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UWUW
UWUW
We Are Busy Bodies - 2022
Michael Panontin
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UWUW (pronounced 'you-you') is a new trio consisting of guitarist/keyboardist Ian Blurton, bassist/keyboardist Jason Haberman and drummer Jay Anderson. Their self-titled four-track disc dropped in the early fall of 2022.
Of course, even Canuckistani Studies undergrads will know that Blurton is the elder statesman in the group, having been a stalwart in the Toronto indie scene ever since his days in Change of Heart. And it was precisely that experience that attracted the younger Anderson. "UWUW started with the simple idea of making music with someone I had never worked with but had admired," Anderson explained to CM. "Ian and myself had gotten friendly and would talk about records at great lengths, and so we decided to make some music."
The guys quickly brought in Haberman and with "no plan and very little direction" started to lay down some sounds for UWUW. They played for a couple of days in Blurton's studio, cutting those jams into song road maps. And that's when the group's musical vision, a curiously cinematic amalgam of pop, jazz and post-rock, started to take shape. "This album was assembled brick by brick from the ground up," Anderson notes. "I had always wanted to make a horn-heavy album and that was something that Ian and I had discussed. So I got Jay Hay to write arrangements with very skeletal info. I contacted Marker Starling and Drew Smith, who I both play with, to contribute lyrics and vocals."
Those horns are most obvious on the record's single, the six-minute-plus 'Scattered Ashes', which for all its screechy effects and unbridled cacophony is surprisingly catchy. There are other flashes of brilliance on UWUW as well, like the soaring guitar/keyboard assault on the prog-lite 'Staircase to the End of the Night', or the CSNYish harmonies.on 'Landlord', or even those eerie keyboard riffs on the closing 'Box Office Poison'.
This is an adventurous record. But UWUW is an adventure that comes without the usual tedium one finds on many debut discs and is definitely worth checking out
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