Come home again
And just like that, they were gone.
I just got home from the Polymaths’ farewell show. It was just like the first time I saw them play at O’Hanlon’s years ago: a similar stage set-up, the same wallflower posture on most of the band, the Polylamp. Probably a lot of the same faces in the same crowd at the same bar, the same smiles calling for the band to “chop chop” until there are no more notes left to play.
Even now, having arrived home and listened to nearly their entire discography (all 90 minutes of it) I can’t tell if the set was short or if it just seemed short. There were songs that didn’t get played, but that’s not really the point is it? Every track that was there deserved to be; this band never wrote a bad song.
There was even a song that never got released, the last song the band’s current iteration wrote, apparently. It was good. It was, completely unsurprisingly, about living in Regina all your life and how that can hold you back. It had, also unsurprisingly, a “la la la”-style refrain that was impossibly catchy. The crowd, I’m certain, would expect nothing less.
After an “encore,” an encore, and The Real Encore The Crowd Wouldn’t Leave Until It Got (”Lumberjack Rock,” duh; I still can’t believe they didn’t even practice it beforehand) it was over. There were hugs, there were handshakes, they packed up their gear.
And that was it.
They were also literally giving away whatever merchandise they had left. And yes, I took that as a tacit approval of what I’m about to do: post the entirety of Home Again for you, dear reader, to download. There is no hyperbole involved when I say that this record is perfect. You must hear it.
Download here, for a limited time only.
Below you’ll find one last track streaming, from the band’s equally brilliant EP. It’s a favourite, but it’s not the favourite. It was perhaps the most appropriate song of the night, but it wasn’t the closer. You’ll also hear a song from the full-length, the one that would’ve played over the climactic end sequence, maybe the credits, if the band were a movie.
On a night where it was still 21° celsius at TWO IN THE FUCKING MORNING; where it was so humid and muggy even at 11:00pm people could be seen on the bar’s patio fanning themselves with their hands and holding a cold beer to their forehead; on a night when the stage must’ve been hot enough for a band to consider going on strike against the weather one last time; the Polymaths said goodnight.
Polymaths - Strike!: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download Polymaths - Burst Into Flames [4:22m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadStay tuned to Urban Planning Records to keep on top of post-Polymaths projects. Some already exist!
