Cistern - New Standard

Cistern is a rock band from Squamish, BC on the unceded land of the Squamish Nation. The restless souls that make up Cistern, a tight-knit gang of four, are comprised of Noah Varley, Noah Wilson, McKinley Languedoc, and Chris Boys. Cistern play rock music like the best bands formed at the periphery: raw, scrappy, intuitive – a group of friends forging awe and anguish into song. As Ursula Le Guin wrote in her Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, “it’s a strange realism for a strange reality.”

Following debut album Head Full Of Questions earlier this year, Cistern's most recent release is New Standard. Languedoc stumbled upon a different tuning, jokingly rebranding it as “new standard tuning", and somehow, the gag stuck. On “Crisis”, the band tries to make sense of the tangle of personalities. “Metal Detector” unravels as a hymn for those who have chosen to march to their own peculiar beat. “Pendulum” is high-wire, jittery and tense, a song about seeking balance in a world that won’t let you achieve it. The record is a 5 track display of DIY-rock anthem recorded on an 8 track tape machine.

Cistern is a band defined by tight musicianship, harmonious and dissonant instrumentation, do-it-yourself recording and experimentation. With the band already wading knee-deep into the musical chapter that will follow, expect more saturated, tape-warmth dance riffs to come.