Deathsticks and Their Haunting Garage Of Distorted Noise.

Deathsticks – Whitby, Ontario, Canada.

I’ll try to keep this short. Whitby based Deathsticks are a very obscure and dirty sounding duo that I honestly have no idea about whether they are a serious effort or not and I’m not even sure if I mean that as a negative criticism.

They remind me of small-town Punk shows where for the most part, the majority of the bill ends up blowing your mind or finishing their set with a resounding approval from the audience. This goes on for sometime before the act that will be the talk of the night and the most memorable takes the stage or their place in the Pub’s corner.

You have no idea what’s going on but it works and you either secretly love it to pieces and try and maintain your “cool” composure or you lose yourself and have a whale of a time. That, that is what this band are about.

Except for some reason in this case, Obi-Wan did buy some Deathsticks, went to see this band live and found himself bizarrely refreshed. Lets face it, with Anakin for an apprentice, you’d need a break.

The band’s music is what I’d imagine someone on a rather large amount of LSD would actually sound like to the audience while they themselves thought they sounded note perfect or perhaps it’s the audience member on LSD and the band note perfect, who knows.

Deathsticks sound like an acid trip, we’ve established that but is it a bad thing? Certainly not. It’s oddly charming and their sound actually breaks-in several fuzzy-rock stylistics that at times sound like Grunge and the more abstract Nirvana tracks or really warped Punk-Rock.

If 60’s Garage Rock and Psychedelia were recorded and then conditioned by someone who had a slight penchant for Noise Rock, I.e they’d been forward in time on old-school acid and then topped up on modern acid while they were and then come back.

That would be another way to describe Deathsticks and their chaotic and overwhelming and ironically charming discordance.

The best thing about this is that both Laura and Matt are obviously grounded musicians with a love of music well enough established and diverse that they are simply having fun and channeling whatever they wish.

The distorted vocals are haunting and the furious Rock n’ Roll (see ‘Shwa Boogie’) is thrilling. The music is primarily old-school Garage Rock with leanings towards Psychedelic Rock and their sheer reckless abandon and up-beat Noise Rock (un)sensibility is incredibly entertaining.

I would absolutely love to see this two-piece live and marvel at the dumfounded look on everyones face. Deathsticks are relentless and incredibly their own. I didn’t even have to stop to think once while writing this, and that in itself is testament to the idiosyncrasy of Deathsticks.

They may not be for the feint-hearted but they still pull it off, whatever that is.

Find all the Deathsticks you could possibly want below, you can rethink your life another time:

• Head to Facebook to find your dealer.
• Then head to bandcamp for what you really want, where the band have all their recordings to date for ‘Free/Name Your Price’ download and also have some merch available.

#StayFresh