Album Notes

Ladies and gentlemen, here’s the story..,

Terror takes many forms. To some, it’s wild animals. For others, it’s speaking in public. For 92% of rock bands in the world today, terror comes in an easily defined form - The Smears.

Why be afraid of this four-piece outfit from Vancouver, Canada? Because there’s nothing more soul-crushing than trying to occupy a stage after some bunch of young misfits have run through a blistering set and trashed the audience’s emotions. It’s enough to make you put down your instruments and buy yourself a taxi license.

The Smears aren’t just the best live band in an era when great live performances are as rare as hen’s teeth. They have also redefined catchy punk-pop. Here, for future reference is the new definition:

So Scared.

A song so catchy that I defy you listen to the song twice and not find yourself humming it tomorrow. Seriously, there’s a tenner in it if you’re not going “ooh oo-ooh ooh ooh” at breakfast.

The kind of material that The Smears consistently turn out verges on alchemy. So, even though we’ll never really understand how it is that these elements come together to form something so monstrously magical, let’s tempt fate and peek inside the box...

Rene - the singer, the lyricist, the powerhouse - stands in front. When she’s not belting out tunes with the conviction of a political revolutionary, she strangling Dustin with his own guitar cord.

Dustin - the imp of the perverse, the human dynamo - is never far away. Try to get a picture of this fucker - it can’t be done. He never stands still long enough.

Squid - the towering menace, the dark handsome stranger - slings a bass the way god and nature intended - low in tone and low on the hips. He doesn’t speak, he just rumbles.

Ange - the machine, the immaculately coiffed killer, the brutal batterer of innocent beats - does what a good drummer should. Beats the shit out of things with unerring accuracy.

But as extraordinary as these individuals are, no one could have ever predicted what would happen when they met. The whole is so much greater than the sum of the upstarts.

Look, as a great man once said, talking about music is like dancing about architecture. I’m never going to be able to come close to explaining this band in mere words. But you, you lucky bastard, don’t need me. The Smears have released their first full length recording -
Asthenic Process - and they are finally ready to take their barely controllable live performance out into the world to inject some life back into an industry that has become tired, complacent, and irrelevant. Don’t take my word for it - go, listen, observe, feel, think, sweat, and when you wake up the next day prepare to spread the word.

For a sneak peak, check out the video for So Scared on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVyjd5RM0Ts