BeatRoute Magazine ON Edition - October 2019

JABARI FLEMINGS
MUSiC CONCERT PREVIEWS
CHASTITY
Brandon Williams made a protest album from
the heart of the suburbs By COURTNEY HEFFERNAN
B
randon Williams has
an ambivalent relationship
to his hometown
in southern Ontario.
It serves as both the
inspiration behind his music, and
place that’s a subject to criticism.
“The finance minister under
Stephen Harper, Jim Flaherty,
lived 300 metres away from me,”
Williams says from an airy loft in
Toronto’s Junction, where he’s
been working with director Justin
Singer on a video accompaniment
for Chastity’s forthcoming
album, Home Made Satan. “He
had a massive sprawling property
among these average to small
one-car garage type of homes. It
was this privilege on the hill, and
then the rest of us. It’s just this
weird...” he pauses, reflecting.
“It’s Whitby, you know?”
On Chastity’s debut album,
Death Lust (2018), Williams
leveled his criticism of organized
religion and unravelled the
experience of losing faith with
unrelenting intensity.
On his sophomore album,
Home Made Satan, he presents
a scathing criticism of far-right
politics. He talks about exposing
racists and the KKK in Ontario
(“Spirit Meetup”) and about
misogyny and hostility towards
marginalized people (“The Girls
I Know Don’t Think So”). While
he contrasts the American
Dream with “elected fascists”
(“Flames”), throughout Home
Made Satan he plants his narrative
close to home to criticize
inequality in Canadian society.
10 BEATROUTE OCTOBER 2019
“Home Made Satan is about
continuing to fight for your life,
about defending other vulnerable
lives,” says Williams in an
Instagram post in advance of the
album release.
In the video for “The Girls I
Know Don’t Think So,” Charlotte
Nurse – an activist
and friend of Williams’
– and Holden Wednesday, Oct. 30
CHASTITY
Abraham, son of
The Great Hall (Toronto)
Fucked Up vocalist
Friday, Nov. 8
Damian Abrahams,
The Rec Room (Calgary)
carry signs that say,
Saturday, Nov. 9
“Black Trans Lives
The Rec Room (Edmonton)
Matter.” It’s a message
Nurse selected
Thursday, Nov. 14
and Williams endorses.
“It’s a voice that Friday, Nov. 15
The Biltmore Cabaret (Van.)
matters to me,” Williams
explains. When
Lucky Bar (Victoria)
asked if he found it
challenging to write lyrics as an
ally, he says, “No, not at all… To
me it feels inevitable.”
For Williams, naming the album
was crucial to its narrative. It was
an intentional decision to call it
Home Made Satan, rather than
Homemade Satan. “I wanted
to emphasize the home,” he
explains. “It’s an album about
seclusion, and just hatching a
million different fears.”
“I think it happens in America
a lot, and I think it happens in
Canada. It’s how these nasty
people get elected. I just wanted
to emphasize home and where
some of this shit gets birthed.”
While Home Made Satan is
more effortlessly melodic than the
deftly discordant Death Lust, it
has in common unflinching lyrics.
Like Chastity’s debut, Home Made
Satan is a concept album. The
album’s protagonist is an unnamed
young boy growing up in Whitby.
Much of the character was
inspired by is own upbringing with
some flexibility. “I’ve given myself
some liberty to say things,” he
admits. “On ‘I Still Feel the Same’
I say, ‘Bring your Parliament / to
my subdivision / we’ll rip them limb
from limb / I’m talking Andrew,
Justin.’
Of the shift in focus on Chastity’s
albums from religion to
politics, Williams says, “I think a
political record was inevitable.” After
touring through North America
and Europe behind Death Lust last
year, Williams realized that once
his music had reached cities as
far as London and Berlin, he felt
responsible for using it as a political
and social vehicle.“Using this
platform for the greater good was
needed. I just felt compelled.”
Now a year after he first penned
the open letter to Ontario Premier
Doug Ford about his decision to
drop the bottom floor price on
alcohol, he’s frustrated that while
Whitby Brewery has recently
opened in Whitby’s downtown,
the town still doesn’t have a music
venue. “I just worry about Whitby
and the Durham region,” he
reflects. “Durham’s got 500,000
people. Why doesn’t it have
something? It’s a threat to the
community, really, and a threat to
young people engaging with each
other and becoming socialized,
cool people. I’m not saying it can’t
happen without a venue but I think
a venue helps.”
It’s not surprising that Williams
would be such a vocal advocate
for places to people to collectivize.
Ultimately, he wants to make
music that would have resonated
with him as a teenager growing
up in the periphery of big cities.
“I want to do an outskirts tour. I
want to do a tour of only playing
places like Whitby,” he says. “I
can’t picture the day that Chastity
will lose that outskirts feeling
because it’s what we are. It’s what
the project is.
“I’ve said before that there’s
thousands of Whitbys and millions
of skid kids. I was one of them. I
am one of them. I’m from one of
those places and I think there is
a voice there; I’m just singing the
neighbourhood song.” ,