The weathervane is my body — Truck Violence

The weathervane is my body — Truck Violence

The weathervane is my body is the sophomore effort from Montreal-based post-hardcore outfit Truck Violence, but in its colossal swings, its precarious peaks and brimming valleys, it reads closely as a creation of careful balance— a project strung between the overlapping mysticisms of sludge metal, noise rock, and the folk music of the Northern Appalachians. Insofar as it advances the meticulous symmetry of their debut project, Violence, the album is a major stride forward into a sound that has no true counterpart.

It’s always helpful when a band provides a bio that actually tells you something about their aims, rather than simply the name of a city or an abstract genre-label. Truck Violence does exactly that, and in a way, my introduction in the paragraph above to The weathervane is my body was simply a rephrasing of this quasi-mission statement.

Their Spotify bio reads as such:

Truck Violence (Montréal, QC) is a medley that wails its way through the bitters of modern Western Canadian hardcore and folk, an honesty and shamelessness in disappointment that is both a comfort and a stern regard.

This very well might have been written by a PR or label employee. But even if that is the case, it provides us with a clear intention— a scale upon which to weigh The weathervane is my body.

In essence, the project is an exploration of the gravity carried by two sonic extremes.

It begins with the collapsing riffs and evocative gutturals of vocalist Karsyn Henderson on “My dog would f*ck the air”. Beyond the mild shock value of the title itself, the track stuns the listener into alertness. It doesn’t surpass much of their previous work in terms of heaviness or sheer energy, but it does set a thunderous tone for the project as a whole. At turns, it heaves an epic weight onto its shoulders— its riffs span decades and even centuries in their reverberating asperity— but at others, it is gentle and quiet, tender in its embrace.

“Jaundiced and reaching for a mother” and “Compelled by Christy” lean even further into this injected sense of openness, with the former’s trailing chugs at the guitar setting the foundations for its acute expression of rage and the latter’s twangy inflection and looser employment of percussion clearing the way for Henderson to deliver a long, circular oration that, at times, dips even into the realm of spoken word.

But “House caught fire” is the first track where we get a full glimpse of the folk motif that has been teased, to various degrees, on each of the first three entries to the album. Not only is the track a testament to the range of Henderson and each of the band’s instrumentalists, but it is decidedly bold in its accessibility. While it delves into some of the crooning, Blind Melon-esque considerations of ‘90s alternative rock, it is no less complex or evocative than the project’s more straightforward post-hardcore efforts— it is only different in its mode of expression. Jangling acoustic guitar and a springing banjo dominate the track’s atmosphere, but the same unfettered angst, the same intrepid vulnerability, lay bare across the length of the song.

With “New Jesus”, “Your name, It’s walking”, and “Stomach as a tower and the globules descending”, The weathervane is my body returns to its original foundation, but with the added tinge of the openness established on “House caught fire”. From the vocal dichotomies of “New Jesus”, flung out across the collapsing instrumental landscapes of the track, to the inescapable and crushing opening strums of “Your name”, to the haunting vocal repetitions that close “Stomach,” each track adds layer upon layer to the existing body of the project— each individual moment is a new wrinkle in the expanse covered by Truck Violence’s sound.

“Gerard, be quiet” provides us with one final jangly reprieve before the album turns the culmination of its combinatory efforts in the projects’ closer, “Kindly, wash yourself.”

The final track begins, fittingly, with a shuffling softness that allows it to transition seamlessly from “Gerard, be quiet”, but it quickly dives headfirst into the full breadth of energy that Truck Violence’s brimming sound allows. It utilizes its sludge, its pure griminess, to an end, however— to provide a sense of finality to the project. It is the album’s heaviest track, but it is also its zenith, transcending the tenuous balance struck between the project’s distinct sounds and providing a closing statement to its sonic argument.

On the surface, The weathervane is my body is a project that lives in its peaks and its valleys, finding its fullest expression either in the heaviness of its hardcore tracks or in the scattered quaintness of its acoustic efforts. But it is what lies between those two extremes— a deep and visceral expression of the “bitters” and the open plains of Western Canadian music— that provides its true emotional impact.

You can outline, somewhat easily, the moments that provide that sense of space to the album, especially those that exist in contrast to the usual confining strictures of the hardcore sound. There are the obvious folk-forward tracks, “House caught fire” and “Gerard, be quiet”, and there are the banjo pickings that close “Your name, It’s walking” and “Compelled by Christy”. But to simply identify those moments is to miss the heart of the project entirely.

A sharp bitterness against the world and its constructs is expressed at every turn, and it is conveyed in equal parts through the desolation of the folk ethos and the more energetic expressions provided by its noise rock and hardcore counterparts. The weathervane is my body, therefore, is a full embodiment, in the parts that live between its two extremes, of the “honesty” and “shamelessness” evoked in Truck Violence’s bio.

It is a triumphant next step in the sonic vocation the band first undertook with its debut effort.