Boids – Quel Drag

Montreal four-piece Boids has run the gamut of eclectic pop-punk over their past two releases.  Previously, the band forced comparisons to a laundry list of disparate influences.  From the ragged, unhinged chaos of Black-Flag and The BCASA, to the steady melodic bopping of three-chord punk staples like The Riverboat Gamblers and Dead To Me, Boids pulled all the stops, throwing out the rules in favour of their own playbook.  After releasing their first two albums in two back-to-back years, fans have been left with five years of relative quiet.  But now that those years have passed, Boids have returned as unpredictably as ever.

Where there was once angular chords and crunchy riffs, there is now a new strand of continuity threaded through Boids’ fabric: new wave.  Produced by the seasoned ear of Tom Thacker (dual member of Sum 41 and Gob), the band’s newest album, Quel Drag, is an abrupt left turn in the Boids discography, but one that somehow fits their “raison d’être” just as snug as any prior effort.

Quel Drag opens with the low steady buzz of “Eurovision,” a sort of manifesto of personal identity that looks to the EU for models of acceptance and inclusivity that transcend the rigid thinking and adversarial attitudes that have come to polarize the contemporary US.  At first the track feels reserved, with low range synth beats and uniform, Ramones-inspired guitar marching steadily forward.  Upon reaching the chorus the band loosens up, infusing bursts of distorted guitar and pulsing synthy keys that swell into a vocally layered melodic choral crescendo unlike anything in Boids previous work.  

“Modern Art” swings the pendulum back to more conventional punk-rock ground, making for a big bass-heavy sound that feels like the love child of The Operation M.D. and The Hives.  The album is definitely the band’s most hook heavy offering, with choruses that simply demand a sing along.  “Bike Thief,” the album’s first single, captures all the reasons that pop-punk has stood the test of time, pedaling along at a brisk pace not unlike The Methadones or Teenage Bottlerocket in delivery and structure.  It isn’t long before the album returns to the weird and wonderful world of new wave in the slower tempoed “Guillotine” and “Shipping and Receiving,” with the former getting all weird and wacky with some spastic vocal bursts and the latter even exploring a brief theremin-style sounding interlude.  

The album’s erratic nature draws a close parallel to Green Day’s brief new wave side project The Network, although with a little more stability.  That being said, all this back and forth fits the album’s goal, which the band describes as being an “unbridled celebration of the weird and wonderful moments that unite us while firmly rejecting the negative forces that try to bring us down.”  

With cleaner vocals and a more melodic disposition than with past releases, Boids have evolved into something new but no less creative.  The right balance of new wave and pop-punk creates a blend of synth and guitars that is still uniquely Boids despite the band being sonically far from home.