According to Pottery’s Facebook page, the five piece want you to ‘get on your feet, feel sick and dirty.” The
Montreal band have primed the release of their debut EP ‘No.1’; it’s tightly wound enough to make you slide on those dancing shoes, given the extended player’s jaunty sound, whether it’ll make you “feel sick and dirty” is dependent on your appetite for its wanton quirkiness. If you were to take the jangly nuances from 60s pop, merge it with some trippy psychedelia, sprinkle in some surf and rev up the urgency, that’s ‘No. 1’s sonic cocktail. Top it off with Austin Boylan’s peculiar, part yelped, part spoken vocals and you’ve got an intriguing first offering from Pottery.

‘No. 1’ feels like a collection of songs beamed in from a bygone era but in no way does it sound dusty or aged. A bit like Captain America, after he was thawed out from being frozen solid after plunging into the icy depths of the North Atlantic Ocean, Pottery sound fresh and vibrant, albeit with a vintage sounding twang. ‘Smooth Operator’ ushers in ‘No.1’s undeniable charm, via a shapeshifting melange of jangly chords and dreamy arrangements that ebb and flow with a hypnotic whirr. The track’s intensity peaking and troughing like the band are clicking up and down the dial of a volume knob. ‘Hank Williams’ call and response guitars instigate a jerky urgency as Boylan talks about someone “getting worked up over nothing.” The track’s staccato persona echoes the band’s plea for you to “get on your feet”. ‘The Craft’ is where the Canadians get a little freaky; they manage to sound taut and loose at the same time, with a 60s jiggle that exposes itself like a gaudy magic eye poster. Boylan is at his most abstract when he yelps the randomness of “workers controlling robotic hands” and “pornographic 3D vision”. The EP is brought to a close by the 8-minute epic of ‘Lifeline Costume’, a sprawling affair that acts like a mega mix of what’s come before; it’s a little bit silly and theatrical as Pottery rev up and down the trippier side of their speedometer but that’s what makes the band’s primary outing such an enticing experience.

Pottery sound like an act untethered by current trends and the zeitgeist; a band marching to the sound of their very own drumbeat.

Words and Thoughts of Adam Williams