Self-described on their Bandcamp as “punk avant garde erotic nightmare thrash psychedelic punk weirdo Toronto,” the Toronto punk band Soupcans is getting noticed. Dave (lead vocals and guitar), Nick (bass and vocals), and Gideon (drums and vocals) have mastered dynamic punk performances, playing shows so explosive that it is not entirely a rarity to spot small drops of blood on your shoes at the night’s close. Over the course of two years, the Soupcans have put out three albums and played with other local groups such as Strange Attractor, The Stoopid Idiots, Elle V Gore, and better-known bands such as The Spits. Although they are all from a variety of backgrounds, Dave, Nick, and Gideon appreciate the comradeship they are able to maintain as bandmates. “You can tell when bands are just sort of putting it on, and with us, it’s not a put on. Ultimately, we are here to entertain. It’s all about the live show.”
The Soupcans contemplate the possibility of playing together full-time with split responses. “I’m a lifer,” Dave, a cook, reflects, “I don’t like much of anything, but music’s good.”
“I think situations like ours are fairly unique,” Gideon, a bike mechanic originally from Montreal, remarks. “You get along because you know what you’re doing is worth it. Having a situation like that as well as something halfway decent musically, for me, doesn’t happen that often. I could do this until I lost my mind.”
“I would do it for a little while,” Nick assesses. A web designer by day, Nick states that he “would do it for a year and see what happens.”
They describe their formulation as a “Craigslist Romance.” Dave and Nick both answered an ad about a month apart that needed members for a “raw punk band” Gideon had previously played for. Led by a Texan calling himself Count Brockula, the group claimed to seek a classic punk with “no rules.” However, the jams proved to demand a much more regimented brand of punk than Brockula originally advertised. “You would come home and get a three-page email about all the things we did that were wrong,” Dave commented. After Dave quit, Nick left shortly thereafter, realizing he had “had more fun playing with Dave than the whole month I was in that other band.” When they met Gideon again at a bar through mutual friends, they discussed the possibility of collectively playing together, and The Soupcans were born. “I needed something to put myself into,” Gideon said, “I felt I could do something of value.”
“A twist of fate,” Gideon and Nick joked, simultaneously.
Aside from their chaotic sound, much of The Soupcans’ music is striking through its catchiness. As far as influences go, Nick and Dave admire Chrome and Hardcore Devo, much because they didn’t care about suiting a genre. “So much is lifted [from previous music],” Dave considers. Nick adds that “I read this really great quote from Jean-Luc Godard: ‘It’s not what you take but where you take it to.’”
The Soupcans make their music accessible by playing affordable shows, allowing free download of their songs, and omitting the presence of lyrics. Except for a few lines provided for the five songs on their Free Garbage Mini CD, no indication of the words to their music is present. “Supreme minimalist,” Dave states, “I believe I should not interfere with the songs in any way. The lyrics should be as vague and as minimal as possible so you can project whatever you want onto it. I want nothing to do with it.”
In regards to their song-writing process, Gideon gestures to Dave and remarks, “he kills them, we grill them.” But after the collaborative editing process, each band member acknowledges their collective ownership of each song. “The songs belong to the entire band.”
A doubtlessly punk band, The Soupcans spend some time debating what the notion of punk means to them. It’s not about leather jackets, liberty spikes, and Doc Martens anymore. “The name [‘punk’] itself has lost its meaning, but the concept still exists,” Nick states. “A punk is someone who has sex with someone in jail for cigarettes. That’s where the name came from!”
I suggested, to Gideon that being a bike mechanic strikes me as a fairly punk career. “It’s definitely more punk than trading bonds, and I’ve done both,” he replies.
“Punk, to me, is like an abstract gurgle in the back of my throat,” Dave remarks, “Punk is packing your own lunch.”
