band of the month

What it sounds like at the end.

Paro is a word for a feeling. The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows assigns words to feelings that do not have them yet. Paro is the sense that everything you do is sort of fundamentally wrong, because you are the one doing it. That everyone else sees an obvious way forward. That there is a glass ceiling above you they do not notice.

Simon picked it for the band. He says he feels it constantly. He does not trust himself to make pancakes without reading the instructions.

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Simon and Braeden have been in the same orbit since the third grade. They started playing music together in ninth. Braeden's older sister taught Simon guitar and played in the early version of the band. They met Donovan at MacEwan in their first year there. For a stretch they were a three-piece called Fairpoint. First show, November 2023, at Rockin' for Dollars.

When Donovan came in, the name changed. The first proper show as Paro! was at the Leaf Bar and Grill, a dive bar on the north side. Sawyer joined around 2024. Ethan stepped in this year for the run of shows supporting their last couple of EPs.

That is most of the lineage. The rest is who shows up where, and when.

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The sound is harder to put a single word to. Simon's first musical revolution was Radiohead. Braeden is a jazz player. The UK Windmill scene runs through both of them: black midi, Fontaines D.C., and Black Country, New Road. Some math rock. Some shoegaze. Some post-rock. Simon shrugs at the genre question. It is all just words.

What you hear is the band interpreting what Simon brought in. He writes parts in strange alternate tunings without analyzing them. The rest of them are jazz freaks, in his words, and they figure out what to do with it. Songs that sound nothing alike across the catalogue.

Rick and Sadie is the one Simon calls their magnum opus, built from a single opening progression up. 6:28 came together in a practice room at MacEwan, the second half written spontaneously in an afternoon Simon still remembers. Cold Feet stands out to Sawyer from the era when he joined. He remembers it as the song that made him realize how strong Simon's writing was.

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The first one they ever recorded was Lovely Melody. Simon and Braeden made it on GarageBand on Braeden's iPhone, before either of them was in music school. Christmas lights in the basement to get the vibe right. Samples from an old Gulliver's Travels movie. It still is not out. Simon has been thinking about putting it out with a batch of other early ones.

He says it still gets him emotional. He calls it pure progress.

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Progress is a word that does real work in how Simon talks about music now. After music school, after starting to call it a livelihood, you have to feel something pushing you. Some indescribable thing pulling you into a song. Otherwise it becomes work.

Sawyer puts it more sharply: it becomes dutiful.

The other side, Simon says, is the trap of only doing what you want. He admits he has leaned that way. He plays in the ways that make sense to him, and then notices he has not pushed himself the way he might have. Neither flow nor discipline alone gets you there.

Braeden says sometimes you do not need either. At the core it is just a fun thing you can do.

Sawyer goes further. Music is something humans do. The artist, the songwriter, the professional are recent categories. The thing underneath them is older.

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The session at Resonate is happening at a particular moment.

They play in Calgary tomorrow. After that, Simon moves to Montreal at the end of the summer. There are no plans beyond that. A small list of bands they would come back to play with. Otherwise that is it.

Simon and Braeden have talked about keeping things going distantly. Maybe pop-up shows when he is back. The band can't really be Paro! without the two of them. Simon has been toying with a solo project for Montreal, called Nolan Flesh. He says we will hear it eventually. It has to come out somehow.

What you hear in this session is what Paro! sounds like at the end. A band working through how to keep doing this. One more time, in this room, with these people.