New Music Round Up: Dawson Gray, Chinese Medicine, ThxSoMch, and more.
Photo credit: Jimmy Fontaine - ThxSoMch
Happy Stampeding to all Calgarians and to those who travelled here for the Albertan festivities. Whether you embrace the cowboy lifestyle or become a western grinch for 10 days, we have news for you: new music doesn’t stop here. In support of our Stampede-lovers, this week we are carving out space for country artist Dawson Gray. But don’t worry punkrockers, we will also be talking about Calgary’s Dial Up and Toronoto’s Chinese Medicine. Buckle up (your big belts of course) and let's talk music.
Hailing from White Rock, B.C., contemporary country artist Dawson Gray released a new single, “Camo Can” on July 4. Blending traditional country roots with modern production, this is folk being played through a pop speaker. Maintaining country’s hallmark themes—trucks, small-town life, heartbreak, and beer— Gray delivers this song with layered instrumentation, including everything from twangy guitars to synthesizers and drum machines. He is embracing the crossover of glossy beats and pop-style choruses to appeal to both longtime country fans and new listeners. Learn the words and learn the dance because you're sure to hear this one down on the grounds this week.
Now this may be overdue, but it’s never too late to talk about The Trans Agenda, specifically Chinese Medicine’s latest EP. Toronto’s own queer-fronted punk band made their latest release on May 16, and its gritty, political, and totally on brand. Their sound captures the restless spirit of punk’s past while pushing forward with a voice distinctly their own. Their lyrics are soaked in messages that demand to be heard, culminating in the satire of their title track “The Trans Agenda” where they combine harmful stereotypes of marginalized groups and tie them together with fast-paced riffs and razor sharp vocals. They also include a feature from a fellow-Canadian band, Shiv and the Carvers, on the track “Total Happiness.” We hear both bands complementing each other's styles to create a relentless and masochistic piece that is perfect for the mosh. Chinese Medicine played Sled Island Music Festival this year, and we don’t just speak for ourselves when we say they are welcome to rock our venues any day of the year.
Across the border from Brooklyn, NY, post-punk band Stay Inside released the single “Super Sonic” on June 10. Known for balancing the raw intensity of hardcore with the introspective vulnerability of midwestern emo, their latest track builds and collapses in waves. Moments of delicate stillness giving way to fluttering vocal breaks emblematic of emotional intensity, they perfectly mirror the turbulence of modern life. This song, like much of their work, is chock-full with tension—high and low energy, memory and urgency, protest and confession. This manifests in the chorus lyrics, “Get your head out of the gutter/ You’re a sell out, did I stutter/ What’s your number? We were supersonic novas.” Like losing someone you love but revisiting old pictures with them, Stay Inside manages to touch that tender part inside your chest with the intensity of very real, very big emotions. The band takes off for a headliner tour of the States in July.
Toronto’s ThxSoMch continues his genre-bending streak with “Sound of You Laughing”, a post-punk-infused slow burn that captures the ache of memory in both its lyrics and accompanying music video. Built around a striking guitar riff courtesy of collaborator Flawed Mangoes and layered with drum textures from LMG, the track leans into a kind of delicate toughness - melancholic, raw, and hypnotic. Freestyled in a moment of emotional clarity, ThxSoMch describes the song as “both comfort and discomfort,” mirroring the feeling of digging through old photos and finding versions of yourself you’re not quite ready to let go of.
The track’s nostalgic undercurrent is echoed in a dreamy, light-washed video directed by Tommy Kiljoy, which channels childhood playgrounds and the liminal space between growing up and holding on. While ThxSoMch initially rose to prominence with the viral hit “SPIT IN MY FACE!”, “Sound of You Laughing” shows off his evolving emotional range—still confrontational, but more introspective. For fans of alt-rock that isn’t afraid to sit with sadness, this one cuts deep.
Coming back to Calgary, the art-punk sensation Dial Up released their first studio album, Ball Pit, on June 5. Known for energetic and weird performances, they push their avante-garde aesthetic even further with this release where we hear both sides of the spectrum—ranging from anxious and angular raw punk blended with warbly synth, all the way to psychedelic rock that could play the soundtrack for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Each song on this album is not like the next, and that perfectly sums up the psychotropic collage that is Dial Up. Their track “I Am a Reflective Surface” is oozing with plastic nostalgia of lo-fi synths, channeling no wave's chaotic DNA into a jittery, danceable form of cyber-anxiety. Alternatively, the memoir “GMOther Pt. 1” is a monotonous story of a boy and a moth, who he calls mother, and represents childish grief and surreal chaos of being an adult in this economy. This album marks the first of many, and it's impossible to listen without being sucked into the band’s world of paranoia, euphoria, and nostalgia.