The Witness

Description

MONTREAL EXPERIMENTAL ROCK BAND’S 5TH ALBUM CHANNELS THEIR PRIMAL INSTINCTS. When you’re a band that’s been around for thirteen years and toured to every corner of the globe, there comes a point when the veil of mystique must be fully lifted. Up until now, Montreal experimental rockers SUUNS have reveled in remaining in the dark, a silhouette disappearing into the fog, putting out albums that rested comfortably in ambiguity and innuendo. Lately, the band seem to be more at ease with their own internal workings. This new sense of ease is undeniable on SUUNS’ fifth album, ‘The Witness’, their first for the Joyful Noise Recordings label. After Max Henry’s departure as a full-time member in 2018 but still a studio collaborator, and the singer’s move to Paris, a new challenge arose for the trio comprised of Ben Shemie, Joe Yarmush and Liam O’Neill: to find themselves again both socially and creatively. Self-recorded and self-produced over most of 2020 — a year of strife, solitude and reflection — ‘The Witness’ finds the band holding a magnifying glass to their own default state. It is an abrupt departure from the previous album, ‘Felt’, which haphazardly harvested ideas in their embryonic version. ‘The Witness’, on the other hand, pours SUUNS’ music into a more complex mold, which forces the band to embrace the dynamism of their live performances and urges singer Ben Shemie to approach his lyricism with an unfailing frankness. More than any other SUUNS record, ‘The Witness’ uses a jazz mentality of conceiving a continuous mood over the notion of separate chapters. It was a conscious decision to make the album sound like one song. There is a level of relaxation, an acceptance of the group's primal instincts, and a concentrated attempt to maximize and revise the instincts in question. ‘The Witness’ is about the idea of a collective witness to the era we are living in now and the connectedness of what we all have in common. There is also the idea of being a witness to all kinds of things and how desensitizing that can be. Perhaps unintentionally, SUUNS have always been a strangely intimate band, and with ‘The Witness’, they have become aware of the extent of this themselves. Although the world is becoming an increasingly warped and confusing place, ‘The Witness’ throws out a sonic lifeline to latch on to, reinforced by years of friendship, alchemy and trust. For a band known for its cryptic magnetism, ‘The Witness’ marks SUUNS’ most generous, stripped-down and touching work to date.