It’s a bit misleading to say the Unicorns have reunited after a 10-year absence, because they always seemed like they were barely holding it together in the first place. It wasn’t just that the band was built precariously upon the complementary-but-combative songwriting partnership between Nick “Diamonds” Thorburn and Alden “Ginger” Penner, or that their infamous live shows were liable to degenerate into a chaotic clusterfuck of broken gear and profanity-laden tantrums. For the Unicorns, this instability was embedded into their music’s root DNA; they took the term “pop music” at face-value and left us with a gooey, messy, combustible splatter. But with 2003’s Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone—their first and, to date, final widely released recording—Thorburn and Penner effectively got their shit together just long enough to herald their band’s demise.
In an early-2000s Montreal music community renowned for heart-on-sleeve, shoot-for-the-moon rockestras (see: the Dears, Stars, and, of course, scene lynchpins Godspeed You! Black Emperor), the Unicorns were the odd band out. From the color-coordinated white-on-pink stage attire to their bottomless well of theme songs for imaginary cartoon characters (“Jellybones”, “Sea Ghost”) to the vintage synthesizers set on “fart,” the Unicorns seemed to be the antithesis of their more openly impassioned, stern-faced peers. And the one emergent local band with whom they initially shared a predilection for gimmicky onstage attire, vocal hysterics, and volatile performances—the Arcade Fire—would soon solidify into a model of poise and professionalism, something the Unicorns could never hope to become. Sadly, they didn’t survive long enough to divest their almost-anthem “Let’s Get Known” of its aspirational irony: After touring themselves into the ground over the course of 2004, the Unicorns would unceremoniously disband just as south-of-the-border publications like the New York Times and Spin were flying reporters up to Montreal to soak up the city’s je ne sais quoi.
Eleven years may strike some as a premature anniversary for a reissue, but the Unicorns’ moment feels so much deeper in the past when you consider how slick and streamlined popular indie-rock has since become, and how few records have matched the scatterbrained unpredictability, frayed-nerve unease, and tooth-rotting tunefulness of Who Will Cut Our Hair. Throughout its 13 tracks (many of which are re-recordings of songs from two limited-run self-released discs), the Unicorns gleefully defy easy categorization as if they were a group of sneaky seventh-graders playing dodgeball: Too complex to be classified as garage-rock, too unsettled to be psychedelic, too hooky to be described as art-damaged, and too fiercely funky to lapse into twee solipsism. (The latter quality came courtesy of secret-weapon drummer Jamie Thompson, who only appears on a handful of tracks here, but who became a full-fledged member after the album’s release.) Each song seems to undergo a diagnostics check—squelching synth test patterns, random rimshots, documentary snippets about Satanism—before it’s set loose, eventually traversing enough twists and turns to rival the Who’s epic “A Quick One, While He’s Away” in half the time. And even after living with this album for over a decade, you’re still never quite sure where it’s going to take you.
Unlike many songwriting foils, Thorburn and Penner have similarly peculiar voices, giving their melodic interplay a finish-each-other’s-sentences sense of intuition while lending their moments of playful in-song sparring a discomfiting tension. When the two start trading “No you’re not”/ “Yes I am” schoolyard-grade taunts on “Child Star”, it’s not unlike watching Siamese twins head-butting one another. But if that song—reportedly inspired by an unpleasant encounter with a past-his-prime Corey Haim—sees the two engaged in obvious role-play, other tracks blur the line between pretend-jousting and actual acrimony.
True to their capricious nature, the band’s would-be theme-song celebration, “I Was Born (A Unicorn)”, devolves into a custody battle between Thorburn and Penner for control of the band: “I write the songs” / “I write the songs!”/ “You say I’m doing it wrong”/ “You are doing it wrong!” But while the Unicorns may act childish, their sense of nostalgia flies in the face of today’s Instagram-filtered, #tbt sentimentalism; instead, Who Will Cut Our Hair transports you back to that pivotal moment in childhood when you first realize the meaning of death, and one’s sense of naïveté and frivolity give way to confusion and terror. For all their surface silliness—this is a band whose idea of sensitivity is serenading lines like “Somewhere in the asshole of my eye/ There’s a muscle which relaxes when you cry”—the Unicorns were motivated by a genuine desire to comfort, using fantastical images of ghosts and haunted houses to temper real-life fears and anxieties. After all, an album that begins with the flustered “I Don’t Wanna Die” ends with the peaceful “Ready to Die”, suggesting that acceptance of death is the first step to truly living.
That certainly seems to be the case for Thorburn, whose ambitions have since shifted into overdrive, with forays into hip-hop (Th’ Corn Gangg), Everly Brothers-style harmony-folk (Human Highway), 1950s doo-wop (Mister Heavenly), and cinemascopic art-rock (Islands). Penner, by contrast, has resurfaced only sporadically, taking a rough-hewn, deconstructionist tack with his short-lived band Clues and his recently released solo album. But the duo’s divergent post-Unicorns trajectories ultimately reemphasize the perfect, delicate balance the duo achieved together.
While it remains to be seen if their recent reconciliation will yield any new material, for now, the four rarities included on this reissue function as fresh flowers at an old gravesite, offering affectionate reminders of a legacy cut short prematurely. These include two intricate-yet-immediate songs (“Evacuate the Vacuous” and “Let Me Sleep”) that fit snugly within Who Will Cut Our Hair’s prog-pop parameters, and a live recording of the never-released “Haunted House” that provides a glimpse of the Unicorns’ notoriously off-the-cuff performances and Thorburn’s cheeky banter.
But perhaps the best exemplar of The Unicorns ethos can be heard in their excellent cover of “Rocket Ship” by Daniel Johnston, the Texan pop savant who first formulated the uncanny mix of innocence and horror that informs every song in the Unicorn canon. That Johnston nod further positions the Unicorns’ modest modus operandi in stark contrast to that of their world-beating Montreal-scene mates. The reformed Unicorns will be opening some amphitheater dates for their old pals the Arcade Fire next month, but this reissue serves as a warm reminder that, once upon a time, the idea of the opposite scenario happening in 2014 wouldn’t have seemed so ridiculous.
