Shane Watt Bannd
Low Rent Folk
Totally Real Probably Not Fake
2 September 2022
Before delivering an assessment of the Shane Watt Bannd’s fifth album, Low Rent Folk, I know they’ll forgive me as I chat a little about the spectacularly named label on which it is issued: Totally Real Probably Not Fake (TRPNF). I was magnetically drawn to TRPNF’s website when listening to Low Rent Folk on the label’s Bandcamp page, charmed by this wonderful description of their operation:
“My name is A. Yester Crowdlee and I would personally like to welcome you to Totally Real Probably Not Fake. I have been the accountant for a small book publishing company for the past 45 years. Luckily I met a few scientists, musicians and artists. Totally Real Probably Not Fake is exploring subjects that lie on the border of geometry and philosophy, physics and metaphysics.”
Clicking on the link to the Peachland, British Columbia-based label’s site, I encountered a smorgasbord of delightful oddities and wonky experimentation, at least in the main. Scattered throughout there are bands named Ironic Butter Fly and Tornadoes of Blood; a concept album about potatoes; album and song titles including Decasyntax – Squish Butternut Squash; Pharmacy Agent Green’s Bycycle God Mechanism; Hundreds of Rolls of Toilet Paper, and – best of all – Gherkins, Bonfires, Butt Rock – A Short Conversation on the Subject of Preserves. Yep, there is plenty of fascinating sonic eclecticism to delve into therein, including among the content were five albums by Shane Watt Bannd (yes, two n’s), this latest of which – at least alongside most of their idiosyncratic labelmates – is comparatively orthodox in respect of compositional structure. By this, I mean that the songs are conventional songs, as opposed to cut-up collages or leftfield explorations of this or that musical persuasion.
This is folk-rock with a slight retro twist, performed in a beautifully loose manner, seemingly sometimes on the point of collapse, but all the better for that edginess. I can hear all kinds of classic reference points – Buffalo Springfield, America, the Grateful Dead, and the Allman Brothers, for example – but it’s all delivered in a scuffed-up, garage-y, lo-fi style. More recent ‘Cosmic Americana,’ so to speak, such as Sean Thompson’s Weird Ears, Color Green, and even early My Morning Jacket also spring to mind, and like all of the aforementioned, it’s bursting with melody, great harmonies, and is seriously groovy stuff. I’m loving it, but as good as it is, I must protest the album’s brevity at a scant 23 minutes.
Low Rent Folk follows 2015’s Lifelines and Lovelines, Elan’s Diner (2020), last year’s Travellers in Distress, and a 20-track compilation from 2019 entitled Everything You Ever Wanted to Hear…, all of which were issued on TRPFN. Across the five releases, the band – sorry, bannd – appears to have a fluid-ish personnel, but the current line-up consists of Watt, Marie-Noëlle Reyntiens, Lewis Braden and Blaise Watt, the latter of whom has also issued material of a fractured folk nature on the same label. Watt’s previous releases should also float your boat if you like Low Rent Folk.
I have a young Dutch friend obsessed with creating highly detailed maps of fictitious towns and cities; one, in particular, he has named Venneburg. He gives every one of the hundreds of roads and streets an imaginative name, and they are truly amazing works of art. Although considered semi-fictitious in his instance and taking a different stylistic approach, aside from music, the Montréal-based Watt also makes these kinds of stunning map paintings and has been doing so for over two decades. His work has appeared in such as The Guardian, and he has been exhibited all over the world. Unlike Watt, however, my friend doesn’t make cool music.
Until today, I had not heard of the Shane Watt Bannd or the evidently fabulous Totally Real Probably Not Fake, but man, am I glad that our esteemed Editor-in-Chief alerted me to them to considerably brighten a humdrum day, the highlights of which were a haircut and a first airing of the gorgeous new Tan Cologne album. As a consequence, A. Yester Crowdlee can rest assured I’ll be diving into his roster’s wares in earnest over the next little while, and I’ll certainly be keeping my ears open for whatever Watt and his cohorts deliver from this point on. I recommend you do likewise.
https://trpnf.bandcamp.com/album/low-rent-folk-2
http://totallyrealprobablynotfake.com/