Updates
Anyone who thought the Order of Canada would tame Art Bergmann was wrong. Deeply wrong. The singer-songwriter is as biting and anti-establishment as ever, demonstrated by his latest album, Late Stage Dementia Empire, and his unflinching opinions on his country’s failings. Jessica and George talk with the veteran of Canada’s music scene about residential schools, music, allyship, colonialism, and more.
And there’s lots of music to puncutate the conversation—who needs commas when you’ve got rock ‘n’ roll?
Purchase / Streaming Links:
Bandcamp: https://weewerk.bandcamp.com/album/late-stage-empire-dementia-by-art-bergmann
Other Digital Providers: https://orcd.co/empiredementia
Art Bergmann / Late Stage Empire Dementia / (weewerk)
“2014’s Songs For the Underclass EP and 2016’s The Apostate surprised enough, after two decades of Bergmann’s battles with drug/alcohol addiction, arthritis, and backaches. To get this fiery, deep solo album in 2021 feels miraculous. Following fantastic, 1979-1980 punk-era Vancouver band The Young Canadians and equally short stints in Los Popularos and Poisoned, he’s been a venerated Canuck solo artist, his social conscience retained; last year he even became a Member of the Order of Canada, his country’s second-highest honor. But to heck with laurels-resting, he’s the best kind of protest singer, sticking his (and our) maw in the midst the fascist leanings of modern ultra-conservative parties—especially ours. His older forebear in such unadulterated critique, The MC5’s Wayne Kramer, joins him on a roasting anti-religious-right takedown, “Christo-Fascists” (which musically alludes to The Stooges’ “Loose”). But it’s his own songs and playing on “Entropy,” “Amphetamine Alberta,” etc., that’s as ballsy as YC’s “No Exit” over 40 years ago. Highly involving.” – Jack Rabid / The Big Takeover
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 30, 2021
With the May 21 release date for Art Bergmann’s latest album Late Stage Empire Dementia approaching on (weewerk), fans can now pre-order the record on their favourite digital platform.
Pre-Sale link: https://orcd.co/empiredementia
In addition, today the Canadian music legend – and recent Order of Canada recipient – has released the album’s latest single “La Mort de L’Ancien Regime”.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 19, 2021
TORONTO ON – Art Bergmann’s music is meant for our current times. As we struggle to make sense of world events and the conflicts they have spawned, Art’s songwriting – as it has consistently done for the past four decades – cuts through the bullshit and hypocrisy with unflinching focus with the aim of finding some remnants of humanity that will pull us through.
It’s what used to be called “punk rock” when Art first established his reputation in Vancouver during the late 1970s, even though he’s never been a fan of that term. Yet, his status as one of Canadian punk’s foundational artists remains unquestionable, to the extent that in late 2020 he became the first of his peers to receive the Order of Canada, an honour bestowed upon the country’s most revered cultural figures.
Art’s latest album, Late Stage Empire Dementia, will be released May 21, 2021 – also Endangered Species Day – on Toronto-based (weewerk), and pointedly demonstrates why he deserved the OC. On eight songs that sonically run the gamut from the jagged, speaker-shredding rock he’s long been known for, to the experimental, acoustic-based soundscapes he introduced on his 2016 Polaris Music Prize long-listed album The Apostate, he takes aim at political corruption, the dual unchecked epidemics of guns and drugs, and the plight of refugees yearning for a better life.
“It’s humbling. And I want to know who did this to me,” Art Bergmann
CBC Article: Trailblazing women, rock singer, former chief among new Order of Canada appointments
CBC Article: Punk rock, heart transplant and Paralympic Games trailblazers among Albertans appointed to Order of Canada)
Press
What’s more important from a legacy standpoint: being the greatest band, or being the band that writes the greatest songs?
The question is an important one when you’re reflecting on the Young Canadians’ place in Vancouver’s fabled first-wave punk gold rush.
Let enough time pass, and all forms of music eventually get classified as folk. Vancouver punk-rock legend Art Bergmann gracing the 2018 Vancouver Folk Music Festival lineup isn’t surprising at all.
As punk rock icon and Airdrie resident Art Bergmann preps for a re-release of his eponymous third album later this year, the 63-year-old songwriter has much to reflect on – especially as the release coincides with the 25th wedding anniversary of Bergmann and his wife, Sherri.
Airdrie, Alberta, is a small city of about 43,000 in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. On its outskirts lives Art Bergmann, who enjoys a spectacular view of the Rockies, and the sweeping vistas of the Prairie. Fitting real estate for an enduring outsider, who for 40 years has taken a rebel stance and held to it.
Long lauded as one of the original punk influences of the ‘70s, and an equally mark-making figure in alternative rock in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, Bergmann’s current album The Apostate draws from all that and more, in crafting his best-yet collection of songs – and first full-length recording in 18 years. It says a lot about an artist’s persistence and integrity when his prime work is done at age 63; Bergmann is happy about that, as are critics, and the Polaris Music Prize large jury, who long-listed The Apostate in 2016.
Art Bergmann | May 20, 7 p.m. | Fox Cabaret | Tickets: $18 (advance), $20 (door); foxcabaret.com
There’s a morbid allure in the way Art Bergmann calls his latest album The Apostate “my epitaph.”
Twenty years after his last original studio offering, Juno-winning album What Fresh Hell Is This?, the Bergmann we find in recorded form on The Apostate is a much different animal than the sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll fuelled beast that helped define Canada’s punk counterculture in the late ’70s and ’80s.
The Vancouver-born former Young Canadian is 63, has been riddled with health issues that sidelined him for more than a decade, and now lives in Airdrie, Alberta, where Bergmann contends he is battling the “dark forces of beige.”