It’s one of those records that hurt: Canada’s Truck Violence release their second album The weathervane is my body – an intense, erratic experience emblematic of life under late-stage capitalism.
Words: Christina Wenig
It’s been two years since Truck Violence – consisting of singer-poet Karsyn Henderson, guitarist-banjoist Paul Lecours, drummer-percussionist Thomas Hart and bassist Chris Clegg – released their impressive DIY debut album Violence. On their dense follow-up, the young band has refined the virtues that make up the foundation of their sound: The weathervane is my body is the sonic equivalent of clenched teeth, of nails digging into the flesh of sweaty palms and tensed muscles. It’s a visceral record provoking a physical reaction, amplifying the anxiety of living under late-stage capitalism.
Truck Violence aren’t the only band pouring the moral rot of society into caustic, sludgy noise rock – similarities to their The Flenser labelmates Chat Pile are hard to ignore – but they do so in a strikingly unique manner. Drawing from turn-of-the-millennium post-hardcore and the backwoods banjo sounds of American folk (Show Me The Body send their regards), their clash of styles does not only embody the ambivalence of living in complex times like these, but more specifically the contrast of their rural French-Canadian upbringing and their current residence, Montreal. It’s the sound of being lost in the world, fallen out of time and place, searching for direction while different forces are tugging and pulling at you.
New messiah of a crooked reality
While song titles like My dog would fuck the air and Kindly, wash yourself summon up the tongue-in-cheek humor of early mathcore and scene bands, they hide a sort of warped poetry birthed from a mind in turmoil and trying to make sense of the world surrounding. Abstraction and metaphors cloak many of the observations and analyses of singer and lyricist Karsyn Henderson, whereas New Jesus, their most outwardly political song, hits you with brutal bluntness – targeting rape culture and Donald Trump as a new messiah for the MAGA cult.
The raw emotion of The weathervane is my body seeps through every sound of the album, its songs on the constant edge of falling apart and breaking down. Mirroring the discord and dissonance of our distorted and crooked reality, they move from complex to fractured and from harmonic to outright hostile. Heavy moments like the sledgehammer finale of Jaundiced and reaching for a mother are followed by the almost bluesy Compelled by Christy, only to further decelerate in the stripped-down banjo ballad House caught fire. Add the reduced indie rock opening of Stomach as a tower and the globules descending, and you end up with an unpredictable dynamic that quickly takes you hostage.
Catharsis through resignation
Every note is gritty like it’s been wrapped in sandpaper. In between the ebb and flow, the crescendos and downturns, there’s repetition – thoughts circling, mind stuck in a spiral. “Every morning I am clueless, and everyone is the same”, Henderson laments again and again, blurring the line between apathy and agony. Just like “I was born jaundiced.” And “I'm just trying to remember it, My own face.”
As unpolished and primal as all of this sounds, it’s at the same time thick with meaning and purpose – every tortured shout, every twisted riff and battered drum beat there because it simply has to be. And what lingers at the end? The almost disturbingly peaceful Kindly, wash yourselfThe weathervane is my body gives the impression that there might not be much of a difference after all.
