"If looked at as a sum of their parts, The Mongrels are a local supergroup. If looked at simply as a rock band, The Mongrels are a pretty super local group. Either way, Montreal audiences win, so caring about such minutiae should be left to the bloggers.
Made up of former members of Tricky Woo, Local Rabbits, Soft Canyon, Bliss, Blood Sausage and more, The Mongrels are likely best known for having two drummers bringing the ruckus that serves as their sound's foundation, atop which vocalist Amy Dynamite, uh, explodes.
"We're not the first people to use two drummers, but we're trying not to use it in the same vein as, say, The Allman Brothers or The Grateful Dead, where it's a sort of a wispy percussive thing," says guitarist Andrew Dickson, formerly of Tricky Woo. "[We're] trying to have two people working in unison, or at least with each other, to try to create something [in] the very tired medium of rock'n'roll music that I'm still very much in love with."
Proof of that love comes in the form of Weird Beard Records, a project that Dickson started with Dynamite and his wife, Greenland promoter Caroline Bognar. "Originally, we wanted to start releasing archive stuff of Tricky Woo," he says, "but it's sort of generated into 'Why don't we take it a step further and do this properly with an existing band that's doing work?'"
That band was The Mongrels, who should expect labelmates
soon.
"That's the plan," says Dickson. "To find a second freaky act that we want to put out, and build from there."
"We're looking for other freakazoids. Freaky outsiders, definitely. Applications are for inept, freaky people, you know?"" - Dave Jaffer, The Hour