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Music

Meet NEEDS, the Hardcore Band That Eats Garbage

Even though they have a habit of rubbing their dicks on each other's faces, the Vancouver band are really a bunch of sweet guys.

Eating garbage directly out of a trash can, rooting through strangers’ backpacks and purses, getting death threats from a bartender after incessantly fiddling with a venue’s air conditioner mid-show. These are just a few of the things that have happened to NEEDS frontman Sean Orr during the Vancouver hardcore band’s most recent North American tour. “I like to go up to the drummer [Devin O’Rourke] and pull my pants down for some reason and show him my ass, my anus,” Orr explains sheepishly, speaking on the phone during a tour stop in Drake, ND. “Just talking about this doesn’t seem real. It doesn’t seem like me. I went up to him and I put my dick in his face. That’s so weird.”

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At a recent show in Long Beach, Orr says, “I was shoving fried chicken down my pants, let some other guy sing a song, drank candle wax, and set my hair on fire.” The rowdy frontman admits that he doesn’t always remember the things that he does on-stage, when he enters a blackout-like state without inhibitions. But while Orr might not be able to recall some of his own shenanigans, they make a lasting mark on audiences: the folks at Vancouver label File Under: Music were so impressed that they signed NEEDS and recently released the group’s self-titled debut LP. Even without Orr’s comical physical displays, his personality shines through on NEEDS. A quick glance at the tracklist conveys his absurd sense of humour, as song titles include “Did You Just Call Me Lord Fuckhead?” and “Clowns to the Left of Me, Dzhokhars to the Right.” And then there’s “We Forgot the Records to Our Record Release Party,” on which Orr switches between spine-chilling screams and conversational speaking as he asks “What am I doing? / No seriously, what am I doing? / 36 years old / 37 in a couple of months / In a hardcore band / Although it’s probably more like punk.”

Orr’s unhinged growls are supported by his bandmates’ explosive punk backing, as drummer O’Rourke and bassist Glenn Alderson hold down the pummeling rhythms while guitarists Derek Adam and Colin Spensley kick up a racket with their distortion pedals set to maximum. But as aggressive as most of the tunes are, NEEDS also has an undercurrent of atmospheric texture: “Rescue Don” begins the LP with hypnotic bass groove over which reverb-flecked guitars are overlaid, while “Nag Champion (Smoke Break)” is a mellow drone interlude. These sonic elements reflect a detail-oriented approach to recording in which the musicians captured their parts separately. “It was spread out over a couple days,” Orr remembers of the sessions with producer Jordan Koop (You Say Party, the Courtneys) at his Noise Floor studio on Gabriola Island, BC. “For a punk band, based on my previous experience, we took our time. I wanted it to be like those really nice-sounding albums in the early-2000s when screamo or punk was really sharp and nice and sexy. On our other albums, we wanted to sound like our live show. But I personally wanted it to sound sexy.” Whether it sounds “sexy” or not is up for debate: it’s hard to imagine getting down while listening to Orr repeatedly growl “Be afraid, motherfucker, be afraid” on “Clowns to the Left of Me, Dzhokhars to the Right.” Still, NEEDS is a sinister, ferocious juggernaut of an album. And, best of all, the quintet is going to be promoting it on the road, meaning that lots of audiences will be exposed to Orr’s crazy stunts.

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Noisey: NEEDS are known for having wild live shows. Was that something you tried to translate in the studio?
Sean Orr: I just get so lost in the music. That sounds really clichéd. People ask me, ‘Do you plan it out?’ Maybe a little bit—I’ll look around the venue and go, ‘I want to fuck with that.’ But it really is just like I become a totally different person. People tell me after [a show] what I’ve done, and I don’t believe it. It doesn’t sound like me. I’m quite a reserved person. I’m not shy, but people will ask my girlfriend, ‘What’s he like? Is he crazy.’ [She says] ‘He’s really a sweet, nice boy.’ As far as translating that into the record—when I do vocals, I kind of get it every time. It is pretty visceral, it is pretty raw. We just did a Daytrotter session and I was super nervous about that, and then as soon as I hear the music, everything’s fine. I do definitely lose myself in the process.

So is doing crazy stuff just what happens to you naturally?
Yeah, it’s just what happens to me naturally. We play with a lot of heavy bands, and I watch them and I love the music, but a lot of it’s so serious. Besides our song titles, which I know are pretty funny, the lyrical content is pretty serious. But I like looking out and seeing people smiling. That’s the funnest. They’re just laughing. That’s so rewarding to me, seeing people smile. It should be fun. I think it might rub people the wrong way—it might look douche-y or aggressive or masculine, but I think that if you pair it with the lyrics, you get it. I’ve had a lot of problems with mental health, and again it sounds clichéd, but music has saved me. It’s perfect. I just read the news constantly. I try to make jokes about the news and it’s really depressing, and the best thing for me is getting on stage and having a blast.

Talking about depressing news reminds me of your song “Clowns to the Left of Me, Dzhokhars to the Right.” I presume that’s a reference to the Boston bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev?
Yeah. We’re in the van right now listening to a podcast called The Last Podcast on the Left. They’re just making fun of serial killers. The darkest of dark subject matter, and it’s totally funny. It’s therapy. It’s a way to deal. You’re not making fun of it, it’s just a way to let it breathe. You’ve got a song called “We Forgot the Records to Our Record Release Party.”

Have you actually forgotten the records for a release show?
Yeah, we did, for our seven-inch [2013’s Rare Earths]. But this is also really funny: before we left on our West Coast tour [in May], we left our records at our release party at Fortune Sound Club. Maybe we don’t take things very seriously to a fault, but it does show that we’re just about the music. We had to buy them [records] off the label. We left them, and then the next day we didn’t have any records to sell, so we had to go to label office and pick up some more last-minute.

Your song “N.E.E.D.S.” has the refrain “Never-ever ending destruction of society.” Which came first, the name or the acronym?
It’s called a backronym. We joke that the band actually stands for “Not Everyone Enjoys Doing Sports.” It’s another commentary on the futility of hardcore music to make any sort of lasting or real change. It’s kind of a hopeless record, in a way. I never really think about it, but it’s really quite a dark record, thematically.

Alex Hudson still doesn't know what a "backronym" is - @chippedhip