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Bob Bryden
Transcendental Misinformation EP
(independent) - 2023
Michael Panontin
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Bob Bryden has been keeping himself busy these days. The one-time Reign Ghost and Christmas frontman followed up his excellent Love in the Atomic Age with a double-CD acoustic set - with 35 tracks! - and then this five-song EP, which comes in two formats, electric and unplugged.
With the war in Ukraine and the Kremlin's bald-faced lies still front and centre in the news, Transcendental Misinformation seems as apt a title as any these days. "It was originally going to be called Transcendental Medication," Bryden recently told CM, "but then I found out that had been used. I figured Transcendental Misinformation was more appropriate anyway. It seems to sum up the age we live in."
Transcendental Misinformation was recorded between Nov. '22 and Apr. '23 and features familiar bandmates Katie Iarocci on bass, keyboards and flute and Rory Quinn on drums. It is definitely a departure from the lysergic tendencies on ...Atomic Age, with many of the tracks bristling with an almost militant ferocity. The best of the bunch is 'Grandma's House (Inundation Day)', which tells the little-known story of the nine communities in Eastern Ontario lost when the St. Lawrence Seaway opened in 1959, a tragic bit of history that for Bryden is actually personal. "Those villages were flooded to make way for the St. Lawrence Seaway - including my family's ancestral digs in (the now submerged) Mille Roche," he notes. "I really felt it is a story which needed telling."
Elsewhere, things get particularly visceral on 'Fire Away Now (for Ukraine)', a Churchillian call to arms exhorting the world to hang tough in the face of the Russian onslaught ("Fire away now, fire away now / Stand your ground in darkest night"). It chugs along on the strength of Bryden's heavily distorted guitar, a common theme throughout much of the EP and an especially potent one on this song. But for those who prefer a little levity with their world issues, the unplugged version drops the guitar and pushes Iarocci's lilting flute flecks to the fore.
Transcendental Misinformation is available as a limited-edition CD (200 copies) but Bryden says he hopes to get it out on wax in the future, "perhaps [even] fleshed out to a full album".
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