On the cusp of their debut album Shunkland being unleashed, RANGE sat down with the band at Bar St Zo, a haunt near their studio where they’ve sung many a karaoke song and crushed countless beers. Upon further prodding, Baylis says his go-to pick in the karaoke songbook is Sinatra; Hill swears by “Witchy Woman” by the Eagles; and Vaktor vows that one day, if he ever does karaoke, he’ll do “Teenage Dream.” 

If there’s one thing about Shunk, they’re unafraid to bounce from sound to sound, genre to genre – whether it’s on karaoke night or in their own tracklist. “Julia came up with the abbreviation ‘Shunk.’ We were laughing about the type of music we were making at the time — shoegaze post-punk,” says Baylis. 

The new album flips from more introspective, roomy shoegaze-leaning tracks like “Cloud” to punchy, high-energy fables like “Rat King.” Domingue’s opera-trained voice is able to shapeshift in a way that goes from being reminiscent of The Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde in one track to Dry Cleaning’s Florence Shaw in the next. Approaching it as a keyboardist, Baylis says he tried for synth-y guitar with this project, and Hill and Vaktor laugh about how Hill imagines them as a single percussionist mutant person. 

“I think that because we do spend a lot of time together, and we have similar senses of humour, we are really strong with the bits,” says Domingue. “Someone will bring a funny bit and we’ll build on that.”

The playfulness of their creative dynamic paired with a self-proclaimed common nerdiness gives Shunk a world-building edge. When I ask who the mayor of Shunkland would be, on a whim, they all immediately jump in with the same answer.

“He wasn’t elected, he’s an evil mayor,” Hill starts. “He’s composed of a bunch of smaller rats.”

“He has a really fat wallet of cash,” Baylis chimes in.

“He’s a rat named Stu,” Domingue says, referencing the story in the track ‘Rat King.’ “Then you have seductive snakes swallowing people, meadows, goblins…” 

The album is a living, breathing little world, informed by Domingue’s storytelling instincts from being an avid reader and poet. Baylis says he’s been fantasizing about a Dungeons and Dragons type-map as a poster to accompany the album, mapping out the different songs, places, characters. Hill says it all came together for her when they were filming visuals for the track “Goblin,” where she and Domingue are dripping in chainmail, wielding swords. 

This fantastical yet funny aura is what they’ve come to be recognized by, along with captivating performances – a signature energy they worried wouldn’t translate onto the album. To record their debut, everyone holed up at Baylis’ parents house while they were out of town for a weekend. Friend Josh Kaiser helped engineer the sound, threading cords and gear through the house. Hill remembers isolating one of the amps in the toilet.

“I love that image of our gear taking over the house like a giant octopus,” Vaktor says. 

They laugh about how they should have had a studio audience of their friends silently thrashing in the front to have captured the right energy for certain songs. Nevertheless, Shunk is ready to proudly put their first baby out into the world – the self-released record drops March 7th, with a release party accompanied by Born at Midnite on March 12th at La Sotterena. 

At this point, the sun has set and everyone’s faces are lit up by a pink glow coming from the direction of the slot machines. We’re talking about where the train out of Shunkland is going – Baylis wants to tour Europe next, Hill talks about going to Newfoundland to do a recording with whales.

“Didn’t we have that one joke where we were all living on a whale or something?” she asks. I say that they should hitch a ride to go tour Europe in the belly of the whale. “It’d be rent-free! Rent Free Willy,” Baylis says. “Via Whale!” Hill laughs.

Photo: Rose Cormier