SNST
SNST is a newly-formed outfit featuring Chris Broach of BRAID & The Firebird Band and Steve Znavor of The Firebird Band. Produced, recorded, and mixed by Will Yip (Tigers Jaw, Nothing, Circa Survive, Pity Sex), SNST’s first LP Turn Out The Lights represents a new beginning for both Broach and Znavor – a fresh body of work that seamlessly blends electronic and organic instrumentation into a unique amalgam of music that's as apt to make you dance as it is to make you think.
Chris Broach is a lifelong musician in the truest sense. He started as a member of the influential indie act Braid as a teenager and for the past two decades he's released under the name The Firebird Band. In 2015 Broach and his longtime collaborator Steve Znavor launched a successful Kickstarter campaign, raising money for a new album for The Firebird Band – but Broach quickly realized that these songs demanded a new moniker. “The Firebird Band was just my thing for so long and SNST is really what Steve and I created together,” Broach explains. “It's a true collaboration in that sense.”
The duo wrote the songs that would become Turn Out The Lights at each other's respective residences in Chicago and Los Angeles. From the club-worthy, synth-driven groove of “Get Over Yourself” to the stripped-down perfection of “'76 – '78” and angular post-rock feel of “Running From The Girl,” Turn Out The Lights is an album that's difficult to categorize because it doesn't have an allegiance to any one genre – and its strengths lie in the liberating nature of that freedom. “Steve and I both approached this recording in terms of what's best for the song,” Broach explains. “We both have a similar aesthetic but we're coming from different places musically and I think that allows us to combine all of those ideas into something cohesive.”
Turn Out The Lights is as infectious as it is intellectual – and the duo tackle topics ranging from deeply personal to passionately political within the course of the album. “I felt like I was a little more free with what I wanted to sing about on this album,” Broach explains. And songs like “National Monument” are evidence of that. “That song is about and what was happening in the United States pre-election and I felt like it was important to write about it because it was so upsetting to me. A lot of these songs are just me experimenting with finding a different voice that I haven't expressed in the past.” Yip was integral to helping to finding that voice as the vocals were written and recorded with him over a twelve-day period.
Broach may have two decades of experience as a professional and touring musician, but you wouldn't guess that judging by the excitement that’s palpable when speaks about SNST. “What I love about this band is that Steve and I are able to do whatever we want without trying to hold ourselves to someone else’s idea of what we ought to be doing. There's no limit to what we can do with this band and that makes it an important piece of my life,” he summarizes. “As an artist you don't often get a chance to express yourself in this way – and I'm happy that this project came together the way it did.”
