The punk scene within the Calgary area has been increasingly growing and vibrant as of late. One band in particular that has emerged is Quit It!, whose 2020 self-titled EP and 2022 LP, Spilling Out, both charted extensively on Canadian campus radio, with the LP going #1 on the national charts. The band, which hails from Mohkinstsis, consists of Spencer Jo (they/them), Jordan Barrett (he/him), Mikey Blotto (he/him), and Tyler Burton (he/him). With their upcoming record, Through The Debris Quit It! channels their frustration and anger into loud, punchy, hardcore punk songs with catchy and melodic hooks, powerful socio-political lyrics, and electrifying energy. Recently, Blotto and Burton spoke with REVERIE about their upcoming record.

“Thematically, our last album was more optimistic, whereas this album is more dealing with frustration that our optimism didn’t prevail the way we wanted it to be, just when it comes to the way our world is spinning right now,” comments Burton.

This frustration can be found throughout the record. Selecting Through The Debris as the title for the record is one example. “It just speaks to the frustration,” reflects Burton. “Being as optimistic a record as Spilling Out was, it was supposed to be the spilling out of our souls and looking for optimism in the world. I think Through The Debris [represents] all for of us having gone through a lot personally, a lot with the band, and the way that the world, in particular the music industry, is changing and making it harder for smaller to mid-size music acts to get to that next step.”

In the anthemic “Don’t Be A Jerk” Quit It! vents their frustration with the rise of discrimination, hate speech, and white supremacy. “At the end of the day, it’s really just stop being a fucking jerk,” states Burton.

Meanwhile, “Kevanu '91” sees the band exploring the challenges of being a small band on the road. “Kevanu is just a puny band van name, a rip on Keanu Reeves and van and putting it together – it was a nightmare of a van that broke down constantly and cost us a lot of time, money, stress, and sanity,” shares Blotto.

On the other hand, “Make It So” is an incredibly sweet and emotional song about the beautiful and heartwarming bond people share with their dog. The song is about Blotto’s miniature schnauzer Picard, who is named after Captain Picard from Star Trek. “He's left alone a lot by me, not necessarily alone, but I leave a lot with the band on the road, and I just kind of wrote a song that I thought was from the perspective of him, how he feels, and what he's thinking about when I leave,” comments Blotto. “I think it was kind of inspired by the Weakerthans, not nearly as poetic as John K. Samson, but he's got songs about his cat.”

One of the standout tracks from the record is "Video Days." The song is a love letter to the skateboard community. “I was sick of writing sad boy songs; like here’s my problems and here’s the problems of the world sort of thing,” says Burton. “I just wanted to write about something I enjoy. It ended up turning into a nostalgia dive. I was like rewatching a whole bunch of old skate videos I really enjoy. I was skateboarding a lot at the time I was writing it – thinking about when I would go skateboarding with my Dad. I spent a lot of time skateboarding with my father, and it kind of turned into that. I even referenced a couple of skate videos in the song. I mean, Video Days is a reference to one of my favourite skate videos of all time, but I reference skate videos my Dad showed me in the early 2000s when I was a young lad on a skateboard and getting into it.”

Spilling Out opened with “Bones Raw Wire,” a haunting piano instrumental with a gorgeous atmosphere. For Through The Debris Quit It! opted to go full throttle right off the bat with the chaotically loud and explosively energetic “Bad Ideas.” “I think we just thought it would be best to come out guns a-blazing right off the rip,” comments Burton. “It's just a big punch to the face. Like, ‘Here's the song, no more screwing around.’ We still have fillers and interludes, but I think it was like ‘Let’s just get to it and let's start it off with a ripper.’”

Quit It! feels that Through The Debris feels more connected as a whole compared to Spilling Out. “Our first album was kind of spun out of the decay of our old band, River Jacks, so some of those songs were carried over from our previous incarnation,” says Blotto. “This one was a lot more cohesive towards what we have become as a band.”

Quit It! is a highly collaborative project, as all four members contribute songs and provide input on both the lyrics and music. “When you have one person writing the songs, it can tend to be not boring necessarily, but having all these different creative inputs, it brings a different sort of energy,” explains Blotto. “We all kind of give our own little touch to a song as well, like it's not ‘Here's the parts I wrote for everybody.’ We’re still all writing together.”

One of the best examples of this collaborative approach is “Devil On Detail,” especially the ending, which Blotto describes as “A very collaborative effort as when we wrote that we really wrote it together, maybe more so than any other song on the record. That outro, we were just pushing ourselves to go outside of the box and do something that we didn’t normally do.”

Being in such a collaborative band allows for some very interesting sparks of inspiration and cool moments to happen. "I have two favourite things, being in such a collaborative band like Quit It!," shares Burton. "One is when someone suggests something that is completely out of left field, and you're like, 'Yes, that's an amazing addition to the song. That's what it needed.' The other one is someone validating a decision that you had in your head, but we're too self-conscious to bring up, like in this record, I maybe had an idea, but felt a little too self-conscious that it might be out of left field, and one of the other people in the band makes the exact suggestion. It just blows my mind."

Quit It! also tried some new things as well, incorporating longer outros and instrumental breaks into the mix. One example is "Pig Fat," which takes an unexpected turn at the end. The outro is stunningly melancholic, hauntingly comforting, and utilizes instruments like horns, piano, and trumpet. “I think it’s a nice palate cleanser in the middle of a record, to have these breaks,” reflects Burton. “Bad Brains used to have five or six hardcore songs in a row and then a reggae dub song for like five minutes and then another six to seven hardcore songs and then another reggae dub. I really enjoy those records. Having those little interludes and palate cleansers breaks it up and makes it a little more dynamic.”

“The part at the end of ‘Pig Fat’ is not really a part of ‘Pig Fat,’” adds Blotto. “When we play ‘Pig Fat’ live, we don’t play it. It was more written specifically for the album as an interlude.”

Through The Debris is set to drop on October 8th. “It’s a real showcase of our frustration with this late-stage capitalism and rising fascism and just watching everything that we didn’t want to happen happening right in front of our eyes,” shares Burton.“It kind of ripples through everything of that. We had van issues, and it was expensive to maintain the van because everything has gone up in price. It's harder to maintain anything when it's getting more and more expensive. It’s frustration within the system, which causes frustration within our daily lives and our commute and our workplaces and all that stuff. There's frustration with the rise of authoritarianism, like you watch policing getting more and more violent. When you get songs like ‘Video Days’ that are about nostalgia, which is kind of reaching back to a place where it was a little bit more innocent, and you can be free in that moment and mindful in that moment. It’s just showcasing our frustration with the entire world and anyone who has got an inkling of power over us.”

Through The Debris is out on October 8th. Quit It!’s latest release is vinyl and Bandcamp-only.

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