Search - Got To Get Got :: Canadian Arts Collective Blues

"One of the bonuses of covering the Halifax Pop Explosion is that it gives us an opportunity to talk about some Canadian bands that we haven't covered on the hill before. Especially when there's a local connection, and there's no band more locally connected to the hill than The Got To Get Got. Formed last year by two former members of North Of America, Mark Mullane and Mark Colavecchia, TGTGG has connections to Vancouver, Toronto, and Halifax. It seems the band was hatched whilst Mullane was in Vancouver for a work contract and sleeping on Colavecchia's floor. They started practicing in Vancouver before Mullane returned to Toronto, and then ultimately Halifax. As you might know, both the Ack and I lived in Toronto for quite some time, and then he moved out to Vancouver, and I came back to Halifax. Oh the similarities! Anyway, I'm sure you're now wondering "well if they split up, does the TGTGG story end there?" No friends, it does not. Colavecchia enlisted some of his west coast compadres (Chris Vanderlaan of Animal Names and Dan Tompkins of Baby Control) to help him record two songs, No One Riots In The Winter and Mass Murder Weekend, while Mullane, backed by the TGTGG strictly East Coast band (Michael Catano of North of America, Ron Bates of The Memories Attack, Eleanor King of The Just Barelys, Brad Lahead, Jon Dacey, Haley Thomas, Rachael Schwartz and Andrew Glencross), recorded two more songs, Blood Test and Tenerife. Put them together and you have TGTGG's compactly named EP Canadian Arts Collective Blues/Huge Zig Zag. After that backstory, and that's not even mentioning the fact that their name comes from a Law & Order episode, how can you not want to hear more from TGTGG? Well, you can remedy that with the aforementioned EP, Canadian Arts Collective Blues/Huge Zig Zag, which really is quite promising. Considering it was recorded by two different groups of people, it still manages to sound like different facets of one group. The sprawling keys and string laden Blood Test sounds like something from Clarity era Jimmy Eat World, while No One Riots In Winter is kind of Arcade Fire-ish, but in a good way. The rollicking, 6 minute+ Tenerife has a post-punk feel and Mass Murder Weekend has a east coast pop feel in the Sloanish tradition. Good stuff all around in my book. It seems TGTGG had been planning on re-forming Voltron style in the fall to record a full length, but for now those of us in Halifax can be satisfied by seeing whichever incarnation shows up for their Explosion gig." - Hero Hill