Vancouver’s punk/post-hardcore band Anchoress – comprised of Rob Hoover ( vocals), Keenan Federico (guitarist), Chris Lennox-Aasen (drummer), and Ricky Castanedo (bassist) – has been transfixing Canada (and the world at large) with their music since 2010. Their most recent project – The EP Formerly Known As Lemonade – was self-released in June of this year, and they have a full-length album – Anchoress Is Ruining My Life – is due out in October. We’ve got the exclusive premiere of the lead single off that upcoming album, “Over/Under”.
The song is adrenaline-inducing from the beginning. The drums start heavy, and you know – especially with Anchoress’ proclivity to do so – that the sound is going to culminate early, with Rob’s voice coming at you in droves as he screams the lyrics. At times completely too difficult to understand, this song’s lyrics are surprisingly decipherable.
Rob Hoover elaborated on the track:
“Over / Under” is a song about the pursuit of art, and specifically about breaking through that seemingly impassable barrier separating a hobby from a career. For being such an expensive city to live in, Vancouver has an incredibly diverse community of artists and those who pursue art. In this case, I’m using “art” to refer to whichever medium you may be passionate about, be it music, writing, ceramics, design, cooking, origami, choose your own adventure here. For just about everyone I know, there is a “career” and the art is a side gig that we pick up when we’re not working or too tired to do anything but watch TV shows. I wrote this song after working several years at a desk job expressing my frustration and exhaustion and I decided at that point that it wasn’t worth working a job that I wasn’t happy doing. Life is too short to spend your time doing something you’re not passionate about. At the end I tried to universalize the lyrics by quoting Aaron Bedard of Bane and Alfred Lord Tennyson who I think made their points more powerfully than I could have. We also snuck in a sound bite at the end of the 1860 phonograph of Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville reading Au Clair de la Lune which is the earliest known recording of the human voice as an homage to art and passion and the advancement of our species.
