Weaves’ music makes sense onstage
Toronto quartet’s art-punk may seem impenetrable, but logic emerges in live shows
Weaves weave. That’s what they do. It’s right there in the name.
Rarely does one of the band’s lurching, latticed art-punk tunes actually end up where you thought it was going, but a sort of logic to how those songs don’t go where they’re supposed to go definitely does emerge.
The Toronto quartet’s playfully wayward esthetic isn’t nearly as impenetrable as it might appear at a casual glance. Self-conscious obfuscantism will only get you so far, after all, if you never give the people an actual song to hang their hats on.
And once you’ve got a handle on their capricious internal rhythms and errant audio flights of fancy, Weaves do have actual songs in abundance: sticky curio-pop dispatches that occasionally feel like they might have been beamed in from the loonier end of the “alt”-rock era once reigned over by the Pixies and the Breeders but mostly don’t really sound like anything but . . . Weaves.
“For us, it doesn’t sound that strange or different. It sounds like pop music, y’know?” says frontwoman Jasmyn Burke over a quick beer during a recent (and increasingly rare) trip home in a summer dominated by touring, touring, touring overseas and in the States. “It’s kind of funny when people have a hard time understanding us because, to us, it’s straightforward. I guess the more we travel and the more people see us the more they understand our language or something . . .
“I don’t know if people were necessarily on board right away. People were intrigued, but they didn’t actually know if they liked it or not. But I feel like, seeing us live, people start to understand it.”
Onstage is indeed where Weaves makes sense, which is why it’s probably wise that the band is committed to hitting the road as hard as it can for as long as it can now that its debut LP for supportive local label Buzz Re- cords, Weaves, is out there in the world.
The musically limber foursome — which also includes guitarist, cosongwriter, co-founder and Burke’s all-around right-hand man Morgan Waters, along with bassist Zach Bines and drummer Spencer Cole — returns from a month-long run of dates in the States for a hometown show at the Horseshoe Tavern on Saturday, before leaving town again with similarly buzzy Buzz labelmates Dilly Dally for a September’s worth of shows in the U.K. and Europe.
Burke, an infallibly charming stage presence who previously fronted Rattail, is willing to put in the work to make a solid go of Weaves.
And that work is already tangibly paying off.
“Sometimes I think people aren’t convinced that they might like us until they see us,” she says. “So it was interesting, just on this last tour, seeing people tell their friends to come see us in another city.
“We started getting this wave of people who had their friends tell them to come see us. ‘You might be hesitant if you hear them online but come and see them.’
“You can do press and you can talk about the album, but really you don’t actually know how people are feeling. So when you get on the ground level and start pushing the record it’s kind of exciting to see, like, someone from the U.K. who drove two hours to see us. “We had one person who came to see us in one city and he loved us so much he brought all his kids to the next show. And then the kids buy T-shirts and hopefully they tell their friends and blah, blah, blah . . .
“We’re trying to make catchy music that isn’t isolating anybody. We were never really that interested in playing to a scene or a certain niche of people.
“We had goals and aspirations as musicians. And also it was refreshing when I met Morgan because I felt like he wanted to do well and so did I. And it’s OK to admit that, y’know?”
“For us, it doesn’t sound that strange or different. It sounds like pop music, y’know?” JASMYN BURKE WEAVES FRONTWOMAN