I don’t think I have the courage to diagnose Gulfer as falling under any particular one of the countless waves of emo that’ve lapped up on the shoreless Midwest from which their brand of punk generally feels descended, but I like the idea of “third-wind emo” to describe the Montreal group’s twice-rejuvenated sound. Third Wind happens to be the title of their fourth LP, and it specifically refers to the new musical avenues they explore across these 10 new recordings. While maintaining their traditional math-rock guitar tapping and emotive vocal style, the record often ventures into territories previously established by knotty post-hardcore groups like Krill (or, maybe more aptly, Knot), while the inevitable pull of chic genres like shoegaze and bedroom pop rear their heads elsewhere.
In walking us through the release, co-songwriters Joseph Therriault and Vincent Ford aren’t shy when citing their influences, name-dropping Krill labelmates Ovlov when discussing the scuzzier tones of Third Wind, while Guided by Voices and Joyce Manor came to mind when composing tracks with tighter runtimes, and Orchid Tapes alums Euphoria Again and Spencer Radcliffe (specifically the latter’s cover of an Emily Yacina track) get singled out as bedroom-pop inspiration. Hence the fact that in an era when these once-niche genres are being mass produced, Gulfer manage to make them sound entirely fresh.
With the record out now, stream the full project below (or here), and read on for Therriault and Ford’s extensive commentary on how these songs came together both lyrically and musically over the past few years.
1. “Clean”
Joseph: This song is a story about an employee killing her boss, though it’s kind of left unsaid that she did it because I wanted there to be that feeling of uncertainty as she’s on the run. At that point in writing songs for the album (two to three years ago now) I realized that songs could be about anything, so I wanted to fill it with as many interesting images and words as possible. When I was messing around and found the chords and melody, I was really happy with it, and couldn’t really think of anything to add that could keep the energy as high. So I thought we could try this super simple Guided by Voices style of song. But Vince had some great ideas for how to extend it, and I think the last part brings out some higher energy and makes it feel a bit more “Gulfer.”
Vincent: This song originally ended before the solo and was under two minutes when Joe sent it out to the band. We rehearsed it like that for a while, and I know Joe wanted to keep it short and sweet and take inspiration from Joyce Manor with their short bangers, but it always felt to me like the song was ending before its climax. I secretly worked on it for a week or two and extended it by copy-pasting the verses and chords and created a little solo on top for an instrumental break before coming up with different shapes of the chords we’re already using to make this somewhat dramatic ending chorus with the classic Gulfer yelling delivery over them, rehashing some lines we sang in the first part of the song. Joe was down with my vision and now the song clocks at three minutes and it’s still, in my mind, a banger. We’ve been playing this song live for a while now, it works super well in our set.
2. “Heartshape”
Vincent: High school years, two friends, two broken teenagers starting to become romantic. The bridge is them later on, adults, looking back on their life and what they built together. Pretty straightforward love song. This is the mellowest song I wrote for this project by far. It reminds me of folk bands more than any genre we’ve been associated with before. I think that I wasn’t even sure I wanted it to be on the record at first, or even put in the time it takes to arrange it with the band. But David has always been a big fan of it, which kinda motivated me to go through with it. Julien is a great drummer, obviously, and is original in the way he approaches writing beats, and I love how he figured out a way to insert interesting rhythms into this mellow-ass love song. You could say the same thing for every song of ours he wrote drums for, but this song wouldn’t have been the same without his touch on it.
Joe: “Heartshape” is one of the most—or the most—important songs on this album to me. Hearing Vince’s demo with the acoustic guitar with so much chorus on it unlocked a different way to express some of the song ideas I was working on, but wasn’t sure if they would fit with Gulfer’s style. “Heartshape” set in motion the idea that the songs we were working on would be less traditional in terms of arrangements and production, and instead we would be following whatever intuition we had. And that’s one of my favorite things about this record.
3. “Cherry Seed”
Joseph: This song is about how we try to make meaning in a world where we have so little control over anything. In particular, I’m referring to the climate crisis and how that looms over our lives. I try to make it personal by drawing the parallel of oceans acidifying to our own bodies, which are mostly water. I’m a pretty happy person, but this one came out pretty nihilistic. I was happy with the chords and melody for the song, but the demo wasn’t sounding right until Vince sent me his “Heartshape” demo. Inspired by that song, I tried reworking “Cherry” as a bit more of a bedroom-pop song, and that felt right. It was deep during the pandemic, and I had a lot of time in my room to mess around with things and go a little nuts automating everything that is, unfortunately, pretty hard to replicate live.
Vincent: This song already had a bunch of cool arrangements made by Joe in his demo, which was really fun to work with—things like MIDI pianos supporting the vocal melodies and harmonica takes going through distortion. For this song I messed around a bit with putting pitch correction on guitars, because it creates these subtle glitches which I think fit the mood of this track. I had a lot of fun writing the vocal harmonies for this one, and I had to push my falsetto skills to record them. Fun fact: we played “Cherry Seed” during a couple of shows during our short run with Pinegrove last year, but decided to stop playing it live because it was a bit hard to do the song justice live.
4. “Drainer”
Vincent: This song was inspired by Spencer Radcliffe’s cover of Emily Yacina’s song “Far Away.” I almost stole word-for-word her first three lines and then created a whole song around the adaptation I made of her lyrics. I guess here I’m describing the feeling of not fitting in in the world, or not knowing how or where to place yourself—failing and falling over and over and getting overwhelmed by little things in life, asking your partner for some advice on how to deal with these questions and finally getting comfort in knowing that as long as you have each other, things will be OK.
This song used to be so different when I wrote it at first. I was singing an octave lower, and it wasn’t as punchy as it is now. I think I wanted to make it more of a slowcore type song. I think I wasn’t planning to do it with Gulfer originally, but for this record I kinda struggled to find inspiration to write songs so I dug up this demo and decided to mold it as a song that could be in our repertoire. I changed the melody and tone of voice, made the rhythm guitar be a bit funky, but it really came together when we rehearsed it with drums and arranged the two instrumental sections. I’m a huge fan of Pink Floyd—especially Syd Barrett’s era—and the clock sounds at the end are a nod to the chaos you can hear at the end of “Bike.”
5. “Too Slow”
Joseph: I like the idea of artists having themes coming in and out of different songs, so I lifted lyrics from one of Vince’s early songs (“Tiki Marathon”) and used that to get started. That’s where the “Too slow to follow” line comes from. Sonically, this song is heavily influenced by bands like Hotline TNT and Ovlov, who I think do such a good blend of fuzz and melody. I love fast, loud songs that are over before you know it and leave you wanting more. A lot of songs on this record are a bit lighter than our previous material, and I’m really glad this heavier/fuzzier one snuck in.
Vincent: Although this song was part of the group of songs we worked on during the pandemic, this one sorta fell through the cracks for a while—meaning we forgot to track drum and bass for it when it was time to track this album. I asked our drummer Julien to come to my place and write out the parts he’d created for it and used a MIDI drum instead, and I played bass on this one. I started mixing it and we liked the vibe of the electronic drum a lot, so we ran with it and recorded our vocal parts over it. I asked our good friend Will [Osiecki] to send a bunch of unused Bas Relief riffs so that I could play around with and possibly include one at the end of this song. Lots of automations and effects, a bit of copy-pasting and other production magic, and now I can’t go back to just hearing the first half of the song.
6. “No Brainer”
Vincent: Not sure what the verses are about here, to be honest—they’re kinda up for interpretation. I liked the cadence, the flow, the rhyming, and the mysterious feeling behind those lines. I know that the general idea of this song is that when you’re in a strong relationship with someone that’s really solid and also your best friend, it feels like a no-brainer to keep it going and therefore it feels like you’re winning at life.
This song and the middle solo especially falls into the category of being used to hearing it a certain way for so long, wanting to recreate that vibe and sorta giving up and keeping the demo takes instead. Although here, instead of scrapping the new guitar takes, I just combined them all together, resulting in, I think, my biggest Logic session up to that point. I think I had somewhere around 30 guitar channels and close to 90 channels altogether for a fairly simple rock song from a four-piece band. I like the wall of sound it creates and how all the different distortions complement each other. Also, certain takes don’t play exactly the same thing, so for me it’s funny to hear certain notes popping out left and right.
Joseph: This is another one of my favorite songs because of how hook-forward it is. Even though there are a lot of instrumental parts, it’s one of those songs that feels shorter than it actually is. Vince’s vocal melodies are so catchy, so I just tried to stay out of the way with my parts.
7. “Motive”
Joseph: This is a story about someone experiencing a psychotic episode and not being interested in seeking treatment. I didn’t want to reference their story specifically (most of the specific things I describe here didn’t happen), so I tried to tell a story about losing touch with a difficult reality. “Motive” is interesting because I think it’s the first or second song I wrote of the batch that eventually landed on the album. Originally it was a totally different song with way more parts, more tapping, and it felt a bit over-stuffed. We played it together a bunch and we all felt something was missing. It ended up being an “addition by subtraction” thing where the song flowed so much better once we removed a bunch of parts. I bought a used lap steel on Craigslist, because I was listening to a lot of the Euphoria Again album that came out [in 2021]. “Motive” felt like a good place to try that out, and I think that and the acoustic guitars in the second half tie the song together. Another thing that I really like about this song is how Vince blended our vocals together where it’s hard to distinguish between us.
8. “Prove”
Joseph: This is a simple one: learning when to stop talking. It was also a really early one in terms of the tracks that made it on to this record, though the structure stayed pretty consistent. I wanted to write something higher energy than what we did on our previous LP, so I drafted a fast drum part in Logic before writing the song to make sure the energy stayed high the whole song. At first I thought there was no way we were going to write something so simple (the majority of the song is three chords over and over), and it felt a little bare-bones. I think when Vince added new guitar leads as we were finishing the demo, the song felt more complete.
9. “Vacant Spirit”
Joseph: Continuing on the “songs can be about anything” idea, I wanted to use images I haven’t used before. The song isn’t really about anything in particular, I just wanted to use words that the listener can interpret however they want. This is also another song that ended up being shortened as we were demoing it—it started with way more tapping at the beginning, which we decided to remove and just have Julien play his beat, which we all liked way more. It also allowed the song to be introduced more gradually rather than throwing the listener into something crazy. For this song, I tuned my guitar to some variation of an open D, and with the use of a capo I had the top three strings all playing D, which gives the rhythm guitar a bit of a drony feel. Those drony notes also brought us to the shoegazey bends throughout the song, which to me sound great because all the three strings bend slightly differently with the whammy, which makes it build even more tension.
10. “Talk All Night”
Vincent: This one is about a friendship turning into a romantic relationship. One person has been wishing for this to happen for a long time and is learning from their past mistakes, and the other is moving on from a dark past all while the world is coming to an end. You can sorta see this as a snapshot into a relationship—a late night hangout that’s captured into words. “You sat on the counter and I kissed your eyes / we talked all night.” To me, it’s easy to picture the two people in an apartment figuring out each other and wanting to keep learning more about each other.
To be honest, this was a really hard song to put together. I had a lot of different versions of the ending, especially. Different electronic drums that would clash with Julien's current drum beat that I had to tone down and refine so that it doesn’t interfere too much with what the live band was doing. Demoing songs in advance can be a curse sometimes because you get used to hearing something a certain way for so long, and then you’ll try to recreate it in a studio setting. I actually gave up on doing that for the ending and kept most of the guitars from the demo because they had such a specific vibe and sound to them. I’m pretty happy with the final result, although it’s not really a song I’ve revisited since we mastered it. Dylan once again saved the day with the way he mixed all these layers together. I think this record is pretty different from our previous work, but the proggy instrumental break before the last chorus is a great nod to the technical riffs we used to do before.
