Basement Revolver have been on our radar for quite some time now, and if you’ve been following along with all the reasons why, let us just put it out there that their debut album, Heavy Eyes, is not to be messed with and you must go pick up some Kleenex before pressing play.
Poignant, honest, and therapeutic are only a few words to describe the Hamilton, Ontario trio’s first full length. With a sense of exhaustion pervading the majority of Heavy Eyes, listeners are brought smack dab into the heart of all of the pains of living with anxiety and depression, giving the record a diary-like essence that can only be truly felt by those who live through it day after day. With an urgency to dig through all of the gray matter, Heavy Eyes expresses the truths of the sufferer within all of us set to some infectious, fuzzed-out 90’s-infused indie-rock.
We asked frontwoman and all-around warrior Chrisy Hurn to give us a rundown of each track off of Heavy Eyes and we were gifted with some magical insight in this exclusive track-by-track commentary. Enjoy and don’t forget to pick up the album now here!
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“Baby”
“Baby” was written about a year and a half ago when my relationship with my partner was still pretty fresh. I was coming off of a year of a lot of emotional shit that I was still healing from. I believe that we wrote it during a band practice, and it just kind of grew from there.
“Johnny”
I wrote “Johnny” in my bedroom two apartments ago. I can still remember it very well, it was a hot summer day with no AC, I had orange and white curtains that had a hole burnt through them from my bedside lamp, and an old quilt that some church ladies had made for my grandma. I was certainly crying a lot and dripping sweat. My bedroom was right beside the kitchen and I could hear my roommies making their breakfast. I guess I remember it so well because I wrote it in a moment of deep hurt and heartbreak.
“Dancing”
“Dancing” started off from a bass line that Nimal had written. We jammed it out for a bit in a band practice, I sat down and wrote some lyrics, and there you have it. It is one of my favorite songs to play live with the boys, it is just very easy to let go and get into it.
“Friends”
I wrote “Friends” this past year, I believe also at a band practice based off of a little riff that we were almost jokingly messing around with. I think I took it home and kept working on it a little bit. It is mostly about my good friends Matt and Laura who I sometimes forget are my good friends. They are getting married this weekend!!
“Knocking”
“Knocking” came out of nowhere. It was the end of our band practice, we were packing up, and all the sudden I had to write the song. Probably took less than twenty minutes, it just happened, and I cried a lot. That song has brought a lot of healing to me personally.
“Johnny Pt. 2”
“Johnny Pt. 2” was written about a month after my breakup with ‘Johnny.’ It was the middle of the winter, and I was very heartbroken. I was sitting in that same bedroom with the shitty orange and white curtains, looking out onto a snowy busy street, and it was nighttime. The song basically recounts where our breakup happened, and how I still cared for ‘Johnny.’ It feels like a very long time ago now looking back, but it was a very hard year, and I wrote a lot of songs!
“Words”
“Words” was the first song that I wrote as ‘Basement Revolver’ – I wrote it when I was still living in the basement that gave our band its name. I was still a student at the time, and I would commute for an hour twice a day up and down the escarpment in Hamilton to school, to write my thesis and go to classes. I was just very tired of writing pointless papers that wouldn’t change anything. So, I was sitting on our couch, I had just bought my first vocal pedal and guitar pedal, and I was experimenting, and “Words” happened. Later Nim and Brandon joined and turned it into a much better song.
“Wait”
“Wait” was written at a band practice in my past apartment on a nice summer day. There was a skate competition happening at the skate park close to my house. I think the song is about discovering my independence within a relationship.
“Tree Trunks”
“Tree Trunks” was written in a few different places over time. It started as a poem when I was an intern at a church as an artist in residence. Then a few years later, I was having a bad case of writers block, and my friends let me use their house as a change of scenery, and I wrote the tune at their kitchen table. I believe that I ordered in pho for dinner that night.
“You’re Okay”
“You’re Okay” was written at the same practice as “Wait.” It took me a lot longer to warm up to this song for some reason, probably until I heard it recorded and realized that I was actually really happy with it. It is about my seemingly never ending struggle with my body, and basically saying “fuck off” to harmful self-talk.
“Heavy Eyes”
“Heavy Eyes” was written about two years ago. We were also just jamming something out at a band practice when the song came about. I was really into Dilly Dally at the time and wanted to write something that felt a little bit heavier. It became the title track of this album, because we felt it captured the general sentiment of the whole thing – being tired, emotionally and physically.
“Diamonds”
“Diamonds” is a very old song for me. I wrote it in my first year at university about a dear friend that I was in love with at the time – I think it is kind of funny now. We were in a band together at the time, and I showed him the song in the hallway of his dorm and vaguely remember him being pissed about it. It was a very melodramatic and emotionally turbulent time in my life, as early adulthood is for everyone. Anyways, the song eventually became a Basement Revolver song, and I feel that it suits the band much better.
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