Music New Brunswick’s 2018 Rock Artist of the Year winners FM Berlin with locals Altered By Mom and June Body gang up for a cool alternative rock show at The Carleton on Friday, December 21st. Show time is 10 PM and admission is $10 at the door.
FM Berlin is a four-piece Alternative Rock band from Moncton, New Brunswick that sounds like The Police and The Strokes made a baby….in space. A bold claim which they own with sing-a-long Brit-rock swagger.
The band’s latest album, At Least You’re Having Fun, had a few false starts, “We recorded the entire album in a state of the art recording studio at the Dartmouth Nova Scotia community college, but we felt the sound wasn’t quite right.” explains the band’s frontman Corey Hachey. “We ended up putting together our own home studio in Moncton where we could spend more time getting the sounds right.” The album was then produced remotely (via email and skype) by two Toronto based producers, Jason Dufour (Tokyo Police Club, July Talk, Lights) and Josh Bowman (Matthew Good and The Balconies).
FM Berlin cadged its name from (Bassist) Glen Farquhar’s father who (in June of 1960) carried a concealed camera into Soviet occupied East Berlin, and was able to smuggle pictures of the bombed out city back to Canada.
FM Berlin is: COREY HACHEY (MAIN VOCALS) , MATT CLOWES (GUITAR, VOCALS), GLEN FARQUHAR (BASS, VOCALS) , NIC MICHAUD (DRUMS)
Born in Vancouver and raised in Toronto, Halifax’s newest transplant ALTERED BY MOM combines a knack for infectious melodies and classic songwriting with a quirky sense of humour and a tongue-in-cheek post-grunge aesthetic – like Sloan had a baby with Barenaked Ladies… and then that baby stole your cigarettes.
While BODY FEELS WEIRD (2016) introduced the bands’ quirky style and undeniable pop chops (witness campus radio gem, Joanne), the forthcoming TRAPPED IN AN MP3 (2018) is an entirely uncontainable beast in comparison, harnessing the energy and rawness of the band’s live show. These big shiny tunes are an exploration of analog love in a digital era, and, like a big warm hug that lasts slightly too long, are alternately heartwarming and menacing.
June Body joined the small community of Halifax-based alternative rock bands in early 2017 with the release of their first album, Star for You – a stripped-down, yet emotionally complex 8-track album recorded in frontman Connor James’s bedroom shortly after he moved from Toronto. Originally slated to be a solo project, the album evolved into what would become the band’s debut record with the addition of bassist Alexander Callaghan.
A year later, June Body’s sound was clearly becoming something completely different than what people had heard on Star for You. New York native Dillon Shillieto had joined the band to round out the trio on drums, and a bigger, punchier alt-rock sound was born. In early 2018, the band went into Halifax’s Echo Chamber studios to record their second release, Life from Underneath. Released in April 2018, the 6-track EP reveals a distinct sonic shift from the band’s debut that is evident within the first few seconds of the album. While retaining the catchy pop-rock qualities of the band’s debut, the new songs exhibit a much richer and somewhat darker instrumental quality, with lyrics that courageously dive into themes about the self, love, death and depression.
Drummer Dillon Shillieto’s departure from the band shortly after Life from Underneath’s release brought current drummer Jonny Renken on board in time for the band’s first tour; a slew of dates that began in Montreal and continued throughout Ontario in August 2018.