The Two Koreas

These are times of war, though not the sort you hear about in top-of-the-hour headline-news updates or in foolhardy presidential state-of-the-union addresses. The very tenets of civilized society are in peril: taste, comfort and class are going over the heads of the mass, and The Two Koreas will not stand idly by watching cigarette prices rise while IQs fall. They have devised a new 12-point plan to save your soul and, while they’re at it, your wardrobe. Call them didactic; we call them Altruists.

Where The Two Koreas’ first public issue — 2005’s Main Plates & Classic Pies — found Toronto’s preeminent practitioners of jangular electric beat muzik pondering the cosmic coincidences of the universe (the connection between numerology and death; the linear relationship between Estonian citizenship and alcohol tolerance), Altruists reveals more sobering bus-stop observations (office wage slaves driven to internet porn for supplemental income; the fallacy of dating 20 year old art-school students; a generation of wayward youth in ill-fitting trousers). Their findings were far too disturbing to be simply rebroadcast through the lo-fi monotone drones that had become something of a Two Koreas signature.

So, in the summer of 2006, the band entered Green Door Studios under the aegis of producer Don Pyle (Republic of Safety, The Hidden Cameras), who fashioned a robust recording that both reflects The Two Koreas’ formidable onstage ferocity — which had been bolstered through infrequent night-long tours that spanned Toronto’s fabled Queen Street district all the way to the Bloor Street strip 10 minutes north — while illuminating a more cerebral, affectionate quality that sometimes lurked behind all that barking and bashing. Some songs even feature the use of heretofore blacklisted devices such as harmonies, acoustic guitars, vibraslap and seagulls (unharmed). And true to the album’s overarching themes of honour and respect, Altruists features a raucously reverential cover of The Swell Maps’ “The Helicopter Spies,” whose author, Nikki Sudden, passed away shortly before recording commenced.

The Two Koreas’ Altruists isn’t just a solitary voice of reason in a world gone horribly mad, it’s also an album containing 12 rock ’n’ roll songs. So put on your finest tweeds — there is much work to do.