Alt-Rock Trio A Different Brand of Noise Returns With New Album 'Far More Than Conversation,' Led by Single "Who Dares"
Guitarist Robert Ranaldi and bassist Ken Ashdown had already built solid careers of their own before the band existed, Ranaldi through Secret Act and Man and Things, Ashdown through This "Blue Piano" and Ulysses Underwood. Both had toured Canada and the UK, landed campus and alternative radio chart success, and opened high-profile dates for major alternative rock acts of the era. A chance run-in on a Montreal street as the 1980s wound down reignited their friendship, and with drummer Gonzo on board, the three quickly formed a power trio built on that shared foundation.
The new band wasted little time. Writing and rehearsing quickly, they built a loyal following through a short run of packed headline shows around Montreal. A demo recorded on an analog four-track in late 1987 surfaced as the bootleg 'Up, Tight,' an instant favourite on Montreal campus and alternative radio. The run was brief. After about a year and a half, university and steady paycheques won out over the uncertainties of a band on the rise, and the group quietly disbanded, leaving behind 10 finished songs that would not see an official release for decades.
Ranaldi relocated to New York, Ashdown eventually settled in Roberts Creek, BC, and Gonzo stayed in Montreal. What finally reunited them was a phone call during the early days of pandemic lockdown, when Ashdown reached out to his old bandmates to check in. Re-recording their old material remotely started to pass the time, since only a handful of those songs had ever properly made it to tape. The band relearned its own catalogue from fading rehearsal cassettes, taught itself audio production from scratch and mastered Logic Pro along the way, trading files back and forth for three years until 19 songs existed in finished form. The first 10, written 37 years earlier, became the band's official debut, 'Blurry,' released in 2025 behind the single "Stir in the Air."
The sound draws on a wide well of influence, from the Velvet Underground, Scott Walker and Big Star to REM, Gang of Four and XTC, a range that inspired the band's own name after Ranaldi made an offhand remark about how differently each member's record collection read. One early fan landed close to the mark describing it as psychedelic power pop folk punk rock. What ties it together on record is a tight, locked-in rhythm section, sharp wit and hooks and harmonies that never let the songs' darker edges overwhelm the melody.
'Far More Than Conversation' carries that same identity into nine new songs the band describes as being about sex, drugs and incipient societal collapse, its own tagline for a record that pulls its title directly from a line in "Eat 'em and Smile."
Opener "Who Dares" sets the tone, a song about income inequality and rampant consumerism that the band wrote decades ago and finds just as relevant today. "Do the Poor" grew out of an overheard conversation among wealthy teenagers at a party, bemoaning their own comfortable lives, and closes with a children's chorus performed by members of the Sunshine Coast Children's Choir, featuring Juniper McDougall and Olivia Copping, arranged by Varya Rubin-Moysey and engineered by Steve Weave at a studio on BC's Sunshine Coast.
"Designs" traces its hazy, image-heavy lyrics back to a mushroom-fuelled afternoon shared by Ashdown and former co-writer Geoff Finch in a Montreal apartment, the words landing somewhere between psychedelic vision and misheard conversation. "She's the One" is Ranaldi's tribute to his childhood sweetheart, whom he later married.
The guitar break on "Pleasure Signs" is Ranaldi's homage to the late John McGeoch's solo on Magazine's "Shot by Both Sides." "Falling Down Again II" reworks an older Ashdown composition once covered by both This "Blue Piano" and Ulysses Underwood, its title a nod to Nick Drake's "Hazey Jane II" and to Drake's lasting influence on the band. Closer "Time Will Tell" balances youthful, change-the-world optimism against the darker political and economic realities of the era in which it was written.
Day jobs still come first for the reunited trio. Ashdown works in labour relations as a mediator and conflict management practitioner, while Ranaldi is a behavioural neuroscientist and professor at Queens College, CUNY, whose research has been cited in Johann Hari's widely viewed TED Talk, "Everything You Think You Know About Addiction Is Wrong." With those careers still front and centre, touring stays on hold for now, and the band's focus remains on the music itself.
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