Tijuana Taxi describes themselves as ‘noisy psychonauts from Toronto’. Written through years of disconnection and reconstruction, the 3-piece post-rock band has released their debut LP, ‘Mirages’. The band says it’s their most expansive and vulnerable work to date – a drifting, slow-burn meditation on lost time, blurred memory, and the dissolving edges of the self.
Apparently, the band’s vocalist is super secretive about the lyrics and has intentionally mixed them to be open to some interpretation. That’s an interesting idea. On the one hand, it’s a cool choice that creates a hidden, secret layer to these tracks – on the other hand, it’s always nice to know for sure what’s being sung so you can be fully immersed in the album’s artistic vision.
Anyway, I have actually been able to get my hands on some of the lyrics, which I will drop in here and there as we go along.
‘Wander/Mirages’ – A slow-burning intro with some lovely atmospherics opens the album. Dusty & expansive, it’s like wandering through an old sun-bleached western plain. It builds as the guitar, beat & bass arrive one by one – and it’s all as tight as a drum. A tearing, abrasive guitar ups the ante – the guitars have a vicious bite and a fantastic, crunchy texture. Then the vocal – far back in the mix – heavy reverb keeping it at bay & obscuring the lyrics. An agonizing scream. The slow, brooding march is wiped away in the final third as a groovy type of hell breaks loose. It’s an epic start.
“Caught inside and chased by desire
One big fallacy
One day you will know what’s coming
Heed my answer
Enough for you”
‘Dru’ – The bass has a nice, rolling groove, and the vocal follows a simple, effortlessly catchy melody that’s like a cross between Oasis and The Stone Roses. I loved the breakdown, which swept away the distortion and reverb that cover the rest of the track. The huge, wailing finish made me feel like I had been dropped onto some strange, inhospitable alien planet. Brutal.
“Can you see
How much it means
To be enchanted
So serene
So you better leave”
‘Slip Out’ – A meditative track where melody seems to take a back seat. It’s a kind of psychedelic trip that bombards you with a hazy groove until you reach a kind of altered state, and you lose track of time and what is real. That’s what happened to me anyway!
“Fading deep
Foggy sound
In the deep
Fall asleep”
‘Sonder’ – The warm guitars & ethereal vocals that start this track only emphasise the power that is to come. Those crushing guitars and walls of distortion soon return, and there’s a grungy, throwback, Smashing Pumpkins-type feel to this that I really enjoyed. The vocals float and shimmer – there’s not a hope of understanding those lyrics here! At times, words bleed together to such an extent that they feel like synth pads – part of the ethereal atmospherics.
‘Mystified’ – I thought this one was going to take an even darker turn, with a dissonant, ear-piercing distortion at the start that feels quite menacing. When it suddenly clears, the clarity is a welcome contrast. Soon, we are plunged back into the depths of doom and fear with a strong rhythmic pulse and an opaque veil of reverb. By the end, the track actually feels lighter than what’s gone before.
‘Ostinato 1’ – A short instrumental interlude that’s over in about 90 seconds – it’s a relentless, devastating, driving riff that’s delivered with terrifying precision. I would love to see this expanded into a full song. However, like standing in the core of a nuclear reactor, this intensity would be hard to take for more than 90 seconds! The tiny pauses are a wonderful touch, and the fade out gives it a perversely gentle outro.
‘Muck’ – The intro has some beautifully tactile acoustic guitars, and a ghostly vocal, distorted & reverbed just enough to keep those lyrics hidden behind the curtain (not completely though – see below!). I felt a wonderful tension that was finally released with explosive guitars and crashing, tumbling drums. Simple chords are used to devastating effect, and the vocal becomes a tortured scream as the track careers into the abyss. One of my favourites for sure.
“Stuck in between
The sap in the air
Sweet toppled trees
Speak easy
Buried beneath
Dead birds at our feet”
‘Looking At Air’ – The quiet intro had me on the back foot – scared at what might come. The bass is like a thick rope, holding everything together as the drums whip and crack. It’s another meditative riff, an almost hypnotic groove with some eerie dissonance before the inevitable crushing avalanche hits us with full force, before gently returning us to earth.
‘Sirens’ – Wasting no time, an aggressively simple (yet addictive) melody repeats and repeats as the intensity of the track is focused like sunlight through a magnifying glass. The breakdown and resurgent drop three-quarters of the way through is one of the most intense moments on the entire album. Like the screams of tortured ghosts. Magnificently anxiety-inducing.
‘Erasure (January)’ – After a brief sonic interlude that feels like the soundtrack to one of my nightmares (‘Ostinato 2’), we come to the final (and the longest) track of ‘Mirages’. At first, there is a chance to recover & reflect. Cavernous vocals and plucked guitar melodies come and go between brief waves of distortion. Sounds expand and expand until they seem to break free, and things reset for a while. Saving the best till last, new melodies appear – glimpses of another world perhaps – before it’s all ripped away and an Earth-shattering riff takes over in one final, colossal flourish.
Like a ghostly figure emerging from the desert haze, ‘Mirages’ alternates between hard and soft with mesmerizing ease.
The band says ‘Mirages’ is about the fear of success, the fear of growing up, and the general anxiety of being so lost in the past that it’s difficult to live in the present.
Written over the course of their late-20s and during a global pandemic, there’s an unsurprising sense of doom – a feeling of longing having had some of those prime years stolen.
‘Mirages’ feels like a rupture in reality itself – shimmering, elusive glimpses at a parallel dimension where malevolent forces lie buried beneath churning waves of distortion. It’s a menacing, disturbing place – but there are oases of hope and beauty to be discovered inside.
Written by Grubby
