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If eyes are the window to a person’s soul, then facial tattoos are the billboards. The Canadian singer who goes by the name of Ekkstacy has one reading “Misery” above an eyebrow and another of the anarchy sign on his cheek. Put them together and, hey presto: you get the headline of a recent GQ feature trumpeting the arrival of “Gen Z’s new king of sad punk songs”.
Who was the old king? Going way back into Gen Z’s prehistory, I suppose the answer must be Joy Division’s Ian Curtis. “Sad punk songs” would be a three-word-elevator-pitch for his despairing brand of bleakness, but it’s not so far off the mark in Ekkstacy’s case.
The 21-year-old from Vancouver, real name Khyree Zienty, has a back-story involving emotional turmoil and depression. As he recounts in interviews, he was hospitalised as a teenager after a psychotic episode caused by drugs during which he jumped through a second-floor window. The facial tattoos, he has said, were inked when he was “doing very bad mentally”. But the character he projects in his songs conveys an altogether more charming form of anguish.
His self-titled second album is stocked with short but enticing songs that capture our attention without seeking to hold it for too long. The style is classic indie, joining the dots from The Cure to Interpol, Bloc Party and beyond. There are reverb-treated jangling guitars, fuzzy riffs, wiry solos and the staccato fusillade of a drum machine. Ekkstacy’s vocals are washed out but more charismatic than the etiolated indie frontmen of old.
He sings in a mumbly, non-tormented way about being lazy, drinking too much, hating his life, wanting to cry. The catalyst for the crisis in almost every song is a woman, usually remembered without rancour, whether it be she who “stole my heart” in one song or her who “keeps shutting me out” in another. All these girl problems imply the possibility of a solution through finding the right girl, like a long night of the soul that could be ended by a lucky swipe right on Tinder.
★★★★☆
‘Ekkstacy’ is released by UnitedMasters
