1 of 2 2 of 2 Get the best of Vancouver in your inbox, every Tuesday and Thursday. Sign up for our free newsletter . Honesty is an invaluable currency in the world of punk rock, so it’s not shocking that Vancouver scene vet Daniel Sioui chooses to lay it all out for Precursor’s new album Thick & Thin .
As one might expect from a local supergroup that includes former members of Brand New Unit (drummer Gabe Mantle), In Bear Country (Blaine McNamee), the Fullblast (Andy Lewis), and Neck of the Woods (Travis Hein), the release has Precursor placing a premium on things like “authenticity and sonic excellence.” But Sioui—who Vancouver emo and punk fans know from his past in Carpenter and All State Champion—doesn’t stop there when talking about Thick & Thin . In a release for the record, he says: “This album sucked to make.
It took months of starts and stops because life gets in the way when you are married, almost 50 years old, and have three kids. Imagine driving to the burbs on random Sunday mornings before your kids’ dance class, violin, or soccer practices to scream your head off in a garage. It wasn’t hard to be pissed off.
I lost a few friends to suicide leading up to the recording and you can hear it. Spent months of nights scrawling lyrics in bed. Thick & Thin was the hardest album for me to make in my 35 years of recording.
” As anyone who recalls almost every band on Vagrant Records circa-2000, sometimes angst, rage, and black-skies depression have an upside: they are good for art. And based on unvarnished sonic exorcisms like “Where’s The Cavalry?”, that was definitely the case for Thick & Thin . So where’s the calvary? If you’ve ever been in a hole that seems bottomless, then you know it sometimes never arrives.
But if you’re lucky, you dig yourself out, and then do your best to get back in the fight no matter how unwinnable that fight might seem. Precursor looks like a band doing just that in the video for “Where’s the Calvary?”, which—cleverly—looks like a shot-on-video artifact from a time when Fall Out Boy was young and beautiful, and emo was the drug of choice for nine out of 10 guitar-fixated teenage depressives. As for Sioui, he’s proof that the power of music is that it can be an invaluable outlet.
“I’m so proud of the record now but there were many days I didn’t know if I could finish it,” he confesses. “I don’t have too many more records in me so I’m happy it’s released out into the wild. Just need my kids to grow up before I can play it for them.
” Video of PRECURSOR : WHERE'S THE CAVALRY?.
