One final trick

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/10/2022 (1120 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

On any given telephone pole in Wolseley, there are posters advertising lost kittens, concerts or last weekend’s yard sale clinging to the wood, fixed in place by staples and tape. It’s a vertical collage, with layer upon layer of paper vying for attention.

Early in September, a single sheet stood out.

It was yellow and, curiously, it featured not a single image. All that was on the poster were 11 words, a URL and a telephone number.

“Trust Fall Hotline,” the poster read in jagged capital letters. “For those willing to see what happens. Call 1-877-347-5231.”

It seemed nefarious, but the yellow posters scattered throughout the city were all part of the marketing strategy of Yes We Mystic, an indie band that has always done things differently.

Since forming in 2011, the ever-changing Winnipeg outfit has playfully defied expectation, both musically and promotionally: it “advertised” its first album, Forgiver, by creating an international text-message chain asking respondents to share something they’d been unable to forgive. To promote 2019’s Ten Seated Figures, five non-members posed as the real members during media interviews. At one point, the band planned to announce it would play two shows at the same time in two different venues.

So it made sense that for its latest album, Trust Fall, released today on German label DevilDuck, Yes We Mystic would eschew logic by setting up a toll-free phone line leading to a choose-your-own-adventure audio journey, narrated by bandmates Adam Fuhr, Keegan Steele and Jensen Fridfinnson.

But for Yes We Mystic — which has attained somewhat of a cult following in Winnipeg — the adventure is now a thing of the past. Trust Fall will be the band’s last album, ever. It is not a comma, nor a semicolon; it is a period at the end of a decade-long musical odyssey.

“This band has been the focus of our lives for so long,” says Fuhr, the gravelly voiced lead vocalist and guitarist who has been with the band since the start. Members are growing up, getting quote-unquote real jobs and getting married. “It got to the point where the band couldn’t be the only focus for any of us. And so we had a choice. We could continue on in a diminished capacity and hope the people wouldn’t notice, or we could try to send off this creation of ours with care and imagination.”

Hence the phone line, which has been dialled over 1,000 times. And hence the full-sized advertisement on an Osborne Village bus shack announcing the band’s impending exit from the stage in a spot normally reserved for public service announcements.

“The band Yes We Mystic will cease to exist on October 22, 2022,” the text read. “The day before, they will release Trust Fall, their third and final album. The first single is called Long Dream, and you can listen to it now on the internet. Trust Fall is for those willing to see what happens.”

It was the latest brilliant piece of advertisement-as-artistic-statement by the band, which played its first notes in the Wolseley basement of former banjo player Katherine Walker-Jones, in a jam space wedged between a couch, the TV and an old workout bike. With no drummer, multi-instrumentalist Keegan Steele played a tambourine with his foot.

The band’s sound was at that point acoustic and folky, but as the lineup shifted — with additions of cellist Jodi Plenert, drummer Jordon Ottenson, and stints from violinists Solana Johannson, Eric Ross and current member Fridfinnson — Yes We Mystic’s sound matured.

Forgiver (2016) was a grand opening gesture, with strong rhythms forming a spine strong enough to carry the band’s heavy lyrics. Ten Seated Figures (2019) took an electronic turn, with even more strings plucked under lyrics about memory, hidden like a secret beneath swelling orchestration.

“At times, it is difficult to understand the lyrics, which can obscure the thought-provoking concept the band is trying to explore,” Winnipeg music magazine Stylus wrote in a positive review. “Perhaps this ambiguity is deliberate, achieving Yes We Mystic’s ethos as ‘the kind of art that is loud in its motivation and subtle in its truths.’”

It was an accurate reading: Fuhr says the album was largely a comment on the imperfection of memory, in the moment and over time.

Nothing the band has created was done without intent, it seems. Fuhr, who now runs House of Wonders, a local recording studio and label, says the development of each album, along with each of its performances, requires a collective seriousness and commitment. Trust Fall could be no different.

“We made a pact with each other that we’re only going to make this album if we could accomplish something great, and if we believe we can make it better than anything we’ve done in the past,” Fuhr says.

Ironically, Trust Fall is an album all about the benefits of not making a plan, released by a group that has prided itself on rigorous attention to detail. And it might be the best album yet.

True to form, it builds a new storey onto the band’s foundation, but with the same sense of creative control that longtime fans have come to expect. Lead single Long Dream leans into the electronic sound while also sinking back to earlier melodic territory. Followup singles Sit Down and Head Rush grab you and don’t let go. The rest of the album, hidden in plain sight within one path of the hotline, doesn’t let up.

But the band’s grand finale has even more oddity to it: Yes We Mystic said it would not play any live shows in support of the album. There would be no farewell tour.

Instead, the band held a video release party at Cinematheque on Monday. Virgo Rising, a band signed to House of Wonders, played a set, while Yes We Mystic’s 17-minute performance film Showroom premièred.

With strong word-of-mouth generated by the poster, the bus shack, savvy social media work and a decade of artistic risk-taking, the limited-capacity show sold out hours after the event was announced. A run of just 150 vinyl records arrived hours before the show, with 150 more available in Hamburg.

In a world of instant access, Yes We Mystic’s finale represents the power of scarcity. “When they announced they were done, I thought it was a marketing gimmick, but there’s really no farewell concert,” says the Park Theatre’s Erick Casselman, who booked the band’s first show and calls it one of the best to play, and stay, in Winnipeg. “There’s going to now be a void in the city that someone will have to try to fill.”

After the short film showed at Cinematheque, the band’s current and former members came together in front of the stage and “hugged for a really long time,” Fuhr said.

Today, the group’s final album was released. And on its own terms, according to plan, Yes We Mystic ceased to exist.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com