UWUW: Scattered Ashes
Jaunty horns, sweet Afrobeat guitar, and warm vocals meld nicely here.
By Kerry Doole
UWUW: Scattered Ashes (We Are Busy Bodies): This track is the first offering from a new project that pools the talents of some Toronto scene veterans. The tag "supergroup" is a mite presumptuous, though guitar hero Ian Blurton (Change of Heart, C'mon, and many more) has a national profile. He is joined here by idiosyncratic singer/songwriter Marker Starling (aka Chris A. Cummings), Drew Smith (d Drew Smith (Bunny, The Bicycles), Jason Haberman (Dan Mangan), and Jay Anderson (Badge Epoque Ensemble, Biblical).
A press release explains that "UWUW came into being when Jay Anderson and Ian Blurton came together through a run of shows, backing mutual friend and singer/songwriter, Kate Boothman as her drummer, and guitarist, respectively. Realizing they didn’t want an instrumental record, they layered on bright horns and smooth vocals, lifting the songs from instrumental jams, to the undefinable yet distinctive sound that is, UWUW."
The result is a self-titled debut album coming out on Oct. 21 on one of Canada's most prolific and interesting indie labels, We Are Busy Bodies. Scattered Ashes starts with jaunty horns and sweet Afrobeat guitar, prior to the introduction of Cummings' warm vocals. The song is neatly layered, and the sunny vibe projected would make for fine patio listening.
Describing the song, Marker Starling states “I attempted to shoehorn every stray apocalyptic thought I had circa Summer of 2021 into the song, including readings from the screenplay of Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville (1965). The world is ending, or perhaps, as Sun Ra believed, we're already past the end of the world. You might end up dying for a cause, or even "just because." Who knows what tomorrow may bring, and like The Zombies, being forever Hung Up on a Dream—in this case, a lost vision of a kind of hippie or punk utopia—is the only way to live your life, the only way to maintain a healing state of mind."
Heady stuff, and we are excited to hear more.
Links
Publicity: Chad Cornies, No Rules PR
