It’s difficult to talk about Ought Montreal’s buzzy post-punk band du jour without talking about the 2012 Quebec student protests. Music journos of course latched onto the narrative because the band’s label Constellation Records referenced the city’s clanging casseroles in the band’s early press releases. But it wasn’t without merit: The band began playing together during the protests and as then-students at McGill University they were drawn together by their taste in music and radical politics. Bassist Ben Stidworthy in fact says he met his bandmates — all expats in the city including New Hampshire-born vocalist-guitarist Tim Beeler New Jersey-born keyboardist Matt May and Australian drummer Tim Keen — not at a show but while organizing around political causes.
“I’d been working at Portland State University and [non-academic staff] had been renegotiating a contract” he says. “True to form in the neoliberal age they were getting completely fucked over. When I got into McGill the exact same re-contracting was happening so it was really easy to see the parallels and jump right in in terms of mobilizing. Within a week I met someone who was flyering at the gates of the university and I just asked ‘How can I help?’ He told me how to get involved and I started going to meetings.”
From these meetings he was put in touch with other like-minded activists — namely May and Beeler — whose house was littered with instruments and “who were always down to play.” They hadn’t entertained the idea of Ought yet — their wonderful debut LP More Than Any Other Day only came to fruition this year — but the house mobilized plenty of like-minded musicians: Their mini-scene eventually shifted to a practise space on Avenue Van Horne in the city’s Mile End neighbourhood. From there a loose confederation of D.I.Y. bands formed including the now-defunct Femmaggots post-hardcore act Mands tourmates Lung Butter and May’s solo noise projects.
Now that group of friends — Ought’s cautioned not to call it a scene — has crystallized around Brasserie Beaubien a venue-cum-watering hole. “It’s just a common space where we all meet. The other thing that happened is that Tim Keen and Matt May — along with all these other people from some of the bands — started a tape label called Misery Loves Co.” adds Stidworthy. “We just did the second round of tapes at [Montreal venue] Drones Club up at Beaubien and Parc. It was really amazing they put out some really good stuff.”
Yet for their More Than Any Other Day LP (and their just-released 10-inch Once More With Feeling which features re-recordings of some of their earliest material) the band linked up with anti-capitalist Montreal mainstay Constellation Records. While their jilted urgent take on post-punk has earned them favourable nods to The Feelies Fugazi and the Talking Heads — likely thanks to Beeler’s talk-sung histrionics — Stidworthy says those comparisons while flattering aren’t particularly applicable.
“In music journalism it’s about creating these reference points and pointing to lineages but half the bands people use as reference points I haven’t even heard a lot of” says Stidworthy with a laugh. “I know Beeler had never heard the Feelies or other bands like that. I wasn’t listening to any of the bands we’ve been compared to except for like Television and even then I was just kind of enjoying Marquee Moon and then putting it away.”
It’s Stidworthy’s way of saying the band’s sonic alchemy isn’t staged: They’re not trying to sound like anyone specific. Instead the bassist suggests that Ought’s visceral sound comes from experimentation. Beeler who cut his teeth on folk music often ad libs his vocals (which often results in absurd yet bizarrely charged lyrics: “Today more than any other day I am prepared to make the decision between two per cent and whole milk” he sings joyously on More Than Any Other Day’s title track). They’re wilfully experimental even while recording (Once More With Feeling’s “New Calm Part III” says Stidworthy was the result of a one-hour in-studio jam). The band is a collision of classically and self-trained musicians.
“Tim Keen and Matt May understand the theory side of music whereas me and Tim Beeler don’t really at all” says Stidworthy. “It’s helpful because some say you have to know the rules before you break it while others say it’s more authentic to have music be pure self-expression where you’re not taught rules. I’m not sure where I stand on that. However having those two educational lineages really helps.”
He laughs. “But no one’s ever saying ‘Well maybe we should use a diminished seventh in this section of the song or change things to make it more visceral.’”
