The Unicorns Are Back!

Back in 2004, the Unicorns released an EP called The Unicorns: 2014. The title track included references to their lives a decade from then -- "I'll be 32 / We'll be 13" -- and it proved to be their swan song. The band broke up that same year and the members went on to new projects.

In light of that EP, it's fitting that the trio have chosen 2014 as their year to finally reunite and play a few shows opening for Arcade Fire. Perhaps this is a coincidence, or maybe they've been planning it all along. In any case, it will come as welcome news to anyone who fondly remembers the group's sole album, Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone?, which was reissued digitally this week. (A CD version will follow on Aug. 26, with vinyl after that on Oct. 7.)

The album originally came out in 2003, during the initial wave of Canada's post-millennial indie rock boom. (For reference, it came out a year after Broken Social Scene's You Forgot It in People and a year before Arcade Fire's Funeral.)

Amidst the many great records released around that time, the Unicorns’ stood out as the freakiest of the bunch. Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone? is equal parts cute and ghoulish, with hook-filled tunes that can't exactly be classified as "pop" due to their complete rejection of verse-chorus formulas.

It's not so much lo-fi as it is gleefully sloppy, as principle band members Nick "Neil Diamonds" Thorburn and Alden "Ginger" Penner hack at their cheap-sounding instruments while interspersing songs with goofy asides and ramshackle noodling. It's as if they spent a couple of days fucking around in the studio with the tape rolling and never bothered to edit out the messy bits.

There's even one song with the potential to be a towering anthem, "Tuff Luff." But while their peers might have bolstered it with grandiose strings and choral harmonies, the Unicorns deliver the climactic riff with what sounds like a child's recorder before pausing briefly for a rap breakdown.

This is the group's classic formula: to stumble upon a brilliant melody seemingly by accident and then, not knowing quite what to do with it, press blindly ahead towards the next flash of genius.

As great as the album is, it's probably a good thing the band never released another full-length. It would have been difficult to capture this kind of slapdash magic again, and how is a band ever supposed to follow up an album where the last song is called "Ready to Die"? Even the album title hints at the group's imminent departure.

Oh, and speaking of the album title, I don't have a clue who has been cutting their hair all this time.