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Music

Chad Bacon's New EP Destroys Every Rock Trope You've Ever Cared About

It took Chad Bacon ten years to grow the balls to put out music, and now he's letting it hang.

Chad Bacon's self-titled debut EP is the sound of rock history getting levelled. Its five songs don't so much break the rules as they demonstrate that Bacon never knew what the rules were, which makes sense considering he's entirely self taught. The album was created through a process of "tinkering" where Bacon played around with an instrument until something stuck, then built each song from there.

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The result is something that seems familiar on the surface but sounds just barely alien underneath, like the inhabitants of a distant planet came here disguised as rock stars. A song like "Fooled Again" starts with a new wave stomp straight out of Joy Division but slowly morphs into something unsettling and sinister as it stays away from giving the listener any familiar comforts. Album opener "Trolley Girl" subverts its own jangley-punk roots with a high-pitched, howling vocals reminiscent of Daniel Johnston, bringing a new level of sincerity through imperfection.

"I guess it's just what I'm feeling at the moment," says Bacon of his songwriting. "On the EP's first track, I just wanted to find a guitar sound that I thought was cool because I knew I was going to make some kind of jangly song out of it, but I didn't know what the song was, so I started with the sound."

He describes a process of starting each song with a different instrument—any instrument he has lying around—then letting it go from there. "These songs are mostly built from what I have in my own home makeshift studio in the basement," he says. "I don't have access to a lot of shit, I just write with what I've acquired over the years. There are a few things I went out and bought when there were sounds I knew I wanted to add over it, but it was mostly just me at home tinkering with what I had."

As an untrained musician, he plays outside of any norms and approaches instruments with an almost child-like freshness—something that translates beautifully onto the EP. Working closely with drummer Rob Gordon, a permanent member of Owen Pallett's touring band, Bacon fleshes out his songs into full compositions with drums and occasionally synths. "He's really into Scott Walker and stuff like that so he likes to put in these things that are really unexpected," Bacon says of Gordon's contribution in the studio.

What's most odd about Bacon is that he took so long to get started. The Toronto west end native first picked up a guitar at age 16 but took over ten more years to start writing music. "I was just a shy crusty kid bouncing around the west end pit (named so because you get stuck in the west end and don't ever leave) that didn't have the balls to put something together on my own and put it out there. Then I woke up one day and realized my balls could be as big as I wanted them to be. So I strapped on a pair of elephant sized danglers to over compensate and started to get to work." Now he's hard at work, destroying one rock trope after another, and ready to wedge his way under your skin. It won't be hard—abrasive at first, his EP sticks with you, speaking to something bigger and deeper that you didn't even know was there.

Greg Bouchard took ten years to start blogging - @GregoryBouchard