Some bands are reluctant to pigeonhole their music into the constraints of specific genres, but the Okay Cars won’t try to evade the question. Talk to these laid-back Canadian expats and you’ll hear phrases like “experimental,” “synth-pop,” “shoegaze,” “chill-wave,” and “too lazy to get a drummer,” dropped into the conversation.
The two-man band consists of vocalist and guitarist Brad Quinn and keyboardist-percussionist Lars Berry. Both moved to Taiwan to teach English five years ago. Both are also from Vancouver, but they didn’t meet until a chance encounter in a Taipei club seven months ago.
“We were both looking to start up a project. It seemed like there was hardly anyone out there into the same music I am,” says Quinn.
Both Quinn and Berry were disappointed by Taipei’s ability to churn out the “party-type foreign band” when they arrived in Taiwan. Quinn, 37, and Berry, 36, say they connected because their roots go back to the mid-90s indie scene, with bands like Tortoise and Sonic Youth.
“Foreign bands were playing for foreigners — they were jamming bands more or less,” says Berry.
The Okay Cars aim to be different. The band’s sound is characterized by Quinn’s haunting vocals structured along traditional pop, verse-chorus structures, paired with Berry’s slippery electronics. Quinn and Berry say they closely follow the “New York scene” and site James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem fame as a major influence.
Listen to the track Pheasants? on their MySpace page and you’ll find a layer of nostalgia for 80s pop along the lines of New Order and Soft Cell reflected in Qinn’s melodic guitar and Berry’s mad-scientist electronic antics.
“We have a little bit of that [80s] element. The instrument I’m using is a copy of an early 80s synthesizer in terms of the way it functions,” says Berry.
“It’s very chilled music,” observed Annie Chii (杞亞軒) of synth-pop band the Looking Glass while watching Okay Cars during a show at The Wall (這牆) last month that also featured her band and Yellowback.
“Other bands that play here [The Wall] are more like American high school bands. But the Okay Cars are different,” said Charlotte van Innis, a regular at concerts at The Wall who was at the same show. “They’re more experimental, more noise. That makes them different and quintessentially indie.”
Expect the Okay Car’s performance tomorrow at Underworld to be accompanied — if the club’s power system behaves itself — by a full orchestra of sorts — chaoscillator, drum machine, Midi and foot-activated sampler — all manned by Berry.
“I’m more or less obsessed [with electronics],” he says. “Basically,
what we lack in members we make up
in gadgetry.”
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