Zeus had already hit the cover of a major Toronto indie-rock paper when they caught my eye. I wondered: who are these intense-looking young men, and why have I not heard them?

It could be because Zeus - comprised of songwriting trio Mike O’Brien, Carlin Nicholson, and Neil Quin, with drummer Rob Drake - spent years behind indie-rock icon and occasional Broken Social Scene member Jason Collett. Now their country-indie hybrid is branching out on its own, with their full-length debut Say Us.

We phoned up O’Brien in anticipation of the band’s showcase for Canadian Music Week, to talk about how the Gods willed their sound into existence.

Q: It seems like Zeus came out of nowhere. Have you gotten used to the sudden blitz?

A: It’s never something you can get used to, but right now it’s just filling in the gaps around the music. It’s nice after working so long to hear people responding to what we’ve done, to hear the feedback.

Q: You and I both grew up in Barrie, Ontario. I didn’t see much of a music scene while I was there - was I missing something?

A: There were some bands at the time, but we met in high school - we played shows in Barrie, but most of it was in our little rehearsal space. We had a little scene going, but it was very small.

Q: How did you guys start working for Jason Collett?

A: When I first started playing with him, it was with a band called Paso Mino. That band started backing him about five years ago.

Q: Did he give you any advice as the group moved out on its own?

A: He’s been a bit of a mentor for us, because he’s been through these things before, and he has a point of view we’ve been able to draw from for sure.

Q: When did you realize Zeus had it’s own legs, so to speak?

A: Zeus started before we became Jason’s band. Really, Carlin and I have been making music together since we were kids. But when we started recording, that’s when we realized it was a project we wanted to pursue. The band grew out of the necessity of playing those songs we had recorded. We were just really excited about them, and wanted to start playing shows.

Q: Zeus is a pretty mighty name for a band. Was that your intention?

A: It wasn’t like we wanted to come out of the gates like “We’re huge!” It was more like it just happened to be a word we were using at the time. We have a way of twisting words around, in our group of friends. We would describe songs as “sounding like Zeus”, or “juiced”, or “Zeus juice”. Just rhyming words, and that was one we were using at the time.

We were asked to play our first show, and we got a call from our friend like “I’m making the poster, what are you called?” and Zeus was the first thing that came to mind.

Q: What about the title of your debut Say Us?

A: We were introduced at a show once as “Zaius”. It was just a joke that stuck, we would called the band Zaius. When it came to the record, we were thinking about self-titling it, but Neil came up with the rhyming “Say Us”.

Q: Are there three members of the band would be considered equal songwriters?

A: Me, Carlin, and Neil Quinn are the songwriters. It was a natural progression: Carlin and I started demoing songs that would become the Zeus project, and when Neil joined the band, he’s such a great songwriter that we just felt compelled to introduce his songs as well. When it came time to pick the tracklist, it ended up being an even split between us, which I’m really happy with. It represents all of us equally.

I was never interested in doing a solo thing, myself. Writing songs, I never thought “oh, I can do this on my own.” I always like having the collaborative spirit.

Q: I particularly like the song “River by the Garden”.

A: Yeah, that’s one of mine. I developed the theme for it over breakfast one day, I was talking with Carlin...I forget what he said that spawned the idea in my head, to make it like a “murder ballad” type of a song. There is a tradition of that type of song within country music, and I thought it might be cool to reference that.

Q: Do you find yourself influenced by a lot of that pre-rock music?

A: I took a trip to Nashville when I was 21, I wanted to go to that town that had spawned all that country music. For me, it’s a songwriting thing; country, soul, R&B, I’m just drawn to really well-written songs.

Zeus’ own (very) well-written songs can be heard on their debut album Say Us, available now through Arts & Crafts.

Zeus Myspace

Anton Newcombe is fucking mental, there’s no question. So when he repeats those words over and over in the appropriately titled “Let’s Go Fucking Mental,” you know there’s a good chance he’s doing so, right about now.

There’s no question that people are going to hate on this album – partly because of Newcombe’s ridiculous personality (insert obligatory reference to the DiG! film here) and partly because the music kind of ambles along, never reaching any point or conclusion. Each song just tapers off and let’s the next one begins.

Whatever, let them hate. This album is all about the mood – something the band has mastered, in nothing else, over their 11 albums. Here, it’s as dark,haunting and ethereal as the Icelandic landscape where it was recorded.

Like all BJM albums, the weak moments are a painful to sit through but the highlights make up for it. It’s a bloody wonderful mess.

Artist: Brian Jonestown Massacre

Album: Who Killed Sgt. Pepper? (A Records, 71 minutes)

Rating:4/5

Rock god/possible sex addict Jimi Hendrix hit his peak in 1968 with Electric Ladyland, a balls-out psychedelic experiment that melted down everything rock ’n’ roll hand within its reach into a very drippy and trippy soup for the soul. By 1969, working out his next album (which he never completed), Hendrix dropped much of the sonic exploration and laid the blues on real thick.

Valleys of Neptunes is what you’d expect from Jimi’s output at this time – skillful blues-rock featuring extended guitar solos for songs living in the shadow of his earlier output.

But this is Jimi Hendrix, we’re dealing with here. His gee-tar still wails and screams and noodles around the rhythm section like a snake on its prey.  It’s a necessary album for collectors and hardcore fans, enjoyable for everyone else, but far from essential. What you’d expect from a Hendrix posthumous release.

Artist: Jimi Hendrix

Album: Valleys of Neptune (Legacy, 62 minutes)

Rating: 3/5

[html]

If your brain's starved for stimulation, then fear not because we bring you some hot books hitting the shelves this week. Pick your poison, from satire for fiction lovers to a book about Research In Motion that dishes the gossip on the ubiquitous BrackBerry and the egos behind its creation.

Solar – Ian McEwan (Fiction)

The latest novel from the Booker-prize winning author of Atonement and Enduring Love, about a Nobel Prize-winning, womanizing physicist with his best work behind him and his fifth marriage on the rocks takes a trip to New Mexico to revitalize his career, escape his family woes and save the world.

A satirical novel about greed and deception spans nine years, from 2000 to 2009, between the Arctic tundra and the dry New Mexico desert. Read it! Or don’t.

The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, Obsession –  David Grann (Non-Fiction)

Author of the bestselling The Lost City of Z returns with twelve compulsively readable essays about obsession and madness. All were previously published between 2000 and 2009 but have been revamped and revised.

Grann travelled the world, uncovering real-life mysteries, from the death of Arthur Conan Doyle scholar Richard Lancelyn Green under peculiar circumstances, to tracking down a giant squid with squid-hunter Steve O’Shea. It’s addictive non-fiction, man.

The Ask – Sam Lipsyte (Fiction)

Never mind that this author is popular among post-adolescent young men. That just means he’s crude, rude and happy to be so. He’s also deeply satirical, and never more so than in this latest book about a failed painter working at as a developer at “Mediocre University” and finds himself suddenly unemployed in a post-9/11 America, as the economy runs slowly down the toilet. Very dark, very humorous. And it’s a book about failure – just so you know.

In The Fabled East – Adam Lewis Schroeder (Fiction)

In 1909,  a French mother ravaged by tuberculosis sets off to the jungles of Laos to find the fabled spring of eternal life, to return healthy to care for her son. In 1936  a French bureaucrat, sent to Vietnam and given the task, by the woman’s son, of tracking down his mother, who had been missing for over two decades. It’s a sublime but witty travel adventure by one of Canada’s up and coming writers.

Blackberry: The Inside Story of Research in Motion – Rod McQueen (Non-Fiction)

The book title says it all.

All the ratty details about the Canadian company – and the two CEOS – that may or may not rule the world someday with an obscure little gadget called a...BlueBerry?  You’ve never heard of it?

Read the book.

A new study published in the British Medical Journal has found that men – gasp – are more likely to be sexually active and interested in sex than women.

The study focused on the American population and found that the gender differences increased with age, peaking in the 75- to 85-year-old group. About 40 per cent of men in that age bracket are still at it, but less than 20 per cent of women. Draw your own conclusions.

Another pretty obvious discovery was that good health increases sexual activity for both men and women. But one of the more interesting finds was that even though men have a longer "sex life expectancy," they also lose more years of sexual activity due to poor health than women.

There you have it – extra motivation to get off your arse and out to the gym.

Source: British Medical Journal