Toronto’s noise rock stalwarts Oh No Forest Fires will play their final show on January 23rd, 2010 at the Horseshoe Tavern. They will be donating the proceeds to earthquake relief in Haiti. The band will also unleash a new album, titled Wants to Try Something, for free at the show as a parting gift to their loyal and dedicated followers. The band has been together for three years and have made a mark in Canada with their spastic live performances, so they’re sure to go out with a bang.
You can preview the first track “Spontaneous Changes In Isolated Systems (Song For Bobby)” from Wants to Try Something here: http://tinyurl.com/ONFFspontaneous
A personal message from frontman Rajiv Thavanathan is below:
“SORRY/THANK YOU/LOVE YOU
[If you don’t have any patience, or more likely, if you just don’t like reading what I have to say, then skip ahead to the part that says “AND THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT SO PLEASE LISTEN” because trust me it actually is important.]
Okay here goes, I will try to keep this a little more coherent than I normally do. I’m already regretting saying that- I will probably make a liar of myself soon. About the coherent thing. I will try though. That I can promise. If I stop trying I will let you know.
So as you may or may not have heard through our social networking websites, Oh No Forest Fires is going to playing for the last time on January 23, 2010.
I have said a million and one times that being in a band is exactly (EXACTLY) like being in a relationship, and I’m going to say it one more time. Sometimes couples break up. Some couples are dysfunctional and fight all the time, but are more fiery together because of it. We are not really like that. Some couples stay together because they’ve been together so long they don’t know what else to do. We are not really like that either. Some couples are best friends and truly meant for each other and get along great but somehow fall out of love anyway, but hopefully stay best friends anyway. This is probably getting in the ballpark of what we’re like. We love each other a lot, that is for sure.
And because of that love, there is a lot of emotion and tears and sad smiles, but there is no drama here, not even much of a story- but it’s been a few years (our first practice was Dec 2006, our first show Sept 2007) and you have all been so very kind and understanding and patient with us, so I figured we at least owe an attempt at an explanation.
[This is me telling you that I am going to stop trying to be coherent now.]
All four of us are adults. Well, maybe not entirely full-time adults, but at least some of us are closer to adults than others, sort of maybe almost. And life has started adding responsibilities and commitments that weren’t there before. They are quite varied in nature, and that makes me happy- it is a reflection of the fact that all four of us are extremely different people. For some of us these responsicommitibilityments means starting a career in a very demanding and time-consuming industry. It also means finishing school. It also means quitting a job that you’ve been doing for years to try and figure yourself out a bit. It also means exploring how to be creative in a post-Napster/file-sharing/record-it-yourself-at-home kind of world. It also means trying to go back to a school that was never actually attended before, but I thought about it and now I’m actually applying in a way that I was expected to back in 2004 and maybe/probably/almost definitely having to move out of this wonderful city that I love because of it.
So with these things all happening, and the fact that we are what some people would call “between record cycles”- actually, you know what, maybe that doesn’t really apply to us, because we never really worked in that conventional timeline way before. Okay, let me rephrase. We put out an album in Nov 2008, and we got to do a lot of things with it that, frankly, we are still pretty surprised that we got to do. Surprised and incredibly grateful. But that was over a year and a bit ago, and we can’t really do much more with it. So at least right now the pressure was off a little bit (because there was SO much pressure to begin with- wait a minute- NO THERE WASN’T. Wicked) and it makes a little more sense than letting ourselves walk away from this when we were in the middle of doing something.
So now that I’ve gone and said that, let me totally contradict myself.
We decided to record a new album.
Starting last week actually. On January 9th. We recorded 6 ½ songs in the span of one marathon day with our good friend and always loyal supporter Nick Bernal. Then our former bandmate and friend and sound guru Shawn Jurek started mixing it for us. Then we went home and recorded some vocals, most of it with my best friend and always loyal supporter Romesh Thavanathan (he also happens to be my brother and roommate and luckily, he has a much better ear than I do). Then Shawn kept mixing. Anyways, I’m getting into too much detail. Either way, we have about 22-26 minutes of music- something like that, depends how mastering goes- because we had a bunch of songs written that we didn’t even have very good demos of, and we love these songs and they are what we have become and we wanted whatever alien race that comes to our barren destroyed wasteland of a planet in about a thousand years to find my hard drive buried in a dirt pile and to explore it and find the last set of songs by the band Oh No Forest Fires. Especially the one that goes “OOoooo Ooo OoOooo”. You know the one.
Anyways, as of this writing, it’s almost done.
It is going to be called “WANTS TO TRY SOMETHING”.
The title stems from a moment I had with a young lady in Barrie, and I hope she reads this and remembers what I said and laughs a little. I will leave the story up to your imagination, but if you really want to know you can just ask me later anyway.
And we are going to give it to you for free.
No strings attached. Not PWYC. Not “No Really, It’s Up To You”.
$Free.
So there you go, I hope you like the album. We are really proud of it. I think. We should be. I haven’t actually heard it. But it should be pretty good. I hope! Fingers crossed. We are proud of the songs, that much I can say for sure.
Anyways.
AND THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT SO PLEASE LISTEN.
If you would like to see us play one last time please join us at The Legendary Horseshoe Tavern on Saturday, January 23rd 2010. Helping us out will be three bands that we have quite an extended history with- our former tourmates and best buds Arietta, our black vanned and hard rocking friends Songs From A Room, and suited-up art-poppers The Darcys.
The cover at the show will be $7 at the door and we are going to give the proceeds from this show to the Haiti Emergency Fund through Partners In Health (http://www.pih.org/). The country of Haiti is still going through an impossibly difficult crisis and this show is a chance for us to help them out in a way that none of us could afford to contribute individually- but that’s what community and humanity and big hearts are for right? Come show us your big hearts. Give more than $7 if you can.
Ooooof. I talk too much.
Okay. That’s it.
We are genuinely sorry, we unconditionally love you, we thank you for everything, and we will see you soon I’m sure.
You know you love me,
Xoxo
R.
P.S. You probably don’t actually love me, I just wanted to make a Gossip Girl reference. I do love you though. Yes, even you.”
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