Greys Warm Shadow

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About

Warm Shadow is a companion piece to Greys’ acclaimed sophomore album, Outer Heaven, comprised of original material as well as elements from that album’s recording sessions at Hotel 2 Tango in Montreal. Penning new songs, manipulating tape drones created from various studio experiments and rearranging old favourites, Warm Shadow‘s intent is to create a parallel world which illuminates the dynamic contrasts that reside on Outer Heaven and within Greys themselves.

Where Outer Heaven‘s focus was more broad both musically and lyrically, tackling topics like xenophobia and mental health issues within an expansive sonic landscape, Warm Shadow is far more insular. Frontman Shehzaad Jiwani explores both the personal and the abstract, with lyrics about Jiwani’s spiritual connection to his grandmother who passed before he was born (“Minus Time”) to his vision of a dystopian future inspired by institutional oppression (“Fresh Hell”). Grandiose soundscapes the band previously wandered are replaced with subtly textured, lo-fi experimentalism by way of Broadcast (“Trish K”) or the tense minimalism of mid-period Sonic Youth (“Space Mountain”).

Warm Shadow occupies a space between larger statements that fills in the broader strokes Greys have painted in the past. Like Amnesiac, Weird Era Continued, or untitled. unmastered., this companion piece exists to spotlight the ethereal moments its predecessor hinted at – to be viewed not as the sum of its parts, but as an alternate universe in which the creative possibilities for a punk band in the 21st century are limitless.

Artist Bio

Presented here is a conversation with noise rock outfit Greys. The Toronto quartet is comprised of singer/guitarist Shehzaad Jiwani, guitarist Cam Graham, bassist Colin Gillespie and drummer Braeden Craig. They are about to release their third album, Age Hasn’t Spoiled You, on Carpark Records. Here are some things they had to say about it.

Q: Does the title mean you guys are getting older?
A: Not exactly. We mean this current age, the present. Your era. Your past. Your generation. It doesn’t define you. It’s rebelling against the notion that you are a product of your time. We’re taking a snapshot of things exactly as they are, from our perspective, if only to break free from it.

Q: But you aren’t kids anymore, either. This is your third album. How does it feel?
A: If nothing else, we’re confident that we are doing our best to push ourselves forward without looking back. Albums like Check Your Head, To Bring You My Love, Fear Of Music, Microcastle, Reign In Blood, To Pimp A Butterfly, Some Rap Songs… All of these artists cast off their shackles on their third albums and they were reborn as a greater version of themselves. That’s what we had our sights on – a reincarnation of sorts. I couldn’t tell you if we accomplished that, but I can say that we tried to push ourselves about as far outside our own perception of what a “rock band” can be while still retaining certain characteristics that make us sound like Greys.

Q: When you say “shackles,” do you mean you felt restricted creatively prior to this?
A: In many ways, yes. Constrained by our own self-imposed limitations, like speed, or volume, or methodology, like only recording live to tape. We existed primarily as a live band and our old records reflected that, but lately, the traditional rock setup just wasn’t inspiring us. This time, we spent a year in the studio, wrote about 20 songs, and embraced the challenge of making something more cerebral and cinematic. Recreating it live never factored into the equation. We entertained every idea that came to our heads using whatever we could get our hands on: samplers, drum machines, synths, tape loops, whatever. It was more about experimenting with tension, dynamics, space and textures than brute force.

Q: The lyrics seem to embody that, sitting more in an abstract zone than your usual, topical approach.
A: We tried to do something more impressionistic than literal. The socio-political stuff is still in there, because it’s impossible not to internalize what is going on around you, but the gaze is inverted back inward to dissect how your surroundings can shape you, and how you either resist that or become a product of them. The goal was to spark several conversations at once, not just home in on a specific subject for each track. If your takeaway from “Kill Appeal” is that it’s about gentrification, police brutality, Indigenous rights, mass shootings, drug dependency, James Baldwin, or all of the above, there’s no wrong answer.

Q: The music similarly goes in many different directions at once. Were you concerned that the variety of sounds on display might cloud your overall vision?
A: We’ve been a band for eight years. The four of us playing together will always sound like ourselves, no matter what. The bands we grew up listening to incorporated many different styles into their music. The way algorithms work – on social media, on streaming services, whatever – they want to shepherd you into boxes that make your personality easy to compartmentalize. People aren’t like that. Life isn’t like that. This record speaks to the chaos and unpredictability of our day to day lives as we skirt the very real possibility of nuclear annihilation. It represents where we are at right now, particularly as this middle child generation who grew up without a workforce to enter and without technology being an extension of our bodies and minds. It would be a betrayal of our age not to address these complicated situations in our music and lyrics.

Q: Do you think people will hear that and embrace this record?
A: We like it. Aside from that, who fucking cares?