♪♫ ♪ ♪♫

Potent
Artist: Puncturevine
Album: Ignite
Year: 2007
♥: Let me tell you a bit about goth clubs.

They're dark -- in feel and lighting. They usually have black lights, a DJ pumping EBM/industrial, a dancefloor filled with a bunch of writhing people who are out to see and be seen. The goth scene in any city is generally incestuous: you know (almost) everyone, and like any subculture, you get swept up in quotidian drama. But if you can let that go, put on your corset and black eyeshadow and red dreads, and just dance -- they're a good fucking time.

I was introduced to goth clubs (and Friday nights at Saph!) via my friend Claire, and through her, back in 2004, I met this girl Meg. You may know her. Maybe. But! Before Meg and I were to turn into the Decarie Duo we've become, we had to bond. So: in summer 2007, we road tripped to visit Claire in Toronto. We packed our best lacy crinoline skirts and darkest makeup, slowly adding colour to our wardrobes but still attached to the dark swirls we painted around our eyes in cegep. This was going to be a return to form! -- the goth girls, together again, doing Toronto up Montreal-style (a Canadian songbook tour of its own!). The weekend itself is kind of lost in my memory, a blur of Meg and I wandering the city on foot while Claire was at work, a lot of amaretto sours and Claire encouraging Meg to go into modeling ----- but this band remains...potent (haha).

Friday night, we walked into Neutral in our gothy finest (our outfits all matched, big skirts/striped stockings/pigtails -- I in purple, Meg in red, Claire in blue), ready to dance...and there were people with microphones and synths onstage. What. Meg and I exchanged looks, exasperated -- we were expecting to move, not listen to some local band from Oakville or wherever the fuck -- but then the set started. Puncturevine is goth/EBM at its loveliest and most accessible: ethereal, flowing, Delerium-esque undertones with a heavy industrial twist. When it ended, Meg and I each bought the album, wide-eyed and convinced.

I'm posting Puncturevine for this theme because it infuriates me that a band so good. so interesting, has never gotten exposure. Will never be included in a Canadian songbook. Will be forgotten, swept under the goth club rug and left with so many other amazing artists, in every genre, that just never make it. So I'm taking the theme and spinning it: this is in no way a song that would ever make it into a school musical. What it is, though, is a local Canadian group that struck me, one random evening, by chance. And that's my Canadian songbook tour: musical and physical journeys to the subcultures, the underbellies, the weird and the outcast and the beautiful.

And I, anyway, have never forgotten this album: I blast it often, especially when I am getting ready to go out. My favourite track is the opening one: "Potent." It pulses, rips through your veins, builds and breaks; its sensuality is raw. And, in light of recent events, I quite appreciate the latter.