WR624: Todd Kowalski of Propagandhi

WITCHPOLICE RADIO: Welcome to Witchpolice Radio. Things are getting better, sort of with the pandemic, but I'm still in my basement on the Internet interviewing people, which I think is going to be the plan for the foreseeable future. And the guest on this show is someone that I've wanted to have on the show for a long time. If you are a really good listener to this show, and you're probably not, you may have heard an episode we did back in I think it was 2014, with a member of this guest's band. So I think that doing a follow up in the current format of the show is something I'd wanted to do for quite a while. And I think before we get into anything, if you want to just introduce yourself and maybe give a bit of background about what you've done in the music scene here locally. TODD KOWALSKI: Okay, well, my name is Todd Kowalski. I play in Propagandhi. I played in Swallowing Shit before. And before that, I Spy. And then kind of between that, a band called Last Man on Earth with Chris and Chris from Propagandhi and James from I Spy. And then before that, me and Simon Hughes and Chris in a band called the Flying Randys. And then I think that's about it here. WR: I think that's enough. I think even just Propagandhi and I Spy alone is like a pretty big body of work that's got, I think, a lot of definitely has a reputation within Winnipeg and the prairies and beyond. TK: Right. WR: So you've been involved in a lot of stuff, for sure. I have a lot of things I want to ask you about Propagandhi. And I guess the first thing is this is kind of maybe a weird question for you because I know you didn't play on the record, but 25th anniversary this year of the band's second album happened, and that was sort of for me, that was my entry point. I was a teenager when that came out, and I heard that and then realized it was a local band and it was just a huge for a lot of people, I think, my age, a huge moment of hearing. Something especially that had political views and values and things that reflected my own. And hearing that in music was new, I guess at that age. And again, I know you didn't play on that record, but one of the things that sort of struck me on relisting to it is how many of the topics that are discussed and the issues that are covered haven't changed at all. In some cases, almost seem like they've gotten worse in the two decades and a half since then. As a member of a band that clearly cares about the content you're putting out there and the issues you're talking about and the subject matter, what does it feel like to realize that everything you've been sort of arguing for through your music for this long? In a lot of cases, nothing's gotten better, and obviously you hope it does, right? And I know again, you weren't on that record, but just the general idea of all these issues, and it kind of seems like we're in 2021 now, when at least in my idealistic teenager phase, listening to that record, I thought, okay, this is great. Someone's talking about this now. Maybe by the time I'm 40, things will have gotten better, but it seems like It's almost the opposite. TK: Yeah, I think I was almost predictable the way things were going, but always still disappointing. I think as you get older, you realize less and less that you're going to see any positive change in your lifetime, especially as things get worse. But I think the thing that has changed most positively is stuff to do with LGBTQ for sure. Stuff like from the it started changing in the think, but from the 80s till now is a complete difference. WR: Yeah. That is an area that's changed, for sure. TK: Yeah, I would say that. And maybe now people sort of waking up to the environmental issues, but it's actually like people are kind of waking up, but it's possibly too late. And also, even though people are waking up, every year, humans emit more and more, and it's worse than last year. So we're kind of pretending to wake up, but not really. WR: Yeah. In small increments and maybe not enough. Yeah. Does that affect sort of the writing that the band does, just knowing that all of these songs, all these issues and these causes that you've fought for for so long are still unresolved? Does that create, like, a sense of I'm not sure. Is there more anger towards sort of the society that hasn't gone through other than the LGBT issues and things like that. But I mean, the animal rights stuff, the environmental stuff, a lot of these topics, racism, are just, like, seem stalled. Does that fuel sort of more frustration as songwriters when you're talking about big issues like this? TK: Yeah, I guess it's harder to write the songs now a little bit, because what's on our mind is exactly the same, but we've already wrote so many songs about it. I find in my mind, when I'm playing my guitar, I keep having the same thought. It's always the same huts, like, in the world, unless you're picking specific issues, the only real issue is to how to make humans have more compassion for each other and try to make the world better. That's really the only point of our band, is to try to touch some kind of emotional thing that might make you think about something like, we're not politicians, we're musicians and artists, and that's our goal. That just becomes more and more difficult, especially as you start to feel just a little older and you almost don't believe that anything's going to get well. And that's just speaking for me. I don't know how Chris and Jord feel. WR: Oh, for sure. It seems to me like well, first of all, one thing that I like about Propagandhi is that I've been listening, like I said, since I was about, I don't know, 14, and I'm almost 40 now, so it's a long time. And it seems like every album you get better, which is like the reverse trajectory of most bands. Like a lot of bands, when they're four, five, six albums in, they kind of get stagnant. But you seem to be getting more aggressive, faster, heavier. The songwriting seems to have more nuance, I think. I think that those songs in the early records where it's more kind of beating you over the head with the topic and the ideas, but now with some of these songs, they seem very personal. It just almost seems like there's a different thinking that goes into writing on the last few records. Is that accurate? TK: I think so, yeah. I think our thing is to just keep trying to challenge ourselves, even with our ideas and music. For sure. In the last year, since this COVID, Chris and I have played just practice so hard. Yeah, we've been jamming. I can tell we're both way better than we were before COVID So I don't know, I kind of find maybe I've said this before, but you wouldn't expect a painter who's 20 to have painted their best painting. They keep moving, keep moving, and then when you're like 40 or 60, maybe you start picking up steam and start making a couple of good paintings. And I kind of feel the same with music. Sure, I appreciate old I Spy and Propagandhi for what it is, but it is what it is. I don't really have massive nostalgia for it, or especially I don't want to recreate it or it's the past. I don't really feel that way, you know what I mean? I just want to move forward. I don't have any desire to live in the past. We'll play old songs for people just kind of to see them happy here. It's almost like doing something for somebody else, like giving them a gift of some kind or a birthday present for your mom or whatever. Yeah, like you're happy to do it, but you know what I mean? It's not for you, it's for them. WR: Do you think that, sonically, this is kind of the natural trajectory for the band? Because, I mean, I know that stuff like thrash and heavier music has always been sort of there in the background from every interview I've read or heard with any of you guys. Right. And it seems like just going this route, is it the organic way the band sort of unfolded or is it something you're doing on purpose to try and bring some of those influences more to the front? Obviously you haven't been doing the kind of 90s skate punk stuff in a long time. That nostalgia thing you're talking about. But it just seems more technical, maybe is the better word for it. It seems like a lot of the songs are more complex. And is that just a natural kind of progression of how the band has unfolded or is this something you're specifically aiming for? TK: I think around Empires we were trying to become way better and move more stuff into the songs. And after that point, I think it was just like naturally, like just sitting around playing guitar until something is of interest or playing guitar and singing until something captures your imagination. Yeah, well, I think it's always been that way. It's just before we didn't have as many tools at our disposal. WR: Sure. Yes. TK: You start collecting tools until you just keep trying to head for what you're going for. WR: You mentioned earlier about jamming during this COVID situation we're all sort of stuck in, and I managed to get a ticket to your show at at the Park, which is great because I've had years of complaining about not being able to get tickets to every show over the past 20 years because they sell out in minutes, which is awesome. Right, but what has that been like as a band that obviously you tour a lot. A big part of your career as a musician is playing live and touring. What has that been like? Having this kind of enforced time off where that's just out of the question. TK: For me. I'm kind of happy doing whatever I'm doing. I don't want to sit there and brood and waste my life pushing out tour when I'm not. But it's fun. We just got back to jamming and just getting ready and I just really like standing there listening to Chris and Jord play and just playing my bass and hanging out with those guys. It's been fun. It's been a while since we played some of the songs and we usually play all new ones and stuff first. We don't add in the old ones till way later. WR: Yeah. TK: So we're just playing songs we really like and having fun. Cool. It's nice to stand in there and just feel the power of the tunes. I can tell we practice hard so it just sounds tight and powerful. WR: I guess a lot of it's muscle memory too at this point, right. Even with time off you still have played those songs so many times and you played together for so many years that I'm sure it just at some point just locks in like riding a bike kind of, eh? TK: Yeah. It took this time because it was so long and we started playing the harder songs first. It actually took me a while, like I practiced for a few days before we started jamming and I'd almost more than I would have thought, kind of forgot how to play some stuff. But that's good because then it made it a little more fun and then we started playing a couple of songs we hadn't played since we recorded the record, like Flante Delicto or whatever that is. Yeah, it's really fun to play and I could tell, I could just feel an improvement enough. So I was kind of happy. I thought, oh, that's cool. It's cool that it paid off. Sitting there like me and Chris, we both sit there with metronomes just picking and picking like on the strings for hours every day, just trying to get our hands mean. WR: I know you've been on that show and actually everyone from your band has been, but there's the Propagandhi podcast which is analyzing, doing those deep dives into literally every one of his songs and I've kind of befriended those guys online. I've listened to all their shows. Really great show. What is that like for you as a musician and as a songwriter to sort of hear someone completely dissect for three and a half hours something that you worked on? I mean, it's got to be kind of like a cool thing to hear that someone is that interested in your work that they want to completely take it apart and figure out what it's about. But is it weird to hear other people kind of discussing what you wrote? Especially if it's something that you wrote years ago? TK: Yeah, I kind of like, when I'm at home, try to not think about myself or whatever too much in that way. So it's like I kind of tune in for particular episodes like the guys when the guys from Sacrifice were on or the one with Derek Riel, my friend. Yeah, I think it's really cool. I feel like just sometimes I just be a little distance from it, just let it do its thing so I don't feel any desire to you know what I mean? Or if people are getting stuff wrong, just let it live for what it, you know, not trying to get too involved. Or, like, when I listen to like I listened to one with Derek Riel the other day, and I was saying to Chris, and, like, it's not very often you get to hear your friend saying nice things about you. In that, like, usually it would be, like, at your funeral or yeah. WR: I think this describes everyone I know who is a Propagandhi fan. But do you feel that the music you make as a band kind of lends itself to that sort of almost nerdiness about it? Because there's so much to unpack in each song whether it's figuring out what the references are or doing research. I mean, a lot of the records have today's empires has that big booklet of this massive document that comes with the LP that you can you know what I mean? Do you think that your audience is maybe people who are willing to sort of devote more time to thinking about what's in the song rather than just it is this is cool, and I want to headbang to it. TK: It seems like it's hard to say. It's kind of odd. We always feel a little bit like the scenes and bands we're lumped into isn't really what we listen to or anything. Which is kind of interesting, too. Sometimes I think that we even probably don't listen to much of the same music as the people who listen to us, which is kind of interesting in a way. Yeah, we're happy. Anyone who's listening to it, we dig it. And the more that they're feeling it and looking into what we're trying to get at that's what you want as an artist, right, to move somebody. You could go paint a picture where everything's all just 100% right with no feeling and it's whatever, but if you see it and it's like, totally moving you for whatever reason, it's like a completely different experience. WR: Yeah. TK: So that's what we're trying to get at. WR: I think I may have asked Chris this when he was on my show a million years ago, but one of my favorite things that I've seen online I mean, there's so much live footage of you guys online from various cities around the world, and I think it was in Australia. There was a show, and you're playing, playing Dear Coach's Corner. And the crowd is singing along with every word. The whole crowd. And I love watching that because I can't imagine many people in the Australian crowd have any idea what Coach's Corner is or who Don Cherry is. And so I know that this is the same with every band, where once your song is out in the world, people will it's open to it becomes the audience's song. Right. They can interpret however they want. They like what they want out of it. But what is that like, being on stage, knowing that you're talking about maybe not that song particularly, but you're talking about very specific issues in the songs? I mean, you're talking about subject matter that isn't just generic. Right. And then you have people who maybe know nothing about it, who are they know every word and they're singing along. Does that kind of give you hope that they're going to maybe dig deeper when they're at home with the record or something? Or are you okay with the fact that maybe they just love the song so much that they'll sing along and not go that extra step to actually learn what it's talking about? TK: I think either way is fine. We just do our thing and however you want to take it is how you take it. WR: Yeah. TK: I do kind of feel, like, happy when I see people singing along for the fact that we didn't build our songs as sing alongs to pander. I like that people listen to the songs and even though some of the songs aren't really sing along type songs, like people are singing along, which kind of really makes me kind of feel like it's nice that you can do that without sitting down and going pandering to them. You're dumb. This is elementary school and we're all going to sing Row Your Boat Ashore or whatever. WR: Yeah. You don't need to specifically write the hook for people to actually be wanting to sing along anyway. Yeah, that's cool. TK: Yeah. WR: One thing I wanted to ask you about as well is I've noticed just following you on social media is you're obviously a visual artist as well, in addition to the music side of things. How long have you been doing that for? Because some of the art you're doing is fantastic. TK: Oh, thanks. I don't know, I kind of was doing it ever since I was a little kid, and then at some point, maybe like eight or so years ago, I was just like, picked up the pace. I was like, I just knew I wouldn't get good unless I tried really hard. WR: Cool. TK: Just like music, I kind of realized you can have an idea for a song or music, but to make it happen and turn out roughly the way you want is a lot of effort, especially if you want it to be on for real. WR: Yeah. [00:27:20] Speaker B: You know what I mean? I don't know how to say it. If your goal isn't if you want it to compete, well, how's the best I can try to compete with sonically? With your heroes. WR: Right. TK How do we get as good as our heroes? And when you realize how much work it is, it's like, okay, that's the same for art, that's the same for absolutely everything. Like nothing comes easy. WR: Yeah. Is it a different creative process for you? Do you feel like you're using a different part of your brain to create visual stuff versus music? TK: It is and it isn't. I kind of go back and forth all day from music to drawing, music to drawing, and it kind of weaves itself together a little bit because you start seeing I start thinking about the principles while I'm drawing. And then if you're drawing or whatever, you have your simple statement or this simple layout or composition, and if it's not solid, there's nothing you can do to decorate it and make it turn out good. You can't just keep adding stuff and have it turn out well. The initial thing has to be solid. So I think through painting, I started to realize more and more that the initial thing without any dressing should be as solid as possible, like the simple statement. And I think that's why some bands are super successful. It's a simple statement. And some bands like the simple statement so strong they can almost stop there. WR: Yeah, for sure. TK: And I don't mean like shitty bands that can't play and their songs are simple. I don't know what I mean. But I don't mean you make a simple song that sucks and it's simple. You know what I mean? I mean something good. And also, the longer you draw, the simpler your drawing can be. Because it's more right earlier. WR: Right. Fix it later on. Yeah, exactly. TK: And I think the same with music. The more right it can be before you even show the other people the song, the better off you are. WR: Yeah. You're not dressing it up too much. TK: Yeah. WR: One of the things that's come up on this this show a lot. And I've, you know, I've been doing it for a while now. I've interviewed people from, like, age 18 to 70 and all different genres of music. And kind of a frequent topic that comes up is the idea that people in Winnipeg and Manitoba and I think the prairies in general, we have really good bullshit detectors. And I think with anything creative, it definitely seems like people here can see right through it if it's not genuine and if it's not honest. And I think that might apply to what you're talking about as well, where the basic idea, the raw materials behind it are generally coming from the person creating it. And you can see that and that sort of will. You can't doll something up and get that to happen. Right. It has to be there in the beginning. TK: Yeah. Right. You just want to just do your thing and say who you are. We're kind of labeled as a political band, but really, it's like, in a way, it's not it's like we're literally saying, here's what I feel about. Like it moves us as much as a love song would move Tony Bennett. Or like, all our songs are like love songs to animals or to whatever, or this is the way I think about it at some point. I remember a long time ago seeing reviews of I Spy and Propagandhi where they're all calling it political and blah, blah, blah, and then in contrast, almost saying people doing kind of love songs and stuff is more heartfelt and blah, blah, blah. But to me, it's like maybe you just don't feel the same things as us and that's fine, but we're feeling this. WR: That genuineness comes through. You guys are singing about animal rights and that's there you're not just saying it because you want to throw us a couple of slogans out there. The songs are well written enough and well thought out enough that it's obvious that this is an important topic. TK: Yeah. Those songs are born out of maybe holding your kitty and looking at their eyes and their hair and their little hands and whatever, and you're like, how can people hurt these guys? And that kind of thing. WR: Well, for sure, yeah. I mean, one of the reasons I got into Propagandhi in the first place is I was raised vegetarian, so I've never had meat. And for me, as a teenager, when all my friends thought it was ridiculous and they tried to hide meat in my food and stuff and to hear a band that was especially when less talk came out and there's that big animal friendly on the logo. And just to have it hearing that for the first time was kind of like, wow, this is something that I care a lot about. And to hear someone I'm listening to actually address it at all. And I think that maybe that kind of like you mentioned earlier, you said the word compassion for everybody. Right. I think that maybe is what that's obviously what attracts people to your music is that in whatever topic you're covering, they feel that connection with that idea and those values. TK: Right, yeah, hopefully. And some people clearly don't. WR: Yeah. TK: We get messages like, you guys still whatever, you guys still on that thing? Or have you grown up? I don't want to grow up from those thoughts, for sure. WR: Yeah. TK: I've grown up from as many stupid thoughts as I can, but I don't want to grow up from those compassionate impulses to being just someone who's investing and waiting to go to Maui for the winter and and hoarding and dying. WR: Yeah. And dying with and you can't take anybody anywhere anyway. So yeah. To obviously the world is going to be what it is, but do you have hope that younger people are maybe going to be more open to these kind of compassionate ideas? Because it seems just I mean, I have kids, they're young enough now, but they definitely seem to be, at their age, more kind of the idea of loving everyone regardless of where they're from or what they look like or what their background is or religion or race or anything. It just seems like it's inborn in them. They show up on Earth with this idea that everyone should be awesome and you can hang out and everyone should be friends and I hope anyway, that seeing them practicing that stuff in real life, I have this hope that maybe is going to be dashed in 20 years or so when the world stays shitty. But I don't know. Do you have any kind of positive kind of hope for the future or do you think that these kind of issues are going to be fought sort of on some level forever? TK: Yeah, I hope that kind of when the generation like mine and the one above is over, I hope the next generation is a little better. But I guess there's going to be so many kids raised by also the people who are there's going to be kids raised with no sense of compassion, and that compassion is terrible and bad, so all those people will be there. And if the world gets worse and things heat up and things become more scarce and competitive and brutal, people can lose their dreams pretty quick and become bitter. WR: I don't think there's an answer for it. I just have this hope that things are going to improve and I think that listening to bands like yours where despite the kind of heavy messages and heavy things you're talking about, I think there is some hope in there. Otherwise I don't think you'd still be doing this at this level anyway, so many years later. Right? TK: Yeah. There's some old Russian poem that I kind of know from more cheaper means from a man lifting banner record, but it says, if I forget that the seed that lies beneath the snow will someday rise, bury me tight. And I kind of think like that at some point. When I was young, I kind of promised myself not to give in. So very often I'm mentally kind of beaten down because we're getting all the messages on propaganda and seeing the message there's so much and sometimes it's like just like the things people are asking from you are just too much and things people are saying become too much. You just start losing hope. But then when I do, I just remember when I feel like just going off into the forest for the rest of my life and just painting and ignoring society, I always remind myself like, no, that's what I promised myself not to do. WR: Just stick with it and I guess be part of whatever solution there is. TK: To improve things and keep trying. Whether you believe things can change or not doesn't matter as long as you keep trying, right? WR: Right. Yeah, for sure. TK: It doesn't matter what the outcome is. If you quit, you lost. WR: Right. And if the things you're fighting for are important enough, it doesn't make any sense to quit because you want to see things improve, even if you're convinced they're not going to, right? TK: Yeah, exactly. WR: I know, like I said before, you're playing in the Park Theater in October, which is very exciting. And you have that western Canadian tour. What's sort of happening with the band after that? Do you have new material that's going to be coming out at some point in the foreseeable future? TK: Well, in November, we remixed and remastered Empires. WR: Oh, cool. TK: And it sounds like -- people always say this -- but this sounds so much better. It sounds like a ten times better record. WR: Cool. TK: None of us were interested in that record at all. And then Chris was like, we should just hear how this sounds and see if we want to remix know. And we sent it to Jason Livermore, who does our other records, the mixing, and he remixed it and it came, like, kind of like perked our ear up. And then we sent, can you do this? Can you do this? Can you do this? And he thought about it over the weekend. He really works hard on our stuff. He takes our stuff home, and I think he might genuinely like it. It kind of works. And then when he came back with his new little skeleton for what he was doing, we were like, okay, these songs actually kind of rock. Whereas before they were just kind of like just kind of felt like they didn't in a way to us. Sure. Because we knew what we were trying to do and what we went into the studio to do. And I remember being in the studio feeling it slip away on us. It's like, how is this slipping away? Like, we recorded pretty well. WR: Yeah. TK: And by the time it was out, we were just, like, depressed. We went back three times trying to fix it, and every time it wasn't being fixed and it cost us a fortune. But we couldn't give up. We even redid the guitars, and I don't even know if they got in. They were still disappointing to us after. But then we got it, and it's like when you can now hear how awesome Jord played and all like, yeah, this is rocking. So we're stoked about that. And then me and Chris have been making songs on our own and we just have to get together, and I'm pretty excited about what we're going to do. I think it's going to be rad cool. WR: With Empires, is it just a matter of sort of getting new ears on it? Because you've lived with these songs for that album is like, 20 years old now, right? Is it just someone else sort of taking a look at it and then seeing what could be kind of tweaked on it or what worked so well about what he did to it? TK: I think he just went back. Like, he went just back right to the raw tracks without even listening to the other one. Okay, just like, how would I do this? And then we have our turn this afternoon. That down. Don't do this. You know what I mean? Just keep it natural, whatever this and that, turn up the vocals, crank the bass, all that kind of crap. And then it just ended up good. We were just happy I was listening to it and I never listened to it. The last time I sat down and listened to it was probably when it came out. Especially songs like Cointelpro. Yeah, it's just like it's just so much better. It's unbelievable. WR: That's funny because I was listening to that album today and I was thinking about how great it sounds. But it's very cool to hear that you've even improved it more. And I guess obviously that's going to happen with anyone's music, right. You've created it and been involved with it and lived with it for so long that yeah, it's going to sound different to you than it is to the regular fan on the street, I guess, right? TK: Yeah. And there is a chance that if people are so used to the other one and they like it so much, there's a chance they might like the other one better because they're so used to it. When the first Youth of Today tape in the 80s, it was recorded so badly it sounded like literal cardboard boxes. Hear the distortion. To me as a kid when I heard it because I was like a metal fan kid, I heard it, I was like, this band is terrible. It's unreal terrible. But I got used to it and loved it. Pretty soon I loved it and then they remixed it sometime in the heard it, it was so disappointing. Even though it sounded twice as good. I wanted the cardboard boxes and distorted mics and the shittiness. That's what made the record sound crazy. But I think Empires is different because the naturalness was actually taken away before in the mixing. The guitars got kind of like that and the kick drum got kind of disappeared and the bass sounded good. I really like how the bass sounds on it. That was kind of the lucky twist of that record. Like, I could always listen to it and be like, okay, the bass sounds awesome. WR: Well, and that's a good one for your first record with the band, too, right? Like, that's kind of a good one to have. K: That was the one thing that probably made me feel maybe a little better about Empires than Chris and Jord did because my particular instrument sounded better. WR: Yeah. TK: But now I think especially the drums, it's just like, okay, Jord played really killer on that. WR: I mean, he plays really killer on every record, I think. But I'm definitely excited to hear, you know, one thing you mentioned earlier is about kind of not being so into the nostalgia thing, which I totally understand, but I feel like you're at the point now as a band where all these milestones are coming up, right? So people are almost expecting nostalgia from you. They want to hear the anniversary of whichever album, right? Do you feel sort of obligated to go back and do these things, or do you just do them when it feels like the right thing to do? Is this happening because of an anniversary, this Empires thing? Or is it just hey? TK: No, I think it's always been brewing in Chris's mind, probably ever since we came back from our third try. I think he's kind of, I'd say a true perfectionist in the way of, like, it's hard to let things go even if it's old like that. So I think he's probably stewing on it and was like, he asked and people are going to say you did it to try to make money, but we'll actually probably not get royalties from Empires anymore because it costs us so much to do this. We got it totally remixed and mastered, like a record that everyone's heard already. WR: But that's the right reason to do it, I think, right, is because if you're doing it for a cash grab, then it's not going to probably be as good as you really want it to be because the band is not going to care about it to the same level. TK: We're kind of crazy. So it's like if it's almost good, but it's going to cost more to get just another round of mixing one round. It's like, okay, let's put all our money in and get one more round. Let's see if we can make it even better. Who cares? WR: Before I let you go, this is maybe a weird question for you because of the kind of the profile that your band has, but usually I end these shows by asking the guest because a lot of them are just bands, basement bands, or bands that are kind of mid level of success locally and things like that. And I asked them sort of a, what's the best way to hear the music? I think that your music is widely available enough that that's not maybe an issue. But also what's kind of a good entry point, do you think, for someone who maybe hasn't actually heard the band before or is just getting into you because there's a big catalog and there's a lot of different the sounds changed a lot over the years. Do you have sort of a favorite place to point people to as like, this is kind of if you want to get into Propagandhi, this is sort of the entry point of choice? Or are you just sort of open to whatever album people want to dig into? WR: I would say any of the last three I would probably start with, and then, yeah, for me it's just like beyond there as you go back, they just get like I get just less good, I guess. Or not less, but less. Something I'm interested in. WR: Sure. TK: Or we're interested in. I think I can speak for Chris too. Don't get me wrong, I was a Propagandhi fan from the demos. It's not like I don't appreciate or don't like that stuff. I just feel like times moved on and I feel like we're legitimately better if I play old songs versus new songs. How do these make me feel? And it's not out of boredom. It's just like I just feel like the new ones are blowing the other ones away.