Wayne Petti finds his louder voice in Grey Lands
What’s the deal?
If Blizzard of Ozz, Frasier and Bruce Campbell’s marauding right hand from Evil Dead 2 have taught us anything over the years, it’s that one should never underestimate one single, savvy part severed from the whole.
Longtime fans of Oshawa-bred roots-’n’-roll ensemble Cuff the Duke have known for some time that frontman Wayne Petti does indeed harbour noisier ambitions.
Even when the recent Hamilton emigré convened such high-profile CanCon pals as Sarah Harmer, Hayden, Joel Plaskett and Greg Keelor to contribute to covers aplenty on Grey Lands’ Songs By Other People last year, though, it still felt like he was pulling punches. Not so much on this fall’s Right
Arm, which lays bare all those Sonic Youth and Yo La Tengo and Superchunk influences in an explicitly fannish manner that says “Yep, I can do this” with the infallible tunefulness of someone who knows he’s already perpetually enshrined in Blue Ro- deo’s collective speed dial but doesn’t want to flaunt it. And who has plenty of tunes of his own, anyway.
Sum up what you do in a few simple sentences.
“We are fuelled by the fumes of the steel plant in Hamilton,” Petti says. “Rock-’n’-roll meets molten metals. Heavier than iron, but not heavy metal! Part daydream, part fuzz-induced coma.”
What’s a song I need to hear right now?
“False Alarm.”
Proof positive that the universe knew what it was doing when it decreed that Neil Young and Sonic Youth should go on a tour together in 1991.