Alex Edkins made his name as the guitarist, songwriter and vocalist of METZ, one of Canada’s best-known noise/post-rock bands. Since he was unable to rehearse and tour during the COVID lockdown, he decided to take the opportunity to work on a long postponed solo album, being released on Sub Pop on May 20. He calls the project Weird Nightmare and says the name has nothing to do with the pandemic.
“It’s just the working title I came up with. I was home all day with my son, who couldn’t go to school. At night, I’d record songs in the METZ rehearsal space. It’s usually a lively building, with tons of bands making a racket, but it was completely empty and silent. It was eerily quiet and strange, a familiar place that seemed alien at that time, which played into the title of the record. I was alone and it was just what I needed to escape from the pandemic.
“I recorded into a computer for the most part, using no tape machines, except during the mixing. I don’t have a wide array of mics, so it was bare bones. The act of doing it myself was more important than making a hi-fi recording. I concentrated on the songs and the process. With METZ, there’s a palette of chord structures that define our sound, along with the bass tones and drumming. I was steering away from that approach and using open chords and bar chords that I never play with METZ.
“It moved the songs and melodies in a different way. For the most part, I pushed the volume to the limit when I recorded. There’s actually a fair amount of acoustic guitar on it, but it’s submerged in the texture of the electric guitars. I like to put a mic on the neck of the electric, close to where I was picking, to get a scraping, percussive element to the sound. I embraced more basic guitar techniques. When I hit on an open D chord, it felt great. It’s something I hadn’t done in years.
“There’s a simplicity and power in rock and I wanted to capture that. I wrote big, hooky, catchy choruses and melodies. I never set out to do that before. I wanted to make something memorable and fun. It was my happy place. I didn’t have any grand ambitions. It was a coping mechanism that brought me a lot of pleasure.”
As promised, the songs on Weird Nightmare sport catchy choruses and memorable hooks, although they’re often submerged in layers of feedback drenched guitar noise. “The sound is pretty mellow, for me,” Edkins says with a laugh.
“Most of my songwriting is pretty fast and aggressive. Some may think these are too, but there are moments when I take my foot off the gas a bit, trying new tempos and types of songs. I let the guitar lead the melody, and the melody dictate the tempo. I followed my gut and did what felt right each day. I gave the song what it needed. I had no idea what was going to come out. I played and wrote with zero limitations and expectations. It was a great feeling to have.”
Watch the video for “Wrecked” here:
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Photo courtesy of Ryan Thompson
