kai wrote about provisional living.
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art by jackson schott.
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Terry Green is my favourite band, and it’s been that way for a while. Today marks the release of their second full-length LP, PROVISIONAL LIVING, after a 7 year wait. It’s their best material by a wide margin—a hard bar to clear for a band that wrote a first LP as good as theirs. I’ve had access to this album since September, and after mulling it over in my head these last 9 months, I firmly believe that it's the best album in the history of Canadian screamo.
It's also much, much more than that.
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flyer by venus.
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Years before I even met any of them individually, I used to see Adrian, Matt & Louis in line at shows as a teenager, back when I was still too young & anxious to talk to people without coming off like a freak. Some time in mid-2014, I saw on Facebook that they formed a band through either Andie or Brandon or Reuben or someone else—I recognized their faces, and they seemed like they were around my age. Van booked their first show around the time I'd met him on Tumblr. I think I met everyone except Adam for the first time when Dowsing & Spraynard played Thigh High, but it took me a little longer to actually talk to them (I did a lot of skulking in the background back then). I heard Visiting Hours shortly after it came out, a few weeks before I moved here, and I remember being very, VERY impressed. Everyone I knew that knew them said the same thing; Brandon's response was along the lines of “that’s ADRIAN?”, and I had trouble believing it, too. I was with Andie when I saw them for the first time at Soybomb about a month after moving to the city, and I remember them asking me for advice on how to talk to Adam. I don’t know if I was any help, but Terry was sick.
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terry green @ the cavern, january 2nd, 2015.
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The first show I ever played was with them, a few months later. Chris booked it, of course: Nanette, a super young pop punk band from the states, and Terry at The Cavern (lol). I was extremely nervous. I didn’t know you had to bring breakables to gigs, so Adam lent me theirs. All I really remember from the show other than David breaking a string right before our last song was taking the photo pictured above and being pretty excited about getting to play with Terry. There was a small pit (as much as you could fit in that space), composed almost entirely of friends, and Adrian kept throwing his mic at the ceiling, trying to hook it over the exposed pipes, knocking off a bunch of insulation in the process. The next time we played there together, David filled in on bass while Louis—readily available but choosing to commit to the bit—stood behind the band, arms crossed & wearing sunglasses as "The Enforcer" (a role usually played by Sebastian). These were stupid, silly things that made me realize I was in it for life.
I proceeded to see them around at shows every once in a while for the next 4 or 5 years in between everything else I had going on in my life. The LP came out during that stretch and put them on another level—playing the exact stuff I liked at the exact worst time to be playing it in this city, better than most people around here had done before. They played with basically every good band that ever came through the GTA and kept the fire ablaze during the scene's leanest times (a.k.a. when Em had mostly stopped booking but before New Friends fully picked up the slack). I had a few loose conversations with the crew here and there, ran into them at some bigger group hangs, and got to share lineups a handful of times (particularly some sweet Norman shows that we had no business being on back when he still lived here). I thought they were just the coolest people ever. I still feel myself trying to temper my obvious adoration from time to time, leftover from when I was sheepishly commuting to Mississauga just to see them. Louis booked me an insanely good bill at his house for the Spirit Desire album release show in 2017 that we absolutely did not deserve after I asked if we could play there, capped off by an incredible Terry set. Michelle & I screamed along to “Instant Relief” in the basement that night and it felt like what this whole punk thing was supposed to be.
In the midst of all this, I remained disconnected. I had a lot of trouble making lasting relationships in punk for a bunch of reasons, and I felt like I couldn’t really get past “show friends” with a lot of people. There was other stuff going on in my life, too, but those moments are what discomforted me the most. I often feel like I caught the tail-end of a special era in Toronto, stuck trying to make up for lost time as rent soared & DIY infrastructures collapsed. Things in the scene turned over, as scenes always do: venues shut down, bands broke up, familiar faces moved away. Change is evergreen, but something seemed different about this wave, and not just because it was the first one I got to witness up close. It's easy to look back on the past (especially one you weren't there for) and say that it was better than what you have in front of you, but even the oldheads who I assume know better were starting to say the same things. Nanette called it quits and we played our last show at the first New Friends Fest in 2018 (one of the best weekends of my life). Terry played the same bill as us—a lineup so stacked that we weren’t even the best band breaking up that night (R.I.P. I Hate Sex). In a weird full-circle moment, I somehow forgot to bring my sticks. Adam was kind enough to lend me theirs; I still remember how tight they hugged us when we finished.
After Nanette, I kinda checked out of punk and stopped keeping up; I hadn’t really been paying attention for a while anyway. I focused more on zines until I didn’t. School thrummed in the background until COVID started. The last significant thing I was doing before lockdown was working on the SD record at Adrian’s house with Dean and company, always happy to run into him whenever he was off work, clumsily offering him some sinigang I'd made at least once or twice to try and express how grateful I was to be given the space. The one through line that kept me involved during my inactivity was seeing Terry when I could get the chance. Getting Meditations in Affinity in the mail was a highlight in a deeply miserable year. I could tell that even if they liked to play it off like it wasn't that important, this band meant more to them than they would ever let on.
All that time away from shows made me realize how much I missed playing this kind of music, and I think they realized that too. An unexpected symptom of that forced pause was boxcutter getting started the second we were able to do so. Toast & I immediately bonded over Matt’s riffs and niche Mississauga history relevant to almost nobody. Although we weren't formally introduced that night, it turned out that the first time we ever spoke was at a Green House show. Faith had only dabbled in the scene by that point but shared our enthusiasm. The conversation we had about starting a band was at a house party thrown by Sam, whom I first met through Cassie (who knew Toast long before I did), whom I first met after seeing her in her giant Jack Skellington hat at a Hard Luck show in 2012 and finding her on Facebook afterwards—the same show I first saw Adrian at, the same show that David went to before we met, the same show Adam attended before meeting any of us, and the same show that Denis attended a year before he drove me (a complete stranger) from Cobourg to Ajax and back for a house show. Denis introduced me to Andie that night, at this rich kid's place on the lake, and every few years I learn about someone else I know who was at that show, too.
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crowd for joyce manor @ hard luck, 2012. photo by crustina.
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It feels funny to try and say something profound about how a band changed my life or put me on a different trajectory. Let’s be honest: most of us are bound by geography, and what we do in Toronto isn’t any more special than what’s happening anywhere else in the world. We have local bands, we play local shows, we make local records. It's not a big deal, nor is it happening at a big scale—I would have liked music anyway. Occasionally, however, the things we do outgrow our environments. The hyper-specific sound we all gravitate towards in this corner of punk isn't built to hold much. Our community is small, many of us have known each other for longer than we care to keep track of, and at this point, it seems like we prefer it that way. We're all intertwined, because what else are we to do? The thing about Terry, though, is that in spite of everything working against them, they make this place feel like the centre of the universe. This record is a testament to every Siesta, every Skramden, every Soybomb, every D-Beastro, every Arcade that helped birth us. The GTA is not the world, but it looks like it from this angle. It is inarguably the crowning achievement of a tiny scene, a brief moment in time, and every band, venue, promoter & show-goer that got us here. The notes hit better when you know everybody in the room, but I'd feel the same if they were total strangers to me: the record's that good. All roads lead to Terry Green.
It has been one of the great pleasures of my life to watch this band perform and grow as artists; it’s been an even greater pleasure to know them as people. I’m proud to call them my friends. Thank you to Adrian, Adam, Louis, Matt, Marcelle & Gonzalo for being the best. 12 years on from spotting those kids wearing Title Fight & Full of Hell shirts in the middle of the half-pipe, they’re still standing. The story of Terry Green is the story of all of us here. I’m more grateful for it than you can imagine—no one ever knows.
PROVISIONAL LIVING is out now on Zegema Beach. Peel crew, fuck you. See y’all at the gigs.
"Maybe someday I can give you everything you gave me."
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