The TVees

Vancouver garage trio the TVees prove to be something special on their excellent self-titled debut. Throughout the album's nine songs, the band demonstrate a keen knack for timeless garage jams via vintage distortion, a shuffling rhythm section and front-man Kyle McQueen's impossibly soulful singing. From straight-up rockers like "Twist My Arm" and closer "The Bright Side" through brief departures like the melodic bridge on "She's The One," the band demonstrate a ton of ideas within their very specific genre. Sure, this could fit on a mixtape with modern acts like the Black Lips or the Strange Boys but on their debut full-length, the TVees show a timeless purity that puts them more on par with the Sonics and the Kinks. (Trendsetter)
By Josiah Hughes, EXCLAIM! MAGAZINE - http://exclaim.ca

...." The TVees are undoubtedly one of the best bands that our (vancouver) garage scene has to offer and they continue to prove it everytime they play. They slayed at the Media Club that Saturday early evening. Kyle McQueen played the shit out of his guitar, while singing fast, sexy 60's sounding songs like "MY BABY"."
....."While I think Kyle is shy, Chris "ROUSO" Rousseau, always the best dressed bass player in Vancouver, is quite a formidable presence, daring one and all to dance and seemingly uncaring to the fact that he was opening an early show. He provided harmonies and backups for the majority of the songs, but switched to lead on occasion, most notable "HURRICANE" (a homage to being in love with "crazy" ladies) Kyle provided achingly haunting backups here that sounded like a lonely call to the night for those crazy girls to come running. It's one of my favorites off their full length, which is getting airplay internationally.
Hello Vancouver, this is one of your best bands, and the CD is a must have for your house parties!"
-TANYA HARDING, editor, SKINNY MAGAZINE - THE SKINNY MAGAZINE-vancouver

MUSIC WASTE 2008:
The B-Lines / Dead Ghosts / Get Well Bomb / The TVees
Pub 340 - June 5th, 2008
by Dave Bertrand

For the first time in many moons, I really made the effort to make it out on time for the opening band, and man! What a treat! I believe a lifestyle shift is in order. As a young teenaged music-nut, I would risk life and limb to make damn sure I didn't miss a precious second of any gig. My oh my, how I would roll into town from the 'burbs, hopped-up on sheer stokes. But you get old. And jaded. You get used to the city and all that magic so close to your fingertips...
But then sir, lemme tell you 'bout The TVees. Whoa! Three-piece, the usual guitar-drum-bass, rhythm section looking like twinsies (found out later that they're brothers!), both big, bald, and bespectacled. Everyone is dressed-up – though not silly, or costumed, or trendy, or fancy-shmancy – just SHARP. Suddenly they burst into the boogie-ing-est groove I've heard in this lifetime. I'm hooked in half a second. Where did this band come from? Where have you hid? They play good ol' rocknroll with the chops of 20-year vets, but with the charm of horny teens in a church basement. They tackle Chuck Berry's “I Want to Be Your Driver',” and not only make it their own, but blow the lid off five decades of rock “progress” in their midst. God, what a party for my ears. I have a celebratory drink. I wish it would never end, but it does, and herein lies the problem: nobody else tonight holds a chance in hell of topping the TVees...
Particularly the follow-up, Get Well Bomb. I don't like being mean to local bands, but I really don't think this band was either trying very hard, or prepared for the rigors of live performance. For one thing: tune your goddamn instruments, please. Unless you're going for something avant-garde and extremely explosive punk/noisy, it just doesn't work to be tuneless (and even then, only very, very rarely, and you need to be more schooled and talented at audio manipulation than you think, lazybones). And please learn to sing – or, failing that – learn to scream. And what was the drummer doing??? I'm sorry; I really think this band needs to practice. Yet the strangest thing was that GWB pulled maybe quadruple the crowd that my beloved TVees did. Why?? I'm hoping it's 'cause the Pub 340 crowd had physically quadrupled in size while I was buying beer, on this here first eve of Music Waste...
Gawd, Pub 340 is so weird without anyone in the “smoking” room, isn't it? Fuck City of Vancouver. Fuck City of Vancouver. Draconian Anti-Smoking Laws are a testing ground for our ability to accept (and energetically support!) the dissolution of our civil liberties. For real!!! But, moving on:
Dead Ghosts are plenty fun, sorta. Everyone loves them, they're new darlings of a sort. Front-and-centre with the monster shades and the yelps (former bassist for Green Hour Band...don't know his name) is sure one charismatic dude. Big big sloppy garage-revival rock. I heard a couple Black Lips here and there. I thought they were fun, though their songcraft wasn't particularly memorable. The crowd ate it up but I gotta admit the big sticking point – I would've dug 'em three times as much had I not already seen The TVees an hour ago, wiping the floor with that whole wide weird world of Vancouver record-collecting analog-revivalist garagiers. Sorry!
The B-Lines feature a couple dudes from Fun 100. Admittedly, I never really investigated the first band, but word is it's quite the same deal. Messy, punk-screamy, fun pop. It's all a big blur, but no one really minds. The frontman is so funny and watchable that it makes up for a lack of coherency. I wish I could remember all his jokes. I was supposed to write them down, but the Pilsner was slowing my work ethic. But I tell ya, friends, top-notch between-song banter goes a long way! I like anyone who's lanky and awkward and stomps back and forth with no sense of purpose or rhythm, spouting deliriously clever asides, just pacing the stage like he's thinking really hard and gonna explode. It reminds me of this polar bear I once saw at the San Diego Zoo, who circled around and around for at least 20 minutes (but maybe more), obviously stricken with terrible cabin-fever and finally, totally, losing his poor imprisoned polar bear mind. For the B-Lines' brand of ADD/fun/punk, this approach works wonders.
So I left, feeling really good about Music Waste – I should interject that the Music Waste folk commissioned absolutely beautiful hard black, silver-printed festival passes this year, real collectible works of art – yet I felt absolutely terrified at the possibility of all the amazing music I've missed through the years from all those skipped opening bands. Punctuality has its rewards. I also got to thinking that there was a time when people practiced for years to master their craft long before they ever even dared to call themselves a musician and hop up on stage... and how I really wish that particular aspect of The TVees was a more common aspect of this still-burgeoning 60's-throwback clique...
Nonetheless, good show. Peace!
- The Skinny Magazine

March 22nd @ The Royal Unicorn

"......The TVees were the new kids on the tonight's block, and two things became immedialty apparent.: their bassist looks exactly like Alexei Sayle (!!!??) and their singer probably has the best set of pipes in town today. By this point, though, the PA was sounding more like your local ham-radio operator picking up Red Foxx's ghost and anything said between numbers was up for interpretation. Despite some of their material straying into mod-by-numbers territory (??!!!), the TVees delivered a solid set of energetic beat music, which overcame much of the technical limitations" - DISCORDER Magazine

BY: Dave Bertrand

Sweet mercy! Grabba-grabba, hula-hoop, shake-shimmy-shake, luvva-luvva that rocknroll and Oh Yes, I'm a-gonna shout it! With a name like The TVees, one must expect a throwback number, and Sir, you will get it. But man! This is so fun and sugary and tight and superb...! It's a 3-song EP, it lasts 7 minutes. In my car stereo I did it 3 time straight, which took 20 minutes. This trio captures the spark and young-man rebellion and go-go dancing of the good mid-60's (and mid-50's) without sounding like they're trying to, which is a rare and nigh-impossible feat. Track three, "Stranded," opens with the sickest of beats (boom-GAH boom- GAH boom-GAH boo--GAAAH!!), that special kinda rhythm - like the Bo Diddley shuffle or the Muddy Waters stomp - which no one plays anymore, but which stimulates impromptu pelvic-thrusts in all young nubiles and make teenagers bang. Imagine the Kinks, Chuck Berry, and the Sonics dressed in their spiffiest...and finger-banging a school bus. My only regrets are that said beat does not go on forever, and the disc is under seven minutes. Also, the cheap paper disc-label went all weird and bubbly when left in my automobile overnight. For me, The TVees are the "oogie" in shmoogieboogiewoogie (and the "unk" in crunkafunkalunk).
- The Skinny Magazine

"...The TVees ordered us all to get up and dance and damn did we ever! This was the first time I'd seen The TVees and they put on a wicked set of fast, catchy, Costello-esque rock. They've only been together for less than six months so catch them now before they make it big in Japan." - Mongrel