In 12 months, The Zummers have gone from playing backyards to headlining regional festivals.
Over the last year, the quartet of genre-bending rockers has taken top honours at both the Crystal Lounge’s Whistler Music Search and the Brackendale Art Gallery’s Battle of the Bands. The band—featuring Tom Csima, Mikey Muscat, Alex Drapeau and Jessie Richards—has crisscrossed the province, played to festival crowds from Prince George to Squamish and tracked five songs at Holy Cow Studio in Kamloops.
But it’s "Grenoble," a “last-minute add-on” written a few weeks before they hit the studio, that marks their official arrival.
“When we were deciding which song to choose as the first single to release, it was very difficult,” Csima says. “We have such a diverse and eclectic range of influences and song styles, but we felt 'Grenoble' had all the elements that make up The Zummers. It was unique and catchy and a great sample for what is to come.”
"Grenoble" blends folk-rock roots with funk and disco, drawing comparisons to Steely Dan and Dire Straits. The song is named for the French Alpine town where Csima once lived in a “dingy apartment” during a transitional time.
“I had just left New Zealand where I had my PR, and followed my girlfriend back to France,” he says. “Shortly after moving there we found out she was pregnant with our son… We only had one key fob, so she used to have to throw it down to me from her fifth-floor window. I always found this kind of ridiculous, and imagined how we must have looked to our neighbours… in the dark trying to catch keys flying down from above.”
That mental image sat in his lyric notebook for years.
“I wrote some lines about it which marinated for a few years unfinished, but eventually shaped into a full song,” Csima says. “The apartment and our living situation is a bit of a metaphor for our lives, and how we just made it work, despite the challenges, and still always found a way to appreciate the beauty of it.”
Musically, the track showcases each Zummer at full tilt.
Muscat drums and pairs the organ with his backing vocals on the track’s infectious chorus. Drapeau contributes mandolin and slide guitar, interweaving with Csima and Muscat’s vocals to produce a “haunting harmony.” And Richards’ bassline anchors the song’s climactic final section, just before the beat breaks open and a French mademoiselle’s voice glides into the mix.
The Zummers’ style, explains Csima, is somewhat blended.
“It’s always really difficult to pin down a genre,” he muses. “We like to say we have some rock bangers like The Strokes, but the soul of Alabama Shakes, and I'm cautious of the absurdity of comparing ourselves to The Beatles, but we love vocal harmonies and have a wide range of song styles, similar to what you would see on the later Beatles albums.”
To celebrate "Grenoble’s" release, the band is kicking off a mini-tour around southern B.C.
Their first stop, on Aug. 15, is at the Heatley Pub in Vancouver, where they’ll be joined by Leah Barley and Myles from Home, before heading to the Rogue Arts Festival in Sechelt on Aug. 16. The tour culminates in a homecoming—a free double-set gig on Aug. 17 at Collins Cross Farm as part of the Slow Food Cycle after-party. There, the band will team up with food truck The Silver Chook and Pemberton Brewing to cap their summer with, as Csima puts it, “a bit of a love letter to the valley.”
Although early buzz around "Grenoble" has raised expectations, Csima remains grounded in the community that propelled The Zummers forward from the beginning.
“We have been so incredibly lucky to get to play some big shows locally in our very short time as a band,” he says. “The local audience always brings such an infectious energy and enthusiasm. We feel we owe our success so far to the word of mouth of our local fans, and we hope that they dig our songs and get to enjoy them wherever they’d like.”
Csima says "Grenoble" is just the beginning for the band’s original music.
“This is the first of many,” he says. “We are continuing to write new music faster than we can record and release it.”
For now, "Grenoble" plays like a groove-laced postcard from the edge of adulthood—hopeful, chaotic and unmistakably Zummers.
