The rousing punk-rock shout-along Cheap Parmesan, for instance, is probably the one song on the album that Ollinger would characterize as political. Sometimes a song that seems nonsensical can have some serious undertones. Someone will say something and we say, ‘We should write a song about that.’ It’s very by the seat of our pants.” We kind of write off the cuff: funny ideas when we’re driving to a show or jamming. “Half of it is hilarious to me or nonsensical and then I’m like, ‘I better write a serious song.’ I don’t want to be pigeonholed into one direction. As the band’s chief lyricist, he seems content to keep his tongue firmly planted in cheek for many of the songs, although he tries to mix it up. Ollinger, meanwhile, offers his best David Byrne-David Thomas sing-talk delivery on the slyly philosophical Frugal Man. You can certainly hear instrumental sophistication sneaking into the stately guitar riffing that opens This Town Sucks, the harmonious college-rock counter-melody on the chorus of All My Spots are Sweet, or the soaring post-punk vibes of Fall for This. We went from 10 in the morning until 6 at night for five days and said let’s see what we can pull off. It felt really professional, for lack of a better term. “OCL was into working with us and we had been working on these songs for a while,” Ollinger says. While the band certainly allowed for some last-minute tweaks, the songs were generally fully formed when they entered the studio, allowing the five members and producer Josh Gwilliam to concentrate on the recording process. The band are all really great players so taking it to the next level is not even talked about, it just happens.” Our guitarist Monty (Montebon) is a really crafty player so that really helps. “You can only write the same standard punk-rock banger before it becomes stale. “It’s the evolution of time,” Ollinger says. There was no desire to reinvent the wheel, but punk bands tend to evolve in a somewhat stealthy manner, Ollinger says. The songs all clock in at less than three minutes and most feature the band’s trademark humour and penchant for catchy choruses. After all, the band - which is named after the real-life physicist and children’s show personality who rose to fame on the Mickey Mouse Club in the 1950s - describes itself as “5 grownups playing kid music” on its Facebook page. Granted, there are some returning hallmarks. Ollinger says recording at OCL was next level compared to previous recording sessions, adding it felt like the eight-year-old band had put their “big-league pants on.” The 13-song album continues to showcase an evolution in songwriting for Julius Sumner Miller, he says. The first wave of the pandemic was already in full swing when JSM settled into a five-day stint last April at OCL studios outside of Calgary to record their fourth album, Try it Out. But the members of Julius Sumner Miller, which also includes guitarists Monty Montebon and Sean Hamilton, bassist Glen Murdock and drummer Scott Burton, were hoping that 2020 would be a busy year for the band in terms of touring, particularly since they are now armed with a new album full of songs that are both well-crafted and ready-made for the stage. It’s safe to say that the city is full of bands with a pent-up desire to hit the stage. Let’s just pretend we’re jamming and have fun with this.’ “ “The weird thing was you can’t even see out there because of the plexiglass and the stage lights,” Ollinger says. Not being able to tap into the energy provided by a bouncing horde of punk fans or have the crowd shout along to the band’s endless supply of impossibly catchy tunes seemed to flatten the more visceral and communal aspects of a traditional Julius Sumner Miller show.
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