Just home from Toronto’s North by Northeast Music Festival, This Hisses played Old Market Square on June 18 to kick-off the Winnipeg Jazz Festival and have had a busy weekend touring their haunting surf sound – a genre that became the name of their upcoming debut album, Surf Noir.

Characterized by Julia Ryckman’s operatic voice and commanding presence, Patrick Short’s post-punk influenced grungy guitar riffs and JP Perron’s tempo-shifting, surf-style drumming, This Hisses have built a reputation as a band to watch.

However, when they first got together to jam, they didn’t even know they would be a band.

“It was purely a recording project at first, but the chemistry was so good we were like, no, this is a good band, we’re gonna do this all the way,” Ryckman says.

Wanting to get in the studio to lay down previously unrecorded songs from her last project, The Gorgon, Ryckman enlisted the help of former Mahogany Frog drummer Perron as well as Short, who played in Electric Candles and Under Pressure.

Since then the band has been signed to local label Transistor 66, and is set to release Surf Noir with a show at the Pyramid Cabaret on Saturday, July 23.

Much of the band’s publicity so far has been about Ryckman putting her opera background to use in a garage rock context. Her study of voice at the Royal Conservatory of Music has influenced her songwriting and lyrics.

“A lot of my vocal melodies were written before the words, and the melody dictated the direction of the lyrics completely because there are certain parts in the song where I want a certain phrasing, so I need a certain vowel there to carry that phrase,” Ryckman says. “It’s not the only factor, but it’s a major factor in my lyrics writing.”

Another major influence in her lyrics is her degree in English literature, an accomplishment shared by Short.

“How you see the world is how you use words,” Ryckman says. “Symbolism and imagery, and how you put a sentence together is something that, having done an English degree, you can’t not think about.”

This Hisses was described by the host at the Old Market Square show as one of the most exciting bands in Winnipeg to watch live.

Certainly, a lot of that comes from Perron’s hyperactive drumming that’s visually somewhere between Keith Moon and Animal from The Muppets.

“We’re trying to take it as it comes right now,” Perron says of the band’s future plans.

“We’re trying to play good shows, and we practice a lot and try to make our shows really good for the audience and really good for us.”

Published in Volume 65, Number 27 of The Uniter (June 29, 2011)