“
I reserve the right to
be disgusted by life,
I reserve the right
to be in love with
everything in sight.
”
BY Matt J. Simmons
longer acceptable status quo.
Ought grew out of the seething mass of discontent
that has gripped Montréal for the past few years. The four
members each ended up in the city for university, and as
the student protests erupted around them, they started
playing music together.
“I grew up in Bergen County, New Jersey, in a
relatively small town, albeit in the most densely populated
county in the most densely populated state.” Each of the
four members—Tim Beeler (vocals/guitar), Tim Keen
(drums), Ben Stidworthy (bass), and May—moved to
Montréal at various times to study. The two Tims and
May rented an apartment together. “We could jam in that
apartment, and so that’s when the three of us really started
playing music together. Ben, who grew up in both the UK
and Portland, Oregon, came into our lives not long after
Tim Keen moved here, and joined us on the bass a few
times jamming before we decided to do some recording
and play our first show (in said apartment).” None of the
band members are from Montréal but somehow their
sound is distinctly representative of the city.You are what
you eat? Scratch that, you sound like where you live.
Ought’s biggest tune—or at least the one being
picked up by most journalists—is a hauntingly beautiful
tune about, as Beeler sings, our limitations. “Is there
something you’re trying to express here? Is there a weight
that you’re trying to unload here? But you just can’t get
it, you can’t get it off now. And there it comes again, and
I give in again.” This is intellectual music: it’s poetic and
disturbing, and yet it’s beautiful in the same way that an
artist might find beauty in the savage scene of a carcass left
on a highway. “I think the unifying factor(s) to this record
6
[sic] spring 2014.indd 7
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