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Woodhands’ Dan Werb and Paul Banwatt

The Pawnshop | Wednesday, Feb. 24

Right up front, “Woodhands” sounds like some kind of disease or affliction, a lack of affinity towards musicianship maybe. I thought it only fair to let the Woodhands duo of Dan Werb and Paul Banwatt know, assuming that, you know, they’d never heard that one before.

But the Toronto pair is good natured and circumspect about their place in the musical wilderness.
They are no laptop-based indie rock outfit, favouring old-school analog synths and real drums. Being in an electro pop dance act is fun, Werb admits, but their roots are still very much punk rock.

“I was never a dance club kid myself, but we find ourselves in dance clubs now,” Werb says. “People in clubs are on so many different trips for so many different reasons and that’s part of what makes the experience so strange for me. Everyone’s idea of a good time is so different.”

Woodhands’ latest dance angst manifesto Remorsecapade explores dark corners of the club set and how Werb and Banwatt fit into it, or don’t.

Adding a lyrical, more message-based component to the tracks has reached a non-dance audience, striking different emotional chords.

“Unlike Dan, I was a former rave kid,” Banwatt says. “Every band I’ve ever been in I’ve tried taking in that direction. I actually find that a lot of the music you typically hear in nightclubs never explores the range of emotions that are actually at play in the club. It’s very dissociated, with one angle: sex and partying. There’s so much more to it than that.”

Within a nightclub experience, perhaps abetted by alcohol and drugs, anything goes. It’s only when the veil is lifted that prejudices of the real world come creeping in. Woodhands celebrates the joys of fucking and fraternizing on tunes like “Sluts.”

“It’s probably the most objective of all the songs on the new album,” Werb says. “It’s about reclaiming that word and the whole notion of promiscuity. In principle, someone who believes they’re open-minded will say that whatever people do with their own bodies, as long as they’re not hurting anyone, is their own business. But we still stigmatize people who like to fuck and that isn’t right.

“Women go through so much more shit for being sexually active than guys do,” he continues. “I think it’s because people are scared; they see it as a sign of weakness. It doesn’t have to be disempowering. There’s so much I wanted to say with that song. Really, it’s the start of a conversation.”