Like Eric’s Trip, another scrappy and melodic band from the Canadian maritime provinces, Halifax’s Surveillance are able to station that spot between sweet and harsh bliss.After a couple of well received demos of scrappy pop-punk, guitarist Dave Burns, bassist Rachel Fry and drummer Tri Le are aiming to release a new album Smells of the Future. Though Burns (who also runs the excellent Various Records) says the release date could be a ways off due to record store day clogging up the system he sent though a taster with the video for the song “Death”.Created by the band’s friend Julien Beale, the simple video features hectic images of trees, fires, cacti and cocktails, that seem to go well with Fry’s frantic speedy vocal delivery.We sent Dave some questionsto find out how the band are getting more aggro.Noisey: It’s no secret that you like Eric’s Trip. Do you have a favourite song or album?
Dave Burns: When Rachel and I started writing songs together it was very much in the style of Eric's Trip because that was one of the only bands that both of us truly loved and we used it as a common ground. It became a kind of crutch while Rachel learned the bass and I learned to relax and not put too much thought into what I was doing. While we've now dropped the crutch, so to speak, there's still a definitive element of that band imprinted on our music, which I'm guessing will be around for quite a while.
And my favourite Eric's Trip album is definitely Peter because it has the least amount of filler on it!Like Eric’s Trip you play with a lot of volume and a lot of melody. Eric’s Trip could do that but also make stuff quiet. Do you do quiet stuff too?
What Eric's Trip did with dynamics and sudden changes from very quiet to very loud and all that shit, that takes a lot of skill that we don't have. We tend to just crank it up as loud as it'll go and play as hard as we can 100% of the time. Although you don't really hear it on the recordings we've also become quite a lot more aggro with our vocals. This is partly for the sake of projecting over the band but also because I'd say we're a lot more pissed off than bummed out these days. We do write a fair amount of songs between the two of us and yes some of them are quiet, though I think it's safe to say that as a band we'll be getting a lot louder before we get any quieter.You have an older song called “You’ll Be Fine (Get Me the Fuck Out of Halifax)”. Was this written in jest or do you really want to get out?
At the time it was the most sincere statement I think (speaking for Rachel and I) either of us could have made, and accurately sums up how we were feeling. We really did want to get the fuck out of this city and away from virtually everyone our age involved with the local music scene! But that's a story told a thousand times already isn't it? In the end we didn't leave because we accepted that people are shitty everywhere you go, and there isn't some sacred grove where everyone is consistently honest, inspired, confident, politically conscious, etc. Plus where would we have gone - Toronto? Fuck.
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Dave Burns: When Rachel and I started writing songs together it was very much in the style of Eric's Trip because that was one of the only bands that both of us truly loved and we used it as a common ground. It became a kind of crutch while Rachel learned the bass and I learned to relax and not put too much thought into what I was doing. While we've now dropped the crutch, so to speak, there's still a definitive element of that band imprinted on our music, which I'm guessing will be around for quite a while.
And my favourite Eric's Trip album is definitely Peter because it has the least amount of filler on it!Like Eric’s Trip you play with a lot of volume and a lot of melody. Eric’s Trip could do that but also make stuff quiet. Do you do quiet stuff too?
What Eric's Trip did with dynamics and sudden changes from very quiet to very loud and all that shit, that takes a lot of skill that we don't have. We tend to just crank it up as loud as it'll go and play as hard as we can 100% of the time. Although you don't really hear it on the recordings we've also become quite a lot more aggro with our vocals. This is partly for the sake of projecting over the band but also because I'd say we're a lot more pissed off than bummed out these days. We do write a fair amount of songs between the two of us and yes some of them are quiet, though I think it's safe to say that as a band we'll be getting a lot louder before we get any quieter.You have an older song called “You’ll Be Fine (Get Me the Fuck Out of Halifax)”. Was this written in jest or do you really want to get out?
At the time it was the most sincere statement I think (speaking for Rachel and I) either of us could have made, and accurately sums up how we were feeling. We really did want to get the fuck out of this city and away from virtually everyone our age involved with the local music scene! But that's a story told a thousand times already isn't it? In the end we didn't leave because we accepted that people are shitty everywhere you go, and there isn't some sacred grove where everyone is consistently honest, inspired, confident, politically conscious, etc. Plus where would we have gone - Toronto? Fuck.