by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

A couple of weeks ago, early on the Sunday of Osheaga’s day two, I passed a wet box of garage-sale leftovers in someone’s driveway. Inside was, among other useless crap, a filthy old kiddie keyboard with star-shaped buttons and a happy-lion graphic. I debated snatching it and offering it in tribute to Holy Fuck.

The Toronto quartet were playing that night (at the same time as the Flaming Lips—kudos to HF for overstaying their set time and serving a three-song sonic dessert to the blissfully Lipped-out). Then again, the keyboard was dirty, possibly busted beyond hope and besides, between them, the band’s Brian Borcherdt and Graham Walsh have an entire arsenal of such items. On stage, each oversees a tabletop littered with noisemakers scrounged from thrift shops, eBay and maybe a few wet boxes in driveways. Bass ace Kevin Lynn, of King Cobb Steelie fame, and whoever’s manning the drum kit lay down the tough, sinuous rhythms while Borcherdt and Walsh give wedgies to the ghosts in their machines. It’s a magnificent thing to witness, better yet to bust a move to.

Turns out I should’ve brought that keyboard, but Borcherdt, wrestling a hangover to chat over the phone from Toronto, a week and change later, is happy enough that the matter comes up.

“That was one of the things we’ve been talking about since the beginning,” he says, “how we wanted to somehow let it be known that if people brought us keyboards and asked us to play them, we’d play them right then and there on stage. Instead of doing requests, we’d have people just bring keyboards. We haven’t had any luck getting the word out, but we’d love that.

“The best thing is if they have a little headphone jack, which makes it easy because we can run it right into everything. Otherwise, we could probably take a guitar pickup or something and stick it on the speaker.”

Not that Borcherdt and Walsh have slacked in their own foraging for tech to resurrect. “We’re still searching every day. I’ve been finding tons of ’em. I have a little turntable that I found at Radio Shack. It’s a little radio, like four inches by four inches, a mini-turntable that’s actually a radio. When you turn the record, it changes the dial on the radio. I took the little elastic band out so there’s no resistance, so that the record turns really quickly. You just scratch it, but you’re going through radio stations. It looks stupid! I wanted to buy two of ’em and get a mini-mixer, and like, scratch between Celine Dion and shortwave static or something.

“I also found a Blue’s Clues thing that does great samples. You can do a really long recording and then just trigger it back. It sounds all munched up—I think the batteries are dying, but I’m afraid to replace them.”

Think about it. An equivalently ridiculous find of your own, dear reader, might wind up somewhere in the din on Holy Fuck’s next record—which, given the time elapsed since their super-fun, self-titled debut of last year popped up, is just about due.

“I think all the recording’s done,” says Borcherdt, “we just have to sit down, listen to it and find the gold, because we have hours of material to work with. The problem is, we give ourselves a lot of homework.”

With Shout Out Out Out Out and Land of Talk at la Tulipe on Thursday, Sept. 21, 9 p.m., $12

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