Spectreview: Casper Skulls – Knows No Kindness

Released: November 12, 2021

Alternative Rock
(Indie Rock)
(Art Rock)

-LIGHT SLATE BLUE-

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“If thunder is facing the rest of our lives as they’re meant to be
Could you send me down to the water where the Spanish and Sauble meet”

To most everyone, the community of Massey, Ontario would be but a blip on the radar. It’s technically not there anymore – today, it’s a township named after the rivers that demarcate it, its borders holding a few thousand deep and bearing few points of interests. The thing about small towns is that they’re often most notable for the homogenous experiences they produce, not the curious specifics of their history. Especially of late, it’s more common for artists to evoke the typical humdrum existence of living in one rather than wax about a death here or a crime there. Yet Melanie St-Pierre takes up the challenge on Casper Skulls’ second record, and by turning her birthplace into its main character, she adds a beating heart to the band’s high-minded take on alternative.

Casper Skulls were a good band even before they were nominated for a SOCAN Songwriting Prize. Mercy Works may have introduced the band as an inspired – if mildly derivative – offspring of late-era Sonic Youth, but standout songs like “Lingua Franca” and “Colour of the Outside” hinted at something more unique and substantive. On Knows No Kindness, the Ontario rock band dig even further into those qualities, coming out with a strikingly clear picture of how well they understand their strengths.

One big change concerns new drummer Aurora Bangarth, whose inherent sense of musicality shines through on several cuts. The wood blocks on “Rose of Jericho” form but one example, as does her atmospheric tom hits on “Monument” and her decision to turn “Ouija” from a standard four-chord jam into a bluegrass workout. Of course, backing her up in most of those instances are guitarist Neil Bednis and bassist Fraser McClean, whose individual contributions (Bednis’ brilliant solo on “Rose of Jericho” and McClean’s ambient pattern on “Monument”, respectively) make them some of the strongest cuts on the record.

More notably, St-Pierre takes lead vocals on every track here, a strong decision considering how often she stole the show on the band’s debut through her rounded, lightly rasped voice. She similarly owns slow-paced showstoppers like “Stay The Same” and “Knows No Kindness,” as well as more forceful cuts like “Tommy” and “Witness.” Choosing to move away from the male/female vocal dynamic that defined Mercy Works helps move the band further away from those niggling Sonic Youth comparisons, and it also highlights what the band does best here: marry the lyrical erudition and ersatz structure of art rock with the workmanlike pleasures of folk-laced alternative (a la Neko Case).

St-Pierre dedicates much of Knows No Kindness to the place of her upbringing, coloring its history with characters that may or may not be fictional. She does so with the same novelist’s eye for detail and poignancy that lifted the band’s debut, and yet it’s that sense of focus that resonates. She and the band keep the record swirling with winter snow and the gentle reminder of death that commonly accompanies it.

The world she describes is a sieve in motion: life exits the body (“Witness”); love leaves for good (“Rose of Jericho”); ghosts inhabit the buildings (“Ouija”); people leave and never come back (“The Mouth”). St-Pierre writes about the fallout of that motion, whether it’s the solitary figure in the dark attic on “Tommy,” the hapless widower on “Ouija,” or her own demons on the true-to-life “Witness” (which, perhaps not coincidentally, borrows from another ‘90s-based purveyor of innocence waylayers, even though it inhabits more personal than populist realms). Her characters live trapped in the cloistered confines of their origin points, facing down obsolescence without the ability to conceive an escape, the chill of the winter a fitting constant. But while her words may read fatalist, her curiosity and resolve keep the record out of the melodramatic, patronizing mire. On “Knows No Kindness” she conveys emotion without being emotional, and her hushed volume on “Monument” lends a reverence that anchors its lightweight drift.

Because St-Pierre writes densely, the effect is so subtle that it might take a few listens for it to sink properly. Once you discern images layering over each other, it becomes hard not to notice the world she’s building. The question of murder on “Thesis,” for instance, is brought to an ironic life on “Witness,” while the deathly body that may link “Tommy” and “Ouija” could inhabit the post-mortem rumination of “Monument”. Like the rivers intertwined at its center, Knows No Kindness flows from one aged snapshot to another with both an easy grace and a surprising depth, proving that Casper Skulls are some of the more devastatingly sharp acts at the fringes of Canada’s indie sphere.

Recommended for freezing over.