We Are The City

Genre: Rock
Secondary Genre: Alternative Vancouver, British Columbia Canada Contact

Three piece progressive indie rock act. Since forming in 2008, Kelowna, BC's We Are The City has become one of the most exciting & unpredictable forces in the Canadian music scene.

Print Version

Artist Information

Biography

Management:
"Parkside" Mike Renaud
info@hiddenpony.ca

Band contact:
theband@wearethecity.ca

Label:
Hidden Pony Records
info@hiddenpony.ca

Booking:
Rob Wright - SL Feldman & Assoc
wright@slfa.com

CDN Publicity:
Julie Booth - Freshly Pressed PR
julie@freshlypressedpr.com

US Publicity:
Brendan Bourke - Canvas Media
brendan@canvasmediapr.com

For the members of We Are The City, the four years since 2009's In a Quiet World have been filled with radical change, both personal and musical. They've undergone lineup alterations, relocated from Kelowna to Victoria to Vancouver, reached their 20s, built up a fan base across the country and painstakingly honed their sound. All of this experience, both good and bad, went into making their sophomore album, Violent, out June 4 through Hidden Pony Records.

High school friends Cayne McKenzie (vocals/keyboards) Andrew Huculiak (drums) and David Menzel (guitar) began plotting this album almost as soon as the first one was done. Their future looked bright, as they won $150,000 in January of 2010 by placing first in 102.7 The Peak's prestigious PEAK Performance Project contest.

Things got put on hold, however, after Menzel left the band in the summer of 2010. The new songs were abandoned, and We Are the City — which by then included interim guitarist Blake Enemark — released their stopgap High School EP in 2011. Although not the album they originally envisioned, High School earned rave reviews and helped to expand their following, with The Vancouver Sun giving it five stars and declaring it a "mini masterwork."

Along the way, the band continued to perfect their live chops, touring across Canada four times, playing shows throughout the U.S. with Said the Whale, and opening for the likes of Mother Mother, Sam Roberts, Tokyo Police Club, Braids and more.

We Are the City continued to gain momentum when Menzel returned, and the guys resumed work on the follow-up they had previously set aside. They wrote the rhythm parts in a pool house in White Rock, BC, later fleshing out these tunes in a teardown home known as Magic House, which was demolished soon after the writing session. During this process, they scrapped much of their old material and crafted a new batch of songs that reflected the life-altering changes and musical maturation of the past few years.

"This is the album that we've wanted to make for a long time — for four years or even longer," observes Huculiak. "We've been in this purgatory, where I knew what I wanted to create with Cayne and David, but how did we get there? Now we've finally gotten there."

Produced once again by Tom Dobrzanski (Said The Whale, the Zolas, Hey Ocean!) at his newly constructed Monarch Studios, Violent is an album of soaring highs and hushed comedowns, with dense syncopations going toe-to-toe with noise-soaked crescendos and delicate pop melodies. "King David" moves from aggressive distortion to gentle acoustic plucking to swirling ambience, while "Bottom of the Lake" places marimba tinkles atop a gritty guitar backdrop, and the cerebral "Baptism" builds towards the album's most thunderous climax.

Huculiak explains, "What we're interested in is contrast. Musically contrasting hooky, poppy things with very experimental ideas." McKenzie adds, "Ups and downs, louds and quiets. Negative and positive themes."

It's this sonic roller coaster that inspired Violent's multi-faceted title. The title's implications are both positive and negative, straddling the line between the beautiful and the abrasive and encompassing the full scope of We Are the City's musical maximalism. Menzel observes, "If we're choosing synonyms for 'violent,' it would probably be 'intense.'"

Violent will be followed by a feature-length film written by We Are the City and filmed by Vancouver's Amazing Factory Productions in Norway. With a script penned entirely in Norwegian — despite the fact that the band members don't speak the language — this subtitled film is a companion piece to the record; the score utilizes melodic motifs from the songs, while the story shares themes with the lyrics. "The film goes as a companion to the record, but it's not a must-have," McKenzie notes. "They both stand alone."

We Are the City's restless sense of artistry has led the musicians through years of self-discovery as they have continued to strive for the next creative peak. Now that they've finally arrived with Violent and its accompanying film, there's no question that the journey has been worthwhile.

Instrumentation

Cayne McKenzie - Vocals / Keys
Andy Huculiak - Vocals, Drums
David Menzel - Guitar / Vocals

Discography

Violent - LP out June 4th, 2013

Mourning Song / Morning Song 7" - September 20 2011 CDN / Oct 4 2011 US
Vinyl available in stores, digital download from iTunes and Bandcamp. Current single "Morning Song" recently added to CBC Radio 3

High School EP - March 22 2011 / Oct 4 2011
CD, Vinyl, in stores & online. Download from iTunes
Single "Happy New Year" earned rotation nationally on XM Satellite Radio Canada, 100.5 The Peak FM Vancouver, Live 105 Halifax, The Zone 91-3 Victoria, Rock 95 Barrie, and more.

In A Quiet World - January 15 2010
Available from www.wearethecity.ca, Amazon, iTunes
Music video for "Astronomers" featured on Much Music

Official Website

http://www.wearethecity.ca

Links

Audio

Video

We Are The City - Happy New Year - Music Video

Photo Gallery

Press

Setlist

Basic Requirements

PDF Rider

WeAreTheCity-Rider2013.pdf

Calendar

There are no upcoming dates at this time.