Chastity carries on a proud Southern Ontario musical tradition with new album ‘Suffer Summer’

Brandon Williams was nervous.

Over the previous 5 years, the Whitby-raised, Hamilton-based musician has had many brushes together with his heroes. However this was subsequent degree.

Williams was about to ask Dallas Inexperienced, the guitarist and singer recognized for St. Catharines’ Alexisonfire and Metropolis and Color, to sing on a track he had written for his new document.

Inexperienced is essentially the most seen artist to spring from the wealthy and long-running Southern Ontario punk and hardcore scene that additionally birthed Williams’ personal music undertaking, Chastity. Williams had opened for each Alexisonfire and Metropolis and Color. He hoped Inexperienced could be sport to collaborate.

So, holding his cellphone in sweaty palms, he tapped out his request and pressed ship.

“After all pal,” Inexperienced replied. “What would you like me to do?”

Inexperienced’s vocals on “Vicious Circle” elevate what was already a spotlight of Chastity’s newest document, “Undergo Summer season,” out Friday.

His enthusiastic response shouldn’t have been a shock. Although it continues to bewilder Williams, admiration from a fervent group of followers and friends drawn to Chastity’s mixture of emo, shoegaze and alt rock has come simple. He counts amongst his supporters Hollerado’s Menno Versteeg, who launched Chastity’s debut by way of his Royal Mountain Data, and Alexisonfire supervisor Joel Carriere, who signed Williams to his Dine Alone label — house to many Southern Ontario punk and post-hardcore bands through the years — and has toured with F---ed Up and DIIV.

“Brandon is doing one thing that no one else has managed to do,” stated Stefan Babcock, lead singer of Toronto punks PUP, who took Chastity on tour in 2016. “There’s so many individuals making an attempt to do the ’90s and never doing it nicely. Brandon is taking what made that period of music nice and placing his personal distinctive twist on it.”

Carriere agreed. “He has mixed the affect of various genres over numerous many years of a few of my favorite bands (and) wrapped it up in 2022 packaging,” he stated. “There's an honesty in the best way he approaches his music that very a lot jogs my memory of how we operated prior to now with Alexisonfire.”

Though it’s only a 45-minute drive exterior Toronto, Whitby felt 1,000,000 miles away from something for an “outsider child” like Williams. Durham Area, which incorporates Whitby, is house to greater than 600,000 folks. “However there’s no all-ages group arts house and there hasn’t been for years,” although Williams is fast to level on the market are 10 hockey arenas.

“So I do suppose it simply sort of leaves a bunch of individuals out.”

Since Chastity’s inception, he’s made no bones about who his influences are and the sort of music he desires to make. Williams missed lots of the “cooler” mid-aughts indie rock artists like Arcade Fireplace. As a substitute, he immersed himself within the native scene primarily based across the now defunct basement venue the Dungeon in Oshawa. The favored cease for bands like Protest the Hero and Silverstein mirrored areas in cities and suburbs throughout Southern Ontario, nurturing careers that may finally broaden throughout the nation, the continent and even the world.

“What these bands had in thoughts was to put in writing emotionally charged music that individuals may sing together with and really feel togetherness,” stated Williams. “I believe it related with me and made me really feel much less alone.

“That is what I really like. I attempt to pay tribute to that.”

Chastity’s first two data captured that feeling capably; Pitchfork praised his debut, “Loss of life Lust,” calling Chastity a “proudly suburban Ontario band” whereas Exclaim! included his followup, “House Made Devil,” on its listing of essentially the most underrated data of 2019. However on “Undergo Summer season” the choruses are greater, the hooks stickier and Williams’ influences, not less than in a single case, bodily current.

London native Linnea Siggelkow met Williams, her accomplice, by way of a mutual pal on MySpace as teenagers, and the 2 bonded over their love of punk music and involvement of their respective native scenes. Caught collectively inside their Hamilton house because of the pandemic, Siggelkow, a classically skilled pianist who data beneath the title Ellis, was amazed by Williams’ productiveness throughout the album’s creation.

“I used to be having existential spirals always and he was simply writing so many songs,” she stated.

“He’s acquired the lyrics, he’s acquired the melody, he’s acquired the track completely mapped out in his thoughts. He is aware of precisely how he desires it to sound.”

Babcock, who co-wrote two songs on the document, agreed. “He’s a pure poet. His lyrics are superb they usually come out of him so simply.”

Beforehand Williams had been intensely personal about his artistic course of, enjoying solely completely completed tracks for Siggelkow. However she ended up singing on and co-writing various songs on the album.

“He’s very intentional about choosing the folks to assist him execute precisely what he has in his thoughts to make it a tangible factor,” she stated. “To see the best way it really works, which is so totally different from my very own course of, has been actually thrilling and particular.”

“Vicious Circle,” the track to which Inexperienced added vocals, began as a voice memo and an concept for a guitar riff that he delivered to Siggelkow. They completed the entire thing in a single sitting. She even co-wrote the textual content to Inexperienced.

Williams was in such disbelief the day Inexperienced recorded his vocals that he purchased lottery tickets. He didn’t win, however tagging together with Inexperienced was simply as useful to Williams: Alexisonfire lead singer George Pettit additionally added harmonies to the observe. “It was extraordinarily surreal to be sitting in a studio watching them do that,” Williams stated.

Babcock can possible relate.

“Most individuals, once they’re youthful, will see or hear a band and simply be shocked that music may sound that means,” he stated. Alexisonfire was a type of bands for each him and Williams.

“There’s going to be lots of people who're saying what I’m saying about Alexisonfire, however they’re going to be speaking about Chastity.”