Toronto’s USS (Ubiquitous Synergy Seeker) are playing not one but two dates in town on their current tour for new album New World Alphabet, and there’s a reason for that: it was Victoria where the band first started to get noticed outside of Toronto.
“In 2008, when our first song got discovered and started getting played on the radio, someone in Victoria heard it, and we played a show for the Fringe Theatre Festival,” says vocalist/guitarist Ashley Buchholz, who calls Victoria the band’s second home. “We played on the street and 800 people came and stood in the rain for four hours to wait for us to play.”
The experience was certainly a monumental one; Buchholz says the rain disguised his tears of joy. Since then, the band has been a regular in Victoria’s festival lineups and at venues around town. This tour marks the first headlining run for the band. It’s certainly exciting, says Buchholz, who is preparing for the task through meditation and deep dubstep. If that sounds paradoxical, that’s what makes up Buchholz, and he’ll proudly admit it.
“That’s where I like to live—right in the sweet spot of simultaneous opposites,” he says. “I have a philosophy in life that involves just constantly being in present of zooming out. One eye’s a telescope and one eye’s a microscope; you’re able to zoom into things and zoom out of them just to get perspective.”
Buchholz is no stranger to introspection, having spent time in monasteries learning how an attitude can affect a person’s entire reality.
“Happiness isn’t a feeling,” he says. “It’s a choice you make pretty much every moment with your attitude.”
Despite how it may sound, Buchholz says the new album’s themes are lighter than the band’s previous work; no surprise, considering the mindset around its creation was certainly happier.
“The album is just overflowing with joy,” he says. “The songs might not always seem like they’re happy songs, but it’s because it’s coming from the place where you’re healing things that are moving you closer toward more happiness.”
Assisting other people toward their own happiness is what Buchholz hopes to achieve through music. He also hopes to connect, citing how people often feel isolated despite the linked nature of today’s world. He points to the song “Who’s with Me?” on the album as an example of this.
“The intention is to say, ‘I’m longing to feel connection, I’m dying to feel connected, and that’s me praying for connection,’ and to everybody who’s praying for that connection, let’s just see what happens if we create that intention to connect. Who’s with me?”
As for what the band’s music actually sounds like, the term “strum and bass” has been thrown around; Buchholz describes it as “campfire after-party music.”
“I’ve always had a fantasy of wanting to hear Nirvana unplugged but at a rave,” he says. “So I said, ‘Well, I guess I’m just going to have to make it because I can’t hear it anywhere.’”
USS
7 pm Thursday, February 9
7 pm Sunday, February 12
$30, Alix Goolden Hall
ussmusic.com