It’s been a solid 2025 thus far for Toronto’s Big Wreck. Somewhere between being anointed official ambassadors of Record Store Day Canada and receiving a JUNO nomination, they also found the time to record The Rest of the Story, out Oct 24 via Sonic Unyon Records. The album was recorded at Noble Studios with producer Nick Raskulinecz (Foo Fighters / Deftones / Evanescence / Alice in Chains), engineered by Chris Holmes, mixed by Eric Ratz (Danko Jones / Cancer Bats / Arkells), and mastered by Andy Vandette (Rush / David Bowie). It’s the dream creative team, says vocalist/guitarist Ian Thornley, and a lot of effort was put in.
“If you’re lucky enough to be doing this as long as we’ve been doing it, you tend to find the people, or they find you. If there’s something there that you believe in, sometimes it doesn’t just show up. They don’t all just fall into your lap. Some of them would require a lot of scratching and clawing, but you have to believe in it.”
This album was made at the same time as 2023’s Pages, and these songs were living with them during the process, and of course now, well after. The initial plan was to release three separate EPs, but it was squashed in favor of being a full-length, leading to Pages. This is just the rest of the story.
“It’s interesting,” laughs Thornley. “I’ve never really been in this situation before, where there’s been, however long it’s been [between albums]. When you listen to things that you’ve recently finished, you tend to focus on things that you would have done differently. Listening to it over the weekend, it hit me very differently. I was moved. I was frankly moved by the music. It’s very open and honest and authentic.”
When making the music, the sound touches on so many different things and they avoid pigeonholing at all costs. They splash some progressive around, a smattering of psychedelic rock, and blend it all in with a little classic rock, and something dubbed post-grunge blues rock was born. All in all, though, there has to be a core of authenticity, and a use of imagery to do a fair part of the heavy lifting; let it elicit a feeling from the listener.
“Artistically, and creatively, it’s always nice when some of the lines are left unfinished. When some of [it] is not quite framed yet, when some of the colors aren’t filled in all the way, it’s always nice to leave yourself a little room to be inspired. The expression we’ve been using is, ‘don’t spend too long at the salad bar.’ I’ve never done anything else. I don’t think I could, to be honest. This is all I’ve ever done. It just occurred to me that I don’t think a lot has changed in what I do musically. It’d be hard to say from this vantage point, but I still think the thrust of whatever it was that I was looking to feel from a piece of music. It’s still the same curiosity.”
The Rest of the Story is out Friday and you can preorder it from Sonic Unyon Records. Follow Big Wreck on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for future updates.
Photo courtesy of Instagram
