Party: OUGHT | 20.04.16 | CLWB IFOR BACH

Party: OUGHT | 20.04.16 | CLWB IFOR BACH

Ought came together in Montréal as a band of expatriates initially attracted by sense-sharpening Canadian winters and university tuition that doesn't cost $40k a year. The city's cultural scene – especially its independent music ethos and galvanizing radical politics – was the underlying attractor, however, and one they jumped right into. Guitarist and vocalist Tim Beeler Darcy, originally a folk musician hailing from New Hampshire, fell in with New Jersey native Matt May (keyboards) and Australian émigré Tim Keen (drums, violin) – the three of them began sharing an apartment that doubled as practice space, where they were soon joined by Portland OR transplant Ben Stidworthy on bass. Ought played its first show and recorded its first EP in the apartment's largest bedroom, in the summer of 2012.

Ought is part of a vital and politically-engaged DIY arts community that has coalesced around one of the loft spaces at the northern limit of Montreal’s Mile End district in recent years (the same zone that incubated Constellation almost 20 years ago). The four band members are, unsurprisingly, participants in a half-dozen other music projects. Various members have also worked with Montreal’s fearless and beloved CKUT radio and the Howl! Arts Collective.

Additional Ought history comes by way of the band's own account:

It’s hard to talk about how the band came to be without talking about Loose-Fit, the Brasserie, and The Femmaggots. Loose-Fit was (and is) booking shows out of a local mainstay-type bar in Petit-Patrie called Brasserie Beaubien. This empowered a lot of people to be adventurous with new projects, and also it being always pay-what-you-can and chilled out and a publicly accessible venue (versus a loft-type situation where the address can’t be posted)—basically, it was (is) a Good Thing Going On. The Femmaggots were (are) our friends (and, some, housemates) at the time and besides being near and dear and fucking great people, they inspired a lot of others to start making music—many in this weird kind of punk-esque/political/wordy/funny world that we were also really into.

SO…the Femmaggots, plus the Brasserie made for a slowly expanding spiral of great music happening, plus actively bringing in lots of other groups that we didn’t know about + hooking up with great people coming through town. More Than Any Other Day definitely came out of this environment (and coming to terms with working varying degrees of bad jobs, etc), but also Quebec during the student strike, which was a total lid-off type situation that we were all really affected by. Meeting + playing with all these amazing people is really the story of the band, having never really gotten hype’d or even making physical releases and just really playing lots and being excited and thankful for the opportunity to keep playing and having a true fucking blast at shows, as they say.

Following another recording session in early 2013 and the release of a second EP via Bandcamp, Ought spent a few days at the Hotel2Tango studio with engineer Radwan Moumneh (Suuns, Matana Roberts, Jerusalem In My Heart) in fall 2013 at the invitation of Constellation, laying down a clutch of songs new and old that comprise the band's first "proper" full-length album. More Than Any Other Day was released by Constellation on April 29, 2014, to widespread critical acclaim.

Months of touring followed the album's release, and in late Spring the band returned to the studio to re-record some updated versions of a couple of other older tunes. The resulting 4-song EP, Once More With Feeling..., hit store shelves October 28 2014, as the band continued to tour extensively in North America and Europe throughout the Fall of 2014.