Local bands have a certain stigma where I’m from. We brought forth Streetheart and Despistado. There might have been others, but in the grand scheme of things they’re really nothing. It’s a shame, because what that means is that instead of being guided by scene-setters before them, our local bands are informed by whatever high schoolers listen to. A couple of years back it was terrible Creed ripoffs, and then there was an influx of metal bands, and now it’s all about the emotional hardcore.

There is, however, a benefit to this. Whenever a truly stellar band emerges from the crappy local scene here, they’re elevated to high-profile, incredibly popular status. And the other thing is, they’re usually really great.

Winnipeg label Smallman Records recently issued the second release from Regina’s biggest local band, Sylvie. The album, titled An Electric Trace, is a twelve-track excursion into spazzy pop-rock, mathy tendencies merged with a knack for killer hooks and oddly-parsed lyrics. It’s also a true band record: four people sharing arrangements, melodies and riffs in a cycle of warily distant emotion and close-knit harmonic interplay.

The mathy tendencies come from the fact that Sylvie are kissing cousins with the now-deceased Despistado; guitarist-singer Joel Passmore was responsible for the maniacal shouts and bubbly basslines that graced that band’s EP and posthumous album. Here, he translates that into a barely-restrained, gruff bark vocal and twitchy, spastic songs like “Anatomy of a Headline {Media}.” The chorus is a chant with a distant howl in the background; the verse is a stop-start, staccato burst of stream-of-consciousness meditation on the permeation of media in our daily lives. “Calculate loss / Unfocused control / Tragedy,” goes one Bukowski-esque segment. Suddenly, midway through, the song breaks into a standard 4/4 time riff, a burst of light and energy punctuated with the band’s signature “weird-ass-sounding” chords. Then back into the chanting and math. It’s dissonant, cathartic and vengeful all at once, and out of Regina it’s a new sound entirely.

However, it only represents the mathematically precise, obtuse side of Sylvie. The other side, reflected mainly in the pieces sung by guitarist-vocalist Chris Notenboom, is very introspective, but breaks loose at times into looser, freer emotions. “What You Find You Leave With” is a perfect example; Jeff Romanyk’s stuttering drums complement guitar noises that can only be described as “thoughtful,” and the chorus features an enormous, rumbling bassline. Notenboom’s lyrics, as well as Passmore’s lyrics in “Headline,” establish a running theme through the album: isolation and anonymity in an age increasingly dominated by faceless technology and machinery. “Did your daddy take away and never give back?” he asks. “Were you just taught to react?”

Two sides of a band, one record. They meet in the middle on opener “Hit & Run,” a song that would be the single if this type of record could really have a single. Ferocious energy and sleek funk hit a wall of diminished chords and collapse into a contest for your attention between lupine barks and the urgent alto of bassist Riva Farrell Racette. And man, when this tune hits its stride, it’s really moving: after the second chorus, the song’s structure implodes, only to find its feet a minute later and kick back into a tremendous coda. The song cuts off suddenly but strikes a raw nerve, hooking into you with a sense of immediacy.

And there’s the thing: immediacy, energy, hookiness. The Regina scene’s been struggling to find that ever since Despistado expired just before their debut’s release. Sylvie’s shows, however, are sold out here; they’re basically guaranteed to be packed. And Sylvie’s not the only band with an air of potential greatness about them. They’re playing on the weekend of May 6th in the NWxSE Pop Festival, a two-night spectacle of local talent. Another band made up of pieces from Despistado, the four-piece Geronimo, is playing, as well as a number of crowd-pleasing acts—surprisingly few of which are emo, hard rock or metal. So while Streetheart may have been the first to test the boundaries of music in Regina, it seems like Sylvie might be the first to redefine them—and in the process, break the stigma of shitty music in my hometown.

[buy music here]