Growing up on the east coast, Eric’s Trip (1990 – 1996) is a bit of an institution. Julie Doiron (bass, guitar, vocals) was one of the original members of this Moncton based, Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr., influenced band. I remember seeing quite a few Eric’s Trip t-shirts when I was in high school but remained unaware of their east coast/Canadian cult status at the time. Yah, the cool kids definitely knew about Eric’s Trip. I did not. They also gained some serious points for being the first Canadian band signed to Sub Pop in the early 90’s.
Eric’s Trip is Julie Doirons’ backing band on “Woke Myself Up”. After my first listen I classified this CD as a pretty good wood, wires and whisky CD with a slightly lo-fi rock feel, especially on the track Don’t Wannabe/Liked By You. The rest of the CD is pretty standard singer songwriter tracks, but lyrically the songs are different. I feel like they were written by a 30 year old woman who is still attending high school. She has all the typical high school problems with love and friends, but she faces each of them with a ‘big deal, I’m still awesome’ attitude because she has experience under her belt.
One of the reasons I picked this up was because of her Polaris Music Prize nomination earlier this year. I don’t hear anything ground breaking on this CD that would have won her this prize, but it is still worth a listen.
I also picked it up because Julie lives in Sackville, NB. For those who don’t know, Sackville is the trucker hat a la 2001 of New Brunswick. It’s a cool spot. Sackville is a very important place in New Brunswick because to most people, the letters NB simply represent the province you need to drive through to get to Halifax (or PEI).