I Heart the Music: Your Online Source for Live Music Reviews and Interviews in Toronto!

Meet The Zolas: a two-piece hark-back-to-70s Rush-esque prog-pop-rock band with a modern, more theatrical twist. The problem? There are a few.

The duo released their highly anticipated debut album, Tic Toc Tic just a month ago, and I’m already bored. At first listen, there was intrigue, but that quickly faded as I realized these guys aren’t as innovative or inspiring as I hoped them to be. The band take steps beyond pop music, but they aren’t quite over the hurdle – The Zolas seem to linger in this middle kingdom between straightforward pop and progressive, but their trendy cabaret-influenced experimental rock album sounds way cooler as a description than it actually is.

As far as pop music goes, these guys have some things to boast: catchy melodies, some interesting hooks, good drum patterns (the drumming is their strong-point), and the overall composition is cool. The instrumentals do elevate the band above your typical pop sound and they certainly carry the music, but the defeat lies within the vocals. Zach Gray’s voice is too standard, too overbearing, and his lyrics provide little to no redemption. Yes, he has the range, but his vocal placement and style just doesn’t jive with the musical counterparts.

Tic Toc Tic sounds like a Cold War Kids/Rush/Gavin DeGraw theatrical hybrid; however, the album has neither the edge nor the tightness of CWK, the musical depth of Rush, and Gavin DeGraw sucks pop. But what’s most interesting about The Zolas is their evident potential.  Zach Gray and Tom Dobrzanski clearly have skill and talent. The instrumentals approach unusual complexity and unconventionality for pop music, but the band doesn’t seem to want to go that extra experimental mile with it. Instead they’ve chosen to plateau at this thinly veiled nuanced interpretation of pop. Sure, The Zolas’ structure departs somewhat from the boring verse-chorus-verse template, and they’ve successfully created some sort of off-broadway-meets cabaret-meets radio-savvy music , but I can’t help but think that their sound is more contrived and vapid than natural or inventive. Yeah it’s fun, fluffy music, but where’s the spirit?

Even with the ability to compose and play music well, talent ultimately depends on the quality of expression and how far the bar has been raised. Again, the potential to go beyond stagy, predictable music is so strong in this album you can hear it, so I don’t know why they wouldn’t use their wherewithal to swerve off the road to commercial and do something greater…or at least use another vocalist.

Reviewed by Brittany Smith

Passenger Action, an amalgamation of members from punk bands past, played a show at the Horseshoe that iheartthemusic happened to be at. So impressed were we, we bombarded the band after their set and requested an impromptu interview. Luckily for us they obliged. And so Clay Shea (bass) and Allan Harding (drums) entertained us with how the band came to be, where they’re going and mammary massages. [Ed note: other band members are Shawn Moncreiff (vocals and guitar) and Ryan Podlubny (guitar).]

iheartthemusic: How did you guys form?

Clay: Shawn and I played for 13 years in a band called Choke. In 2006 we did our final tour, no wait, 2007. Before we finished we started playing with Allan and Pod; Pod used to play in a band called Tee Fullblast.

Allan: I was also in a different band from Edmonton. I’ve been in almost 50 bands. I play a lot.

iheartthemusic: You slut!

Allan: I started playing when I was 12 in wedding bands and stuff. I’m from Saskatchewan, but I moved to Edmonton to go to music school. I went on the Fullblast tour and met Pod; he was from Edmonton but he was living [in Toronto] playing in a band and going a little bit crazy, so he left the band and moved back to Edmonton and we started hanging out. He was almost done with music but then we started playing in a fun band and jamming and then…wait, how the band actually got started was when Clay had a bass stolen.

Clay: I left my guitar in the back of my car and my wife was using the car to go to the lake. She took it out and put it down while she was cleaning, ran in the house to grab something, and in the time before she came out some kids stole my guitar.  I didn’t notice it was missing until a couple days later. Long story short I needed a new guitar so I went to the shop where Pod works. Choke was not finished but on hiatus, and me and Shawn were looking to start a new project. A mutual friend from Detroit had recommended Ryan, who we call Pod [note: they pronounce it Pud, but we guessed it was based on his last name so spelled it this way]. Pod worked in this shop and we got talking about practicing. I think at this point him and Shawn had talked about the idea as well, and he said he knew Allan, so we got together and practiced and it clicked right away. That was two years ago.

iheartthemusic: How would you define your sound?

Allan: We’re like the new Rush.

Clay: I don’t see us as a punk band, but we all came from punk band backgrounds and I think it’s apparent when you hear us. We try to keep things a lot more interesting than the average punk band.

iheartthemusic: You just released your first full-length album.

Clay: It came out on Feb 10, it’s self-titled.

Allan: It’s on Smallman Records. We released an EP of the first six songs we ever wrote together. We did that in a basement in a week. Then we sent it out to some people and we had a couple offers but ended up going with Smallman Records from Winnipeg.

Clay: It was the label Choke worked with for 10 years.

Allan: They signed us and then they re-released the EP we made on our own and then we spent all of June recording the record in Brampton. We recorded it in June and it’s just coming out now in February so it’s been a long wait. Torture.

Clay: But we’re excited to be on the road again. It’s tough cause we’re a band running on the reputation of previous bands we were in; sometimes people are showing up with expectations. They liked our old band and really want us to sound this way or that way. But at the same time it’s afforded us the luxury to be able to go out on our own and make it worthwhile.

Allan: We definitely have an advantage coming here with past reputations because we can come to the Horseshoe on a Sunday and play in front of 50 people or however many.

Clay: On the Horseshoe thing, my dad, he really does his best to try and take an interest in my music. He’s awesome, but I know he’s always faking it. But the thing he gets excited about every time is whenever we’re playing the Horseshoe. I always tell him and he’s like, “I saw Hank Snow there when I was 20 years old.” And it makes him so happy; it’s like that connection that’s just awesome.

iheartthemusic: So the Horseshoe is just one of many stops on your tour to promote the new record?

Allan: We had a crazy fucking mission to get out East. We started in Edmonton, we played in Regina and Thunder Bay then Montreal to Rimouski and then all the way to Halifax.

Clay: We went from Edmonton to Halifax in a week’s time. The country’s so big and there aren’t a ton of places to play in between Winnipeg and Ontario. Either way it seems you gotta drive pretty much for two days across the country either at the beginning or end of a tour…You drive 20 hours from Edmonton and you cross four provinces. And then you hit Thunder Bay and you drive 20 hours and you’re still in Ontario. It just doesn’t seem like the same place.

Allan: Ontario is halfway to Ontario.

Clay: You’re brilliant…Anyways, within a few days of the record coming out we would have super fans at every show. A number of them anyway, whether it be four guys singing every word or 15 or 20 or whatever. It’s been an enthusiastic crowd.

Allan: I will say this, we’ll probably play in Europe before we play in the States. It’s more exciting.

Clay: I spent a lot of time touring the US with Choke and never really enjoyed it that much, I found it really tough. The things we didn’t do, like go to Europe or Japan, which I know are feasible because we have friends who do it, I think that’s where we want to focus more for sure.

iheartthemusic: What made it hard and tough? Was it the crowd or the venues and bookings?

Clay: A little bit of both. For the most part Choke was lucky, we were pretty successful in the underground scene, in Canada anyway, so we would do well.

Allan: Who did you tour in the States with? AFI… When you dig into the history of the band you’ll see that we’ve all been playing for a looong time.

iheartthemusic: Any crazy fan experiences?

Allan: [very guilty laugh] Tell them the massage story.

Clay: [louder guilty laughter] Giver. This wasn’t a crazy fan, this was just crazy. We were unloading after a show at a bar when all of a sudden  we look up and this girl’s got her large breasts in her hands and drops them on a guy’s shoulders from behind. Huge boobs! Then boom, titty neck massages! It was one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever seen.

iheartthemusic: I’m envisioning those inflatable neck pillows for airplanes.

Clay: Exactly!

iheartthemusic: What’s next?

Allan: We’re hoping to do the Moneen CD release tour, we’re on Warped Tour for Western Canada and we have a Western Canadian tour in April. Then writing and we’re going to go back to work. So we’re trying to keep busy.

Photography by James Blake