About The Garrys

The Garrys are a trio of sisters from the coldest part of the landlocked Canadian prairies, and they make surf music.

Formed in the spring of 2015, The Garrys use layered 3-part blood harmonies, hazy sun-bleached melodies, classic lo-fi guitar tones, and syncopated surf beats to create a unique “doom-wop” sound, dripping with dark nostalgia and touched by psychedelic dread. Their music is likely to leave you with an urge to do the Watusi, bittersweet thoughts about slow-dancing with your middle school crush, or a nagging feeling that it’s not quite safe to go back into the water.

New Release: Get Thee To A Nunnery

The Garrys released their fourth LP and third studio album, entitled Get Thee To A Nunnery, on September 24, 2021 via Grey Records. This album was recorded at Rec Hall Studios in Saskatoon, Treaty 6 Territory, and allowed the band to work for the first time with Canadian music icon Dallas Good (of The Sadies) as producer.

Like previous releases, Get Thee to a Nunnery pays homage to The Garrys’ familial roots, telling stories and cultivating moods inspired by their windswept prairie surroundings, the isolation and decay of rural life, generational shifts in worldview and faith, the soft-spoken beauty of small moments and oft-ignored locales, and making sense of nostalgia for times and places that they never really knew.

Most notably, Get Thee to a Nunnery was inspired in part by stories of their mother’s high school years at an all-girls Catholic boarding school and convent in small-town 1960’s Saskatchewan. On several tracks, The Garrys explore the push-pull of rebellion and redemption that comes within a religious upbringing, and the seeding of persistent guilt that all former Catholic school kids know well. Even for artists as reverentially nostalgic as The Garrys, it’s impossible to avoid grappling with the tensions that arise from their sources of aesthetic inspiration. On one hand, they look upon this era and environment as timelessly cool, and coloured with a sepia-toned innocence; on the other, they know the truth of it was inescapably oppressive to young women and various Others. As these cold realizations surface, much of the album is united by a mourning of the various things that can erode, wither, and die while time marches on and as we get older — including the communities, traditions, and relationships we once held near and dear.

Musically, Get Thee to a Nunnery draws upon influences from a diverse array of sounds, including the classic surf riffs of The Ventures, the drama of Ennio Morricone’s spaghetti westerns, the dreamy psychedelia of Kurt Vile, France Gall’s brand of mod-pop cheek, and the lo-fi garage noir of Los Saicos.

Order Get Thee To A Nunnery on vinyl, CD, cassette, or digital formats from thegarrys.bandcamp.com.

Accolades

The Garrys received a 2020 Saskatchewan Music Award for Experimental/Contemporary Artist of the Year, along with a nomination for Alternative Artist of the Year, and recognition on SaskMusic’s Top 10 Albums of 2020 (fan’s choice) for their album Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (Original Score). The Garrys were also a featured artist during BreakOut West 2021, and performed virtually for M for Montreal 2020. Prior to this, The Garrys performed at Iceland Airwaves in Reykjavik, Iceland in November 2019.

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