Future PEERS aren’t new to music. The four—Luke Correia-Damude, Michael Loebl, Antonio Naranjo and William Culbert—had previously performed as Boys Who Say No, achieving moderate indie success in Canada. Their modest success gained them a ‘mentorship’ from Kevin Drew (Broken Social Scene), as well as the attention of producer Shawn Everett (Weezer, Alabama Shakes, Julian Casablancas) who invited them to work with him to develop their sound and image.
Their self-titled LP is the culmination of these efforts. The album opens with ‘Fuck Noises’, which starts out as lo-fi garage rock, with heavily distorted shouty vocals and bass. It’s what you’d expect from a band born in a Toronto garage, but as the first verse came to an end I began to realise that I was going to have to adjust my expectations; a set of swirling synths begin to find their way into the mix while Correia-Damude’s angry, distorted screams transform into robotic, metallic vocals as the song takes a sharp turn into its psychedelic, indie-pop-infused chorus. It’s an interesting mix of sounds that work surprisingly well together.
The eclectic mix of sounds happens both within songs – like in ‘Fuck Noises’, as well as in ‘Time Went Away’, which is equal parts Daft Punk and The Strokes – and across the album. There’s (very) slightly more traditional lo-fi garage rock on there (‘Too Reserved’, ‘Craft’ and ‘For Friends’), but there’s also ‘Better Left Lost’ which sounds like it could be a Vampire Weekend song, and Start A Fire which dives into Passion Pit indietronica territory. If Future PEERS didn’t manage to quite pull off this mashing together of genres, it would be an interesting mess. Luckily for them, they did; the album manages to sound both diverse and cohesive, a fine line that many bands have failed to walk before.
On their SoundCloud page, the band say that they “make music that sounds like it might be from the future.” With how well they’ve managed to combine elements from past and present, I wouldn’t be surprised if it really was from the future.
Mikhail Hanafi