Basement Revolver + Keegan Powell with FLWR GIRL FRI MAR 1, 2024 • 7PM DOOR, 8PM SHOW

Basement Revolver + Keegan Powell

with FLWR GIRL

FRI MAR 1, 2024 • 7PM DOOR, 8PM SHOW

General Admission Standing | 19+ | $20 (+SC/HST) ADV. Link to Tix

In 2020, the world stopped but Basement Revolver never really did: songs were written and recorded, a band member left, and another came to replace them. But, they couldn’t tour or rehearse or record in the usual way. The gap between making work, and being alone, resulted in serious introspection for the band. Their new album is full of the tension in a world that is shut down, but which expects productivity. This resulted in a deeper understanding of what kind of message the band wanted to present, and which stories they wanted to tell. The indie dreamgaze band from Hamilton, Ontario have been playing together for more than six years. Their co-leads Nim Agalawatte and Chrisy Hurn, have known each other for much longer. Their career started with a bang, being signed by the UK label fear of missing out on the strength of their 2016 break-out single, “Johnny”. They followed this up with three EPs in quick succession--an eponymous one in 2016, Agatha in 2017, and Wax and Digital in 2019. A full-length, Heavy Eyes, was released later that same year. This punishing schedule of releases was supported by concerts throughout Southern Ontario, the US, the UK, and Germany. 2020-2021 was supposed to be the same--a new full length album, Embody, and touring dates to support it. The pandemic meant less touring, and different ways of being in the world. But, there was also reconsideration of who the band was. They waited, and worked out what to do, eventually changing what they wrote. Coming out in the middle of pandemic meant that embodiment took on new forms, and this album is one of those ways forward. With its complex sonic landscapes, sometimes lush and sometimes stark, the album is of a piece with their earlier work, but it’s deeper and more self-aware. Embody is the sound of freedom, especially in the midst of such pain, both locally and globally. Trading tracks virtually, rehearsing online, and the isolation of that means that the album is full of hopeful waiting — to tour, of course, but also to engage these new understandings in the physical world. A companion performance album, Embody Live, followed in June 2023, offering a tantalizing glimpse of the band's nuanced and highly affecting power as a live band.

The origins of Keegan Powell's new album Fear Be Gone (May 10, 2023) came from the marriage of two unlikely yet related places which inspired Powell to approach songwriting from a new perspective. The marrying of the literary and the lyrical derived from a book he started writing called Scatterings; part allegorical, one part poetry, one part short stories. As the poetic parts of the book started to form, Keegan realized the poems could potentially build some of the narrative for an album he was writing serendipitously. The release arrives almost one year after its predecessor, Previous Pain, which charted on the NACC and earned multiple rotations on SiriusXM. Powell is also known for his work in Darling Congress, Chastity, and Teenage Kicks.

Ushering twentysomethings down the aisle of adolescence into adulthood, FLWR GRL’s brand of locket rock explores the fine line between the mundane and the meaningful. The Niagara-based songwriter Kiki Klassen (formerly of the Bae Beach Club) combines the vocal dexterity of Phoebe Bridgers with the soft-indie-rock inclinations of Julien Baker and Said the Whale. Klassen’s power pop songs have blossomed from casual bedroom demos into fully produced earworms. Her second single, “drink water”, was released in September 2023, with a debut EP doing well slated for winter 2023.