Music
The best kept secret in music
Press
Post-grunge, kinda Beatles, kinda Sloan. They were very good! - Now Magazine, Toronto
June 10, 2004 Pop group The Heard Mentality, whose musicians have roots in Sarnia, will be performing at this summer’s Bayfest. The band won a contest presented by Finger Eleven, who are performing at Bayfest and are one of Canada’s current premier rock acts. The contest invited bands to submit a song through Finger Eleven’s website, to be selected to open for the band at one of their summer concert dates. The Heard Mentality won the Bayfest slot with their song, “I Guess I’ll Do”, which appears on the band’s full-length self-titled debut album from 2003 (available through www.indiepool.com)
Members of The Heard Mentality have close ties with Sarnia. Three of the four members – Stephen Scarrow, Darcy Windover, and his brother Michael Windover - were in Sarnia’s Fab 4 + 2, a Beatles tribute band that sold out Sarnia’s Imperial Performing Arts Theatre in summer 1998. The Fab 4 + 2 performed to raise money for the Imperial’s restoration, and were subsequently recognized as honourable donators.
The group formed an original pop band called Corduroy at the University of Western Ontario in 2000, and in 2003 changed their name to The Heard Mentality.
- http://www.sarniabayfest.com/news.asp
Discography
Yup. Corduroy. 2001.
The Heard Mentality. 2003
There are mp3 samples from our current album, as well some live tracks, on our website:
www.theheardmentality.com
Photos
Feeling a bit camera shy
Bio
THE HEARD MENTALITY - BIO
The members of The Heard Mentality were quick to turn the isolation of their small town Ontario upbringings into a musical obsession. By absorbing the psychedelic vibes in Neil Young’s former home of Omemee, or feeling the Motown funk of Detroit radio stations from across the river in Sarnia, their collective ears were open to everything from sixties pop, to nineties alternative, to the country and western that populated their rural towns. They began to hear how all this music could somehow fit together, and as it grew like an ever-expanding pop symphony in their heads, they knew that somehow it needed to get out.
Jump to May 2002, when a group called Corduroy, well-known in London and Toronto for its vocal harmonies and striking pop sensibilities, is reduced by two members. Taking the loss as a chance to expand themselves, the remaining members, along with a new bass player, focused their collective energies into new and interesting directions. With this revitalization came a new name: The Heard Mentality.
In the next year, the band’s live shows beamed with the excitement of new material and a constant sense of possibility. The Heard Mentality opened the ears of audiences with the urgency and individuality of each song. Stepping up to the challenge of such Canadian indie favorites as The Parkas, Nero, The Two Minute Miracles, and The Rude Mechanicals, prompted the band to try and fit this energy into a format that their fans could take home.
Recorded at Chemical Sound (in Toronto) by James Heidebrecht, and mixed by Stephen Pitkin (of The Flashing Lights), their album combines a unique approach to song writing with their compelling brand of vocal harmonies, and delivers it in an exciting array of pop numbers. From the indie stomp of ‘That’s What They Told Me’ to the backwoods harmonies of ‘Down to the River’ to the stadium worthy ‘Freeway’ to the tender ballad ‘Rebecca’s Song’, the first half of the album is true pop genius. While the second half explores a slightly darker side, with much more texture and experimentation, it still retains what many have come to know as the ‘Heard Mentality sound’.
In June of 2004, The Heard Mentality was chosen by Finger Eleven to open for them at Sarnia’s Bayfest (also featuring ZZ Top, Brian Adams, and The Tragically Hip).
The Heard Mentality has an idea: before the frail body of rock and roll sighs its last ‘oh baby!’, they want to transplant the organs of every other kind of music. Maybe then, rock and roll will again be filled with the possibilities that made it the bold new sensation it once was.
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