Video: Meters to Miles – Recession

Meters to Miles is a Windsor-based indie-pop band that has been playing since 2007. Recently, they released a music video to the song Recession.

The song’s subject matter is one you can surely guess, but the tone is a bit surprising.  The bitterness of someone who has just been laid off is certainly there, but the song is nonetheless very danceable. Ignoring the fact that the lyrics are about how the rent can’t be paid, I can see this one being put into regular rotation at The Loop’s Indie Dance Night.

Adding the video to the song, things become more amusing, while still being cause for thought. The focus is on an astronaut who has been laid off, now trying to cope with the monotony that is everyday life on earth. Yes, seeing a man in a spacesuit play Dance Dance Revolution is awesome, but the premise of the video does still drive home the fact that it isn’t just factory workers losing their jobs these days; everyone is affected by economic struggle.

Fri. Feb. 18: Waker Glass will set the mood at the FM Lounge

Sometimes a band kind of sneaks into a scene, with no fanfare, no big write ups preceding their debut, often to smaller than normal audiences, but create a tremor that resonates beyond their own knowledge.

Waker Glass is one of those bands who did just that. It should really come as no surprise really, as their members have been in or had stints in some of Windsor’s most successful and acclaimed bands of the past two decades – such as Elephant, Luxury Christ and Treehouse Beggars – and one is in one of the scene’s other up and coming acts, The Rheostats. But they’re debut in the fall of 2010 – an unassuming show with a relatively unknown act called Alex Carruthers & The Rhythm Brothers (who have also gone on to some big shows since then) and the avant garde band The STiG (currently toiling as The Thrash Brownies). The crowd wasn’t one of the best the FM Lounge has seen, but the people who were there were attentive. And they listened. By the end of the set, the crowd was filling in a little nicer, as people were texting their friends that there was “something pretty cool” going on at the old Fish Market.

Waker Glass followed that up with a spot on last December’s FunnelFest festival, sharing the stage upstairs at The Loop. For only their second performance, they came through like the veterans they were comprised from, commanding the stage and further cementing their status as a band to watch for. Their sound is definitely “atmospheric” (as several people have said) with an honest to goodness method storytelling that comes from bands like Calexico, Wilco and Automatic for the People-era REM, but delivered more in the style of bands like Mazzy Star. A little bit of sugar sprinkled on the melancholy.

Opening the show is a band that I thought had broken up last year, but it looks like are back (at least for periodic reformations). Meters For Miles is pure and simple, a hard driving pop band that delivers hard hitting pop hooks via an almost punk rock delivery, which again is probably derived from the fact that their members were also in some pretty heavy hitting bands from the ’90s, B Plan and Dirty Harry. Singer/guitarist Dan Marshall also struck gold briefly a few years back when his solo EP was picked up by Universal Records based on the award-winning single, “Dandelion”.

This Friday, Waker Glass and company return to the scene of that first fateful show and I’d bet its far better attended (and appreciated) than their debut. These guys are here to stay.

Waker Glass with special guests Meters to Miles, The FM Lounge (156 Chatham St. West, beside Pogo’s), Friday February 18th, 9pm, 19+