Hoping For The Worst

TO MAKE IT as a rock band in New York these days, it can seem like you need to have a gimmick; you’re either transgender Siamese twins from the North Pole or boat-shoe-wearing prepsters who use “summer” as a verb— something, anything, to get people to notice. Worst Case Ontario is neither, and that’s OK.

“We’re not twee or precious; I like that stuff, but it’s not who we are. We don’t have ukuleles and mandolins,” says guitarist John MacDonald. “We don’t have the elaborate costumes,” adds lead singer Sam Weisberg, clad in loose-fitting jeans and New Balance sneakers.

Weisberg looks like a slimmer, better-groomed Seth Rogen; someone you could idle away the afternoon with watching movies you’ve already seen 10 times. MacDonald is the more stylish of the two; clad in jeans and a black hoodie, he looks more the part of a rocker.

The two met at—shocker!—Oberlin College, where they lived in the same dorm. They never had a full-fledged band, but occasionally worked on side projects together. Weisberg had a solo project called Sam the Jew and His Fostex 4 Track that he says could be seen as the origin of Worst Case Ontario. “It was really shitty, but led to some of the songs on the album once we fleshed them out,” he says.

Shortly after MacDonald moved to New York for grad school in 2006, he joined a band Sam had already formed, Kinopalatsi. Ironically, his first show was the band’s last before switching its name to Worst Case Ontario, an obscure phrase from Canadian mockumentary show Trailer Park Boys. Since then, the band has gone through a number of members— some left, some were kicked out—before reaching the current lineup.

Bassist Andy Wellington is an old friend from Oberlin, and drummer Tim Perzan was found on Craigslist. “He blew into the audition with a 40-oz. and we knew it was going to happen,” says Weisberg.

While MacDonald and Weisberg work in journalism as a music editor and financial reporter, respectively, Perzan is an interior painter for exotic homes. “The first conversation I had with him was while he was painting Ellen Barkin’s house,” says Weisberg. “He was like, ‘Yeah, I’m in Ellen Barkin’s house, everyone says she’s a cunt but I dig her!’”

Together they play sloppy, drunken rock with unpolished but placating vocals, reminiscent of The Replacements, which the band cites, along with My Bloody Valentine and Guided by Voices, as a big influence. And a Worst Case Ontario song certainly wouldn’t sound out of place on ’90s college radio. “Our unreleased stuff sounds like moodier, longer British rock,” says MacDonald, “but we don’t have the fey British vocals.”

There’s no grandstanding—the band has instruments and is just doing what comes naturally. The guys are not here to craft complicated songs or wow you with groundbreaking, poetic lyrics.

“Our lyrics lately are mostly tongue in cheek,” says Weisberg, who splits songwriting duties with his bandmates. The band has songs about debt, songs about girlfriends, ex-girlfriends and the usual late-twenties malaise. It doesn’t have love songs, though. “More like you get the girl, but she doesn’t do it for you,” says Weisberg. “Or being in love but bored anyway,” adds MacDonald.

The poppiest, most radio-friendly song, “Eugene Levy Unbilled,” is an ode to the comedic actor forced to earn a living starring in films like American Pie 9 while shining brilliantly in Christopher Guest movies. “We were watching Serendipity, one of those shitty romantic comedies about fate starring John Cusack,” says Weisberg. “Eugene Levy comes in for a bit part and saves it, but he never gets any credit.”

Which the band can relate to. “There’s so much money you have to spend out of pocket,” says Weisberg about being an unsigned act in New York. “Sometime I think of moving somewhere smaller and starting a scene, just being a house band at one of the places everyone goes to, somewhere like Columbus with a good local scene,” he says. “There are so many places to play in New York, but so many other bands to see.”

As for the future, the guys of Worst Case Ontario harbor no illusions of being rock stars. “We just love touring,” says Weisberg. And sure, the band would love a record deal, if for no other reason than personal validation, says MacDonald. Weisberg pipes in, “Yeah, and the label pays for your gas.”

>> [WORST CASE ONTARIO] July 9, [Bruar Falls](http://bruarfalls.com/), 245 Grand St. (betw. Driggs Ave. & Roebling St.), Brooklyn, 347-529-6610; 8, Free.