THE BRAINS
Sunday May 6,
CASBAH
306 Main St. W.
905.521.4441
myspace.com/thebrains
It isn’t uncommon for the average coffee–swilling, acoustic
guitar–strumming, long haired artist type folkie to confess that
much of his or her lyrical content is intensely personal but, for
some reason, such a sentiment seems out of place coming from
Rene “El Brain” Garcia. The singer and guitarist of Montreal’s
rockabilly psychos The Brains makes no mistake, however, that
the themes he addresses in his lyrics are immensely personal and
outline the events that both shaped his life prior to forming the
band and continue to chronicle his experiences. There are real
skeletons in Garcia’s closet and truly awful experiences in the
Chile-born, Montreal–raised singer’s life that he continues to
wrestle with now into adulthood. In short, these songs are
Garcia’s life — even if they are a bit allegorical.
“I really want to say that I’m really happy about this album,”
begins Garcia on the phone from his home in Montreal. “I put my
heart into it and it might be like a horror movie, but it’s all true.
All the songs are based on real things — like when I wrote the
lyrics to “Six Feet Under”, it was about how I was feeling when I
couldn’t see my daughter. My daughter’s about a year and six
months old and I wasn’t allowed to see her; I felt like I was dead
and buried for the month that her mother wouldn’t let me see
her. Having to go to court over the whole thing was horrible and it
felt like I was buried and I wrote about it.
“The song “She My Devil” is for some real experiences that
I’ve had with my current girlfriend – walking past graveyards and
things.” Finally, Garcia starts to tell the real horror stories:
“I came to Canada when I was four years old from Chile. We came
here because of a war that was happening there and we were
