A/V zine
Pair 3
Band:
WLMRT
Artist:
Alexandra Cooney
Self-Afflicition
by Alexandra Cooney
Intrigued by the opportunity to get out of her comfort zone, Alex Cooney wanted to explore how music could directly influence the outcome of a piece.
Alex’s recent work explores how everyday moments present unique and beautiful oddities that are often under valued, by incorporating self representation in day to day tasks.
When she was given the punk musical stylings of WLMRT’s song "Soap Time" - something completely out of her bubble - it prompted her to approach the subject matter through a projected lens of how the musicians may have written their album.
Drawing from influences of early punk rock artwork which utilizes shocking imagery in unusual scenes with bold, contrasting colours, she wanted to illustrate how the lyrics in "Soap Time" have a nonsensical but meaningful storyline. Lines such as “read[ing] my park in the book stoop again”, “smoking cigarettes between [their] toes”, and “eating frozen milk outside" all project an undertone of being happy while in placid discomfort.
So she put herself in that type of situation - on a patch of Astro-turf, blinded with light, uncomfortably ‘enjoying’ her ice-cream cone, all by choice. It’s both a depiction of what she interpreted the musicians meant, and the sense of random fun the song made her feel.
While remaining within her current realm of self-portraiture, “self-affliction” is definitely not a reflection of Alex’s every day life.
WLMRT: In on the joke
It is an age-old story that has been the origin for some of the greatest bands in history – a group of friends stand in the crowd at a show and agree, “We can do this!”
That is how WLMRT was born.
Since that shared revelation between vocalist Shelby Wilson, bassist Kat McGouran, and guitarist Adam Bernhardt, the group rounded out their lineup to include synth player Ryan Hage and drummer Alex Wood – and they have been very busy.
The band recorded their first EP, Fuck Me I’m Joking, and released it in January of 2016. A year later, the group released their next collection of songs, the Plan B EP.
Self-recorded and mixed by Hage, Plan B – a collection of six bursts of youthful exuberance – was a graduation to three microphones, the band explains with a sense of humour, as opposed to the singular microphone used to record their debut.
“A lot of our early stuff was just kind of stumbling into songs really, kind of like, ‘oh, I guess this works, I guess that’s the song’,” says Bernhardt.
Despite the brevity of the songs – Plan B clocks in around 10 minutes – even a 45-second song like “Icy Podcast” is packed full of ideas. From the opening seconds of “I Don’t Like Patios”, the band does not let up – constantly pummelling your headphones with glorious punk rock cacophony.
“I think our sound came about by everybody trying to pull the band in one direction,” explains Hage, “and that’s why it ends up sounding kind of chaotic.”
Lyrically, Wilson captures the mundane in a creative and manic fashion. Telling hyper-realistic stories and inside jokes, they are particularly personal in a unique way. And they are generally funny, or at least, suggesting a wicked smirk. Buried within them, however, are lines proposing a much deeper side.
Take, for example, “Soap Time”. Amidst tales of summer shorts and “concrete sandpaper against my ass”, Wilson exclaims, “I don’t want to be cozy, I just want to think about it”, shouting the last line again for emphasis. It is this sort of rumination that make her words relatable to those who were not there for the initial joke.
But above all else, they are fun.
“If Brutal Knights didn’t exist, I probably wouldn’t be in this band,” Wilson says. “Well, I mean, that’s not true. But I listened to them when I was younger and they’re jokey punks – fast hardcore with fun lyrics. That’s what I wanted to try to do for myself.”
Currently, WLMRT is starting to explore Ontario touring routes, travelling together to play shows as far as Ottawa in the near-future, and continuing to tread their own path.
But it is among their roots in the Toronto punk and hardcore scene that the members still feel at home.
“As far as the punk scene goes, it’s pretty diverse,” says Hage, “and that’s one of the places where I [have] actually felt more comfortable as opposed to in the workplace or going to school or anything like that.”
Amidst this scene, and the larger Toronto scene as a whole, WLMRT has created a very distinctive sound for themselves. But they are not actively trying to be different; they are just actively trying to enjoy what they are doing and with whom they are doing it.
“I don’t think we ever set out trying to be the most groundbreaking or original or anything like that – we just wanted to have fun,” says McGouran. “Luckily, Toronto’s music scene is so diverse that we could fit in really anywhere. There’s a lot of bills where there’s a lot of different genres of bands playing and it just doesn’t matter. Everyone is supportive and interested to see what other people are doing.”