Mid-February is the worst part of an academic year. The frame of my glasses freeze on my face, while all social interactions are interrupted when someone struggles to roll up the rim on their cardboard cups. L’horreur. The world tries to send signs that things will be ok, but today it doesn’t matter; the city’s sidewalks are either covered with the last snowfall or with the best skating rink east of Montreal. Thankfully, there’s music which provides a soundtrack to stay sane, between two sips of discount coffee and two mid-term essays. Allo, Viet Cong, t’es beau.
Viet Cong is a four-piece post punk power house from Calgary. After releasing an EP filled with promises last year, the band took their technical melancholy to the next level with their debut album. From the beginning on Newspaper Spoons, a tribal beat gets layered through hypnotic and dense distortion. There’s something special going on, while the band repeats “we’re bending newspaper spoons,” as a mantra. From this haze, the Albertans extract melodies to paint gray pictures, before deconstructing everything on Pointless Experience. Viet Cong presents hooks one after another on the standout album Continental Shelf. Bang, a glaucous, yet beautiful, post-nuclear landscape emerges as “Ice on the horizon, the skyline folding in.”
On Silhouettes, the band keeps a strong hand on their post-punk roots while reinventing the genre. This is a strong feat because instead of detaching themselves from their influences, the members wear them on their arm. The result proves that this aesthetic choice was the right one: every time Viet Cong seems to have reached their maximum potential they stand out and triumph with chaos and urgency, like on the album’s closure, Death. There’s also charm in the band’s controlled dissonance, like in the tensed and psychedelic jam of March of Progress. There’s some very complex things happening throughout the seven songs, yet this album serves a good pretext to sit back and forget the techniques in order to absorb the emotional pressure behind Viet Cong.
In the end, this album is a great reminder that sure, it’s alright to be sad, but things will be ok in the end. Even if half of Viet Cong is made up of members of Women (RIP), it’s time to put their past pedigree aside and enjoy this present offering.
