Yes We Mystic

A five-piece group from Winnipeg, Yes We Mystic grabs ideas and aesthetics from all over the map and ventures to morph them into something entirely different. They take their favorite bits of folk, rock, and R&B, hurl strings and mandolins together with synthesizers, pedals, and samples, and come up with music that can mellow and groove but climb in an instant to towering, frenzied heights. Throwing opposites together creates a space. Yes We Mystic prides itself in living in these spaces. Yes We Mystic was born of necessity. After the harsh breakup of their high school band, front men Adam Fuhr and Keegan Steele picked up and started again; stole a name off a bus bench and began writing folk songs. These songs, born in bedrooms and basements, eventually became 2013’s Floods and Fires, an EP hailed by BeatRoute as “an album for any situation”. Cramming a full band into Adam’s parents van, they played those songs for two years at festivals and venues across Canada including performances at NXNE, M for Montreal, and Breakout West, sharing the stage with Dan Mangan. But then, as it always does, came change. The long time members packed it in and moved away. Tastes shifted. New members brought new ideas and new strengths. From this sprung stranger and bolder music; music that has captured audiences across the country while slowly overtaking the folk of Floods and Fires in live sets; music that brought one Toronto audience member, in between songs on a sweaty November evening, to loudly proclaim “This is the best band I’ve ever heard to come out of Winnipeg. Period”. Now comes the Vestige 7”. In Vestige, Fuhr and Steele, rounded out by Jodi Plenert, Jordon Ottenson, and Solana Johannson begin to reveal what they have long been planning; music with the same heart, but with a different face. By approaching genre as a tool rather than a barrier, a wider swath of sounds is available to convey the same style and emotion that they have valued since those bedroom songs. If Wood Wheel pushes the sonic boundaries that the band set up with Floods and Fires, then The Contest of Strength demolishes them. Currently Yes We Mystic are writing songs for their full length debut in a dank room above a pizza restaurant. That record will be produced by Jace Lasek (Besnard Lakes, Patrick Watson, Wolf Parade) in June and released in 2016.