The Sylvia Platters have been kicking in the Fraser Valley music scene since their inception in 2014. While the band has gone through member changes and stretches of silence over the past two years, their latest EP has the same punchy, danceable tunes that listeners have become accustomed to. In their unique, sort of unnameable genre of guitar/indie/power pop, The Sylvia Platters’ four-man band promises five new songs that won’t disappoint.
The five-song cassette EP Youth Without A Virtue will be officially released on June 24, with a release show at the Red Gate Arts Society in Vancouver on June 25, the band’s first live stage show in over two years. The choice to distribute physical copies of their music via a cassette tape was an idea born of cost-efficiency and nostalgia, as well the band’s desire for fans to be able to leave their show with a tangible item.
The title track of the album “is the sound of shattered illusions. Of finally letting go of a complicated past where fear and shame reign,” wrote Nick Ubels in an email, the band’s co-lead vocalist and lead guitarist. The album’s upbeat and sanguine instrumentation is paired with substantial lyrics that attempt to process the band’s experience of growing up in the evangelical Fraser Valley, and the “pressure cooker social dynamics that can take hold in insular communities.” This theme in their songwriting grew organically through the band members’ shared experiences within evangelical Christian culture.
“I think that we really do try to embody the collaborative spirit of being in a band,” said Ubels in an interview with The Cascade. He described how one member may come up with a guitar riff, another may come up with the melody, or the lyrics, or the track title.
The EP was recorded at The Noise Floor on Gabriola Island last summer, with the band waiting for COVID-19 numbers to go down a bit before officially releasing their much-anticipated set of songs. The band also welcomes a new bass player to the team — Stephen Carl O’Shea, whom the band had collaborated with before.
Ubels stresses the importance of the music community in the Fraser Valley that he has been a part of for the past eight years. He describes Abbotsford as “this small city that nevertheless has managed to produce some really amazing music and a really healthy underground music scene.”
The band knew early on that this was not going to be a career for them, but rather a creative outlet and community builder. “You don’t have to be in it to make a career,” said Ubels, to encourage anyone fresh on the music scene. “You can be in it because you find it joyful and fulfilling and it means something to you.”
If you’re free the night of Saturday, June 25, try making the trek out to Vancouver and celebrating the release of Youth Without a Virtue with the great lineup of bands that will play at The Sylvia Platters’ first show since the pandemic. Other bands that will be playing with them at the Red Gate include AC-PDF, Primp, and lowercase dream.
Follow the band on Instagram @thesylviaplatters to stay up to date on future Abbotsford shows, and listen to the release of their new EP on Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Spotify, and many other streaming platforms after June 24.
Andrea Sadowski is working towards her BA in Global Development Studies, with a minor in anthropology and Mennonite studies. When she's not sitting in front of her computer, Andrea enjoys climbing mountains, sleeping outside, cooking delicious plant-based food, talking to animals, and dismantling the patriarchy.
[…] stay in the underground music scene (as the band’s singer guitarist Nick Ubels explains here), The Sylvia Platters’ prime concern seem to be to write the best songs they can under their […]