Sometimes when you run a blog on your own you get caught up by stupid, limiting factors that hold you in place when you really want to post about new music. That could be life tasks or chores (boring!), other hobbies (ok getting better) or just plain glazed-over, void-gazing laziness (chef’s kiss).

I’ve been wanting to post about this Toronto band Uh Huh for a while now, primarily the great “Babylon”, the second single they put out from their upcoming debut, out April 14 via Telephone Explosion, but have been held back by said clutches. Is it pure luck that I find a stroke of inspiration on the same day that they release a NEW single, making this post not only desire-fulfilling to talk about a new band I like, but also achieving a sense of making a deadline? A time-sensitive success? Only time will tell. Ok, enough getting meta, let’s get into the track at hand.

Truthfully, I don’t know much about Uh Huh, except that their debut album is coming up. What I do know about Canadian musicians and bands though, is that you can have great faith that each band member of any new band has likely played in multiple other projects, or has an enhanced seriousness or perhaps, dedication, to the craft of making art. I’m talking out of nowhere right now, but what I’m trying to say is that Uh Huh sounds seasoned. It sounds like a group of musicians that have met through their travels uniting for one singular vision: to make some of the grooviest, haziest music possible.

Uh Huh make dub reggae-influenced rock music with a heady sense of groove. Their first single, “Somewhere Beyond”, features a HEALTHY bass line that the rest of the song coils like smoke around, with shimmery, obscured guitars, tinny drum machines and processed vocals generate a fine mist that bathes the listener. Later on there are guitar and I’m thinking melodica solos. It’s fire.

The single I’d been wanting to post, “Babylon”, is the most overtly dub-inspired track thus far, again with a thick bassline and plush with trumpet, cloudy, dreamy vocals taking the listener on a humid journey through fronds on another planet. The newest track, “Redemption Pause”, is probably the most “rock” track they’ve put out so far, with a front-and-center guitar lick and steady non-drum machine percussion, as well as some psychedelic disco rhythm guitar and a slinky bass line. On the chorus, we hear the vocals get to the most urgent they’ve sounded across all tracks, as the entire track takes on a more driving feeling throughout. We’re not floating through a blissful mist in this case, we’re moving with a purpose. The track eventually opens up into a sick space-age keyboard solo, then leading to a closer that cuts out everything except the rhythm section. It’s a sick track, and gives me hope that this full album will rip my head off.

As someone who’s been listening to more and more dub reggae over the last few years, married with the fact that I’ve been hunting down more digital rips of weirdo private press groove stuff since the start of the pandemic, Uh Huh are hitting a sweet spot right now. Their self-titled debut album is out April 14 via Telephone Explosion Records. Anticipate me posting more stuff from TE soon too, cause they’ve got a huge year lined up.