through their live version of Morning Song. The saturated neon filters on their PXTK live album series. Drummer Andrew Huculiak and his mischievous, cheeky grin, waltzing around and dumpster diving in and around Vancouver while guitarist David Menzel tries to fix a broken shed light to shocking results in the Magic House series. My roots go way back with the band. Very far, in fact – I discovered after meeting the band that Menzel shared an elementary school in common with myself and the friend who first introduced me to them. The band’s audacity, relentless creativity, adventurousness and openness to new challenges has consistently inspired me through the years. Their tenacity, perseverance, sheer, bold artistic vision and drive to actualize it has been a driving motivator for my work. It has led them through five unique and inspired full-length records, countless energized gigs and tours and enough strange, conceptual projects outside of and informed by their music to fill a career twice the length of the one they’ve had. The band announced the closing of their twelve year-long run as We Are The City back in 2020 - in celebration of the band and their remarkable, underappreciated achievements, here is a look back at the wild and wonderful world of We Are The City.

We Are The City formed in Kelowna, BC in 2008. Their first record In A Quiet World (also recorded with Dobrzanski) appeared shortly after, and it didn’t take long before the familiar highs and lows of chaos surrounding the band took form. A year after their formation the band won Vancouver radio station The Peak’s annual battle of the bands-style contest The Peak Performance Project, taking home $150,000 for career development. Shortly thereafter the group lost founding member and guitarist Menzel. The tumultuous two years following consisted of a blurred haze of touring and local gigs where the remaining duo and an enlisted guitarist would perform as a new band called High School, experimenting with new, in-your-face sounds and taking over basements all over Canada. They would play under fake names with T-shirts tied over their heads to obscure their identities from locals, pushing away from the pressures, expectations and hurt feelings that had been marked upon We Are The City. After having their identities revealed by local fans and fellow musicians who recognized them, the project eventually took shape and morphed into a new, fresh-faced version of their former band. Reworked and looking towards new opportunities, the band released the EP under the We Are The City name, stating in the record’s liner notes that the EP was the first time the band had played the songs as We Are The City. High School draws upon strikingly different sonic and lyrical ideas than their debut, focusing in on a decidedly more brash pop-rock sound and diving into the headstrong self-conscious and exploratory nature of teenage angst, insecurity and naiveté. Before long Menzel, who had become disillusioned with DIY touring and was recently engaged, joined the band once again, and they picked up speed towards their second full-length record Violent.

For me, Violent is the band’s magnum opus. It packs everything that makes the band so incredibly resonant and engaging into a tight, bold and fearless thirty-five minutes. The record is marked by a myriad of trippy, knotted rhythmic experimentation, with Huculiak’s chaotic and expansive percussion whipping around McKenzie’s static-laced saturated synths and sharp, crisp stabs of guitar. These moments are beautifully counterbalanced by quiet and contemplative tracks like 20 Ft. Up and Punch My Face, where McKenzie’s lyricism and emotionally dense musings on humanity and spirituality run the gambit of evocative imagery and weave together atmospheres, textures, and dynamic shifts that speak to the songs and uplift the lyrics rather than distract with pointless experimentation. The album is sonically diverse, from the heady and propulsive progressive rock sounds in King David to soft, fuzzy electronica on Everything Changes. This contrast is best embodied by the wild and beautiful penultimate track Baptism. The song rides on a nimble drum pattern and expansive keys, punctuated by shimmering choral breaks and an explosive finale that pays off the pent-up energy the track is barely holding steady throughout. It makes for an electrifying addition to the band’s already propulsive and dynamic live show.

On Violent and beyond, the band’s sound always recalls vivid and specific, sometimes cinematic imagery for me. It’s no wonder the trio has leaned so heavily into the visual component of the project extending well past obligatory music videos and the occasional live performance. Visual companionship to their music feels like an absolutely essential component; take for example the band’s striking album covers.

Throughout their storied career, the band has been careful to document their highs and lows, idiosyncrasies and process, resulting in some hugely underseen and underappreciated documentary shorts highlighting their restless and relentless creative drive. The Magic House series chronicles the band’s time writing and demoing what would become Violent, peering into the simultaneously free and expressive and endlessly frustrating writing period, and processing it through a hilariously self-deprecating and sardonic series of shorts that almost feel more like Fargo than real life. They quickly followed this with a more serious and experimental short documentary showing the recording of Violent, and the excellent Whether You Care or Not in partnership with Storyhive, which chronicles the band’s post-record release Europe tour and the transition period to their next record.

The group also released a series of live videos entitled PXTK, which they note as a live album despite only existing and hardly being promoted on their YouTube channel. The saturated neon glow of the captured performances underlies the colourful and playful feeling unleashed through their live performance and beautifully encapsulates what is so exciting about the band’s passionate live shows. The High School EP is paired with a series of dark, abstract music videos by frequent Vancouver-based collaborators Amazing Factory that add an acute emotional weight to the whole album. At every turn the band has worked to build a body of work that visually accompanies and adds to their music, making the songs and the records themselves only one part of their larger canon of work. With this in mind, it is no surprise Andrew Huculiak’s turn towards filmmaking was and continues to be so bold.

In 2014, Huculiak released his debut full-length film Violent into the world. The film was written by himself and his brother as a work that can pair with the album, but also stands alone. The soundtrack was created by and credited to the band, reworking motifs and melodies from the record into minimalist ambient works. I was lucky enough to catch the first Vancouver screening of the film with my Dad (by now as big a fan of the band as I am and proud owner of the soundtrack and DVD) and was blown away. The film is an absolute triumph, an incredible artistic statement from a visionary in Huculiak and an engaging, witty, and thematically dense piece of filmmaking. The micro-budget film was shot in Norway, translated to and shot in Norwegian – a language no one on the production team spoke – and features all unknown actors. The fact that it even turned out half-decent is a testimony to Huculiak’s vision and strength as a filmmaker, and Violent’s success on the indie circuit was well deserved. Huculiak followed this up with his sophomore effort Ash, released in 2019

Even with Huculiak’s success in the indie film world, he still made time for the demanding productivity of We Are The City. Their last five years saw the band pull away from traditional production and songwriting and diving deeper and deeper into experimentation. 2015’s Above Club is a deeply weird offering boasting thick synths, loose drum rhythms and a decidedly maximalist and warped pop energy. The band followed this with the announcement of two records, very much two sides of the same coin. At Night is a nervy, distortion-laden and abrasive effort made quickly and formed out of lost ideas from the record to follow. As the band has explained, the album serves as a precursor to what would become their final album – the aptly titled RIP. By design, At Night is a perfect counterpoint to the more restrained, patient and reflective RIP, which feels like a perfect culmination of the long and tumultuous journey of the band’s career. We Are The City is a group that has never gotten the recognition they so rightly deserve, but RIP feels like an offering from a band who has made peace with flying under the radar and meaning everything to a few people instead of being a footnote for many.

Despite their inherently underground stature, the band always felt larger than life to me. Seeing Huculiak on the streets of downtown Vancouver a handful of times left me near star-struck every time, and asking Cayne McKenzie a question at a Q&A after the first public Vancouver screening of Violent was almost nerve-wracking.

As their name implies, the community around this band was instrumental in their longevity. The band built a small but dedicated and tight-knit fanbase that they clearly care deeply for; though they have found success touring in Europe, their home base of British Columbia was a backbone for them, and the distinct feel of the Pacific coast can be felt throughout their canon of works. The band has always made sure to bring it home in their live performance; from a free New Year’s Eve performance at Canada Place downtown to a headline show at the legendary Imperial Vancouver to a more intimate, sold-out and self-described “trashy” gig at The Biltmore Cabaret, every time I was lucky enough witness to the band’s live show, their technical ability, wild chaotic and improvisational energy – particularly from Huculiak, a madman behind the kit if I’ve ever seen one – and raw power grew exponentially. The band’s records stand on their own, but the live show is a whole other beast in itself. A pure showcase of brash artistic expression, passion and joy only begins to describe it.

For the last few years of the band’s existence I was living in Montreal, a far cry from the lush pacific coast, pursuing and fuelling artistic and musical ambitions of my own. It was an incredible journey, but I am sad that over that time I missed some of the most interesting of the aforementioned conceptual projects and experiments the band has constructed. These projects range from low stakes to grand in scale, but they all underline the band’s passion for innovation, diving headfirst into their vision and building a world and a story around themselves.

One of the last projects the band embarked on was the RIP Store. The trio rented out a commercial space in downtown Vancouver and transformed it into a shared workspace and creative hub. The space was free to use, provided free internet, occasionally sold beverages, and hosted concerts featuring the band and many of their friends, peers and contemporaries including the likes of Teen Daze, Babe Corner and Hannah Epperson. The concept worked so well that the band even looked to take it on the road, aiming to book a full tour in unorthodox venues and art spaces. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic the concept was never able to come to fruition, with the band’s early 2020 Europe tour being their last. In promoting the RIP record, the band also rented a pop-up van which they parked in random areas around the greater Vancouver area, dropping coordinates on social media for eager fans to seek it out. When found, fans could access the van, which would be playing previously unheard songs from the then unreleased record on repeat until the van’s battery inevitably died.

Near the release of At Night, the band released My Dinner With We Are The City – a wry, cryptic riff on the classic film My Dinner With Andre – that sees the band ruminating on their career, the past and future, the nature of art and creativity, and their relationships with each other. The short film is at times a mystifying watch, vibrating with the odd sensation that there is something more to it below the surface. While it serves to promote the records in an off-handed way, more than anything the short provides a fascinating look behind the curtain at the realities and struggles of grappling with life as an artist.

Above all these projects, all the documentaries, all the outside forces around the music, hands down the most impressive experiment the band has ever put together is documented in another Storyhive documentary short. Above Club shows how the band (minor spoilers for the beginning of the documentary) faked a two-week long live stream of them supposedly recording their third record in Serbia, claiming to be recording it over the course of the livestream and promising to release the record as soon as it was completed. In reality, the band had scripted and pre-recorded the entirety of the livestream footage, sowing the seeds of deceit in the aforementioned Whether You Care or Not by scripting a scene of the trio negotiating for a recording space in Europe above a nightclub while on their Europe tour. The scripted livestream became more and more chaotic as the band pushed the limits of what they could get away with, bending the truth more and more and underscoring the way we deceive others and ourselves through social media. The whole social experiment is beautifully and concisely captured in the documentary, which is well worth watching even for those with no prior knowledge of the band, and has a lot to say about the role social media plays in our lives.

Any one of these projects would be impressive for a band to have pulled off, but for We Are The City to have done them all while consistently pumping out challenging and boundary-pushing records is extraordinary. Even through all of the chaos, highs and lows, experimentation and work the band put in over more than a decade, they have remained criminally underrated and underappreciated. The group has never stopped working hard to fulfill their wild artistic visions since their inception, and that passion and drive paid off in the way the band has affected me and all their other loyal fans. Their relentless creativity, perseverance and unapologetic weirdness has driven and inspired me to create to the best of my ability, and I know I’m not alone in that. The phenomenon that is We Are The City extends far beyond their music; it is always resting somewhere in the back of my head, keeping me focused on striving towards realizing my strangest and most uncompromising artistic ideals.

The end of the We Are The City era marked the beginning of a new one, and echoes of the band’s influence continue to inspire and enlighten even this long after We Are The City ended. They were We Are The City, and so are We.

Note: This article was previously published on October 28th, 2020 in The Permanent Rain Press. It has been edited.

Header photo, High School cover art credit to: Kirsten Huculiak

PS - I could not find links to view the Above Club or Whether You Care or Not documentaries. If you have access please reach out so the links can be added!