Mathemagic: "Always Will Be"

Band made of brothers = guaranteed smash. Think about it: the Bee Gees, Boards of Canada, Hanson—the reward for enduring puberty in a bunk-bed is you get to grow up to be musical, your hardships converted into psychic sibling songwriting. Evan and Dylan Eutenier obviously had a more psychic bunk-bed than most of us, and Mathemagic, their spunky two-man shoegaze act, is only one vowel away from a fucked-up Donald Duck cartoon, wherein our beloved feathered friend has been trapped by evil blackboards. And before anyone scrambles to volunteer the term mathgaze, the Euteniers’ rough-hewn, blocky sound is too flinty to sway to while working a calculator. Think Swervedriver starting an avalanche, then slipping and getting sucked into it.

I think if a phone-in poll called “Baptise this –gaze” was run for the Mathemagic demo, a potential poll topper could be Beach-, available for license only if listeners promised to move to Socotra Island. The freaky guitar zest of “Always Will Be,” coupled with its wood xylophones and genderless breath, would sit perfectly against “the most alien looking place on earth,” and it’s a shame there isn’t a Toronto-Madagascar rail link for the Euteniers to shoot their first video. The song’s seasick tempo is easily as entrancing as Socotra’s HP Lovecraft-friendly plantlife—at one point, my head became so woozy I could hear the track title sighed into the lyrics—and Dylan and Evan hold their sparkle despite their thirst for salvia. “Beachgaze” might be too keen a term for a record only unveiled in March, but I’m pretty certain it’s the one word you’ll be able to clearly remember after a night spent hooked on Mathemagic. Just for fuck’s sake don’t try and do calculus.