Kick in the PANTS

Winnipeg post-punk band PANTS goes from just jammin’ to serious business

Kevin Legge

In the spring of 2013, guitarist/vocalist Bill Perehinec, bassist Ryan McPherson and drummer Nyala Ali settled on the name PANTS. Thankfully, they also decided to take the band’s music a little more seriously.

“Bill and I were jamming off and on, just making noise about a year and half ago, and then we decided we’d like to actually have a band and write some actual songs,” McPherson says. “We just wanted to hang out and make music with people that aren’t a total chore to be around.”

While Perehinec used to perform in a cover band called Seller, and McPherson played in a stoner rock band, both say they’re pretty much starting from scratch with PANTS. 

So far, the band has released two basement demos at pantsmb.bandcamp.com and is working on some new material it will debut at the Uniter Fiver Showcase at the Park Theatre on Jan. 17, alongside a demo sampler called The Dunning-Kruger Sessions Vol. 1.

“If we had to pick a genre, I guess we’d say post-punk,” Ali says.

 “Nyala and I are really big Steve Albini fans,” McPherson adds. “We’re both into Shellac and personally a lot of my influence comes from Joy Division, Jesus Lizard and that sort of post-punk noisy hard rock kind of stuff.” 

“When we started out we were just playing whatever, just trying different things out, which is the PANTS philosophy, try it and see if it works.”

Writing seems to have been the band’s main focus in 2013, although PANTS did play New Music Wednesdays at Ozzy’s in the summer.

“Since then we’ve evolved so much in our writing, so a lot of stuff we played at that show we’re never going to play again,” Perehinec says.

One of the demo songs PANTS released in October is “Boundaries”, which the trio shot a video for in late 2013.

“I used to work with a guy who decided corporate life wasn’t for him and so he quit the job we both had, even though he was doing quite well, to go work in a warehouse somewhere and he was much happier doing that,” McPherson says. “For me the song is sort of about setting your personal limits, deciding what’s over the line and what kind of life you want to lead.”

The music video was edited by McPherson, shot by his girlfriend and features the band members performing with paper bags over their heads.

“The video was a ton of fun. None of us had ever done a video before that and now we’re totally hooked so we’re going to definitely do more videos over the summer,” McPherson says.

“I think that video inspired us to be even more creative. It really gave us a lot of energy,” Perehenic adds.

Part of the series: The Uniter Fiver

Published in Volume 68, Number 16 of The Uniter (January 15, 2014)

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