Tyson Brinacombe waxes on defunct DIY space in poppy new album
With an unmistakably tall, long-locked stature, Tyson Brinacombe is a man of many modes and a staple of many local bands. All this granted, he is, above all, a traditionalist in the best sense of the word. This isn’t meant to say he’s stuck in the past – rather, Brinacombe mines the history of pop music for his own ends with an archivist’s ear and a forward-looking DIY heart. After taking three years to self-produce his 2014 album Casio Fiasco, he made 130 King with The Trepids (members of Hinindar and Esther Grey, among others), a band once based out of the Trepid House, a Waterloo DIY performance venue that has since been boarded up and gone to the dogs (i.e., condo developers).
While not a woe-is-me lamentation or overtly positive sentimentalizing of a place important to them, The Trepids’ EP strikes a balance by alluding to the loss of the building instead of preoccupying itself with it. The seven-track EP comes not only in perfect time for Guelph’s Kazoo! Fest, but also for the long-awaited warmer weather – the sunny, hazy tunes presented here evoke the unabashed good time that marks Brinacombe’s many projects, from Tyson and his Gameboy to his Casio Fiasco LP. With its Kinks-informed pop sound (most notably in the outstanding minor-key track “Leave Your Arms”), 130 King is packed with well-written, evocative songs that work well in tandem with the rest of the Guelph music auteur’s catalogue.
I spoke with Tyson about the record in his apartment, which doubles as his studio, Little Room Labs. The frantic, guitar/book/synthesizer-laden living rooms evoked the image of a guy with a ton of ideas and the drive to get them all into recordings, come hell or high water. This is how DIY music should be made – well-read, driven, and with an honest work ethic.
“That band [The Trepids] lasted a couple years. We all moved out, and the house kinda turned derelict and got shut down and boarded up recently. They have plans to build a condo there, it’s gonna be torn down, and it got me thinking about all of this stuff again. […] Everything just sent me back to finishing up these recordings we started in that house four or five-years-ago, and polishing them up. After playing with a machine for three years, I’ve been yearning for human contact again, so this worked out. I signed us up to play Kazoo! and we got in, so I finished up the record and asked the band if they wanted to play some shows again, and they were all happy. It’s sad that [the Trepid House] is gone, […] in Guelph lately, I feel like we just need a good house venue. It makes me a little sad that the music community in Guelph is so strong, and it feels like we have so many venues, but there are so little spaces open to, you know, you and your friend doing a weird one-off project, or something that might not have a draw. Or even like, bands in the 60s would have a residency somewhere. […] I feel like it’s a little sad right now that bands don’t have those spaces and time to develop and become an amazing live band.”
These frustrations notwithstanding, the nostalgic but not-too-nostalgic memories present in 130 King seem to support his case for more DIY spaces within community music scenes, while offering a fun, 60s pop-drenched pop EP. Again, it’s an album rooted in pasts both personal and historical, but sounds refreshingly new.