The Peak

Empty hearts, full minds

By Jennifer Laidlaw

The Famines played the Biltmore Cabaret on Friday October 3. For show information or to purchase their album, visit www.thefamines.ca.

Just off four dates in a row on their second Canadian tour since July, Famines lead singer and guitarist Raymond Biesinger is feeling the vocal strain of returning to the music scene from a lengthy hiatus and smoking too much tobacco.

The Famines’ jam-packed tour is paying off for Biesinger and Famines drummer Garrett Kruger. When I spoke to Biesinger last week, he explained that they recently passed the stranger test. “Artists often worry it will just be friends at their gigs,” he said, “In the past, people usually came because they knew us personally, but our last four shows on this tour have been populated mostly by strangers!” It’s a sure sign they are on their way to success.

Biesinger and Kruger are old names in Edmonton’s tight-knit music community. Kruger formerly played with Wolfnote, one of the loudest bands in Edmonton, while Biesinger was a member of the minimalist group Vertical Struts. The pair took the hugeness of Wolfnote and combined it with the “dirty, nasty garbage rock” noise of the Struts to create their new sound, which is described on their website as “ ‘70s punk and modern noise.”

This two-piece band has a simple arrangement — drum, guitar, and vocals — and they are prepared to take this simplicity and push it as far as possible, all the while building their own unique sound. Biesinger has been at it for eight years now and has yet to feel even close to reaching a creative limit.

Musing over musical comparisons, Biesinger says people feel the need sometimes to pigeon-hole a sound because they don’t know how else to describe it, “We have been compared to the [White] Stripes, Joy Division, Iggy Pop, and Black Sabbath — which is interesting because these [comparisons] are all over the map and there is only so much you can do as a two-piece. With the White Stripes, sure we are a two-piece band, but we are not blues-based, so the connection ends there.”

Biesinger describes Famines songs as having a sense of purpose. “I Like Some of the Things You Do” examines the things Biesinger liked and disliked about Islam following a recent trip to Istanbul, Turkey, during Ramadan, while “Gimme Some Numbers” questions the lack of statistical data comparing socialist Cuba to capitalist U.S.A. Biesinger’s background in history and politics has him wondering what the better choice is: a country that consciously harms civilians but has universal health care or one that has a more subtle way of killing, reflected in the number of people who can’t afford health care?

Not surprisingly, Biesinger’s fantastically curious mind comes up with many of the band’s song ideas, leaving Kruger the task of psychoanalyzing and producing first edits. Currently reading “Waste and Want” by Susan Strasser, perhaps Biesinger will soon be inspired to write a new song on the social history of trash in the 20th century.

The name, the Famines, is the duos’ perceived reflection of society and its emptiness. “We have a lot of things, but not necessarily happiness. The name is a reflection that however plentiful, there is always a lack of something,” explains Biesinger. It also points to the minimalist quality of their sound and how the Famines are taking as much from their modest number of instruments as they possibly can.

The Famines’ debut album 2X7” was released in July with old school style on double 7”, cassette, 8-track, and iTunes. It debuted at #5 on Vancouver’s CITR 101.9FM.