New Music Discovery: Anyway Gang - 'Alternate View'

Each Tuesday and Sunday, Taylor rounds up this week’s best new music with the New Music Discovery Show. Here’s one of our favourites.

Anyway Gang – “Alternate View”

Canadian supergroup Anyway Gang have returned with their first song of 2022. The group consists of Sam Roberts, Sloan’s Chris Murphy, Hollerado’s Menno Versteeg, and Tokyo Police Club’s Dave Monks. On Wednesday, they shared “Alternate View” with an animated music video that tells the story of a “fortune teller named Hyacinthe, who was raised in the circus by her father, the lion tamer.”

Versteeg elaborated on that in a statement, saying, “One day, Hyacinthe looks into her crystal ball and sees her father being eating by the lions. Despite her pleading, her father refuses to look in the ball to see his blood-soaked fate. Sure enough, the gruesome scene transpires and her father is eaten alive.

Hyacinthe is tormented by nightmares and in every fortune she reads she sees nothing but darkness. On a stormy night outside of Denton, TX, she is walking by the lion cage. The beasts whisper to her, to stick her head in their cage so they can end her suffering. As her life flashes before her eyes, she immediately regrets choosing to end her life, but as she recoils, her head gets stuck between the bars of the cage and she blacks out. Fortunately, the Contortionist named Karloff sees this happening and uses his powers of contortionism to climb into the cage and help free her head from the bars.

She awakes with a new outlook. Karloff is constantly standing on his head or walking on his hands and the two of them discuss the importance of looking at everything from a different angle. In a circus life, an alternate view, and a friend to share it with, is the only thing that can keep you sane. That’s the story of Hyacinthe and The Contortionist.”

The band has yet to confirm a new album.