Maybe you’re in some bar with your friends and you need to go to the bathroom so you get up and you walk past this shelf where someone left a white cassette taped to a postcard. Now you, being the curious type, have a choice to make. If you choose it, then that discovery in all of its WTF-ness is yours now. And that sort of thing doesn’t happen everyday. 

Or two of your friends mention they were part of a studio audience for a band’s show but it wasn’t in a bar, it’s on YouTube. You’ve got fifteen minutes while dinner’s on the stove so you track it down and check it out. While finding it, you might have scrolled past a lot of great people in your feed promoting their various ventures. This one, though, you did the work to find. You had just heard good things. 

You consented. You chose. I was thinking a lot about that when I came up with some of these ideas I’ve been trying out for the new music I’ve decided to call Station 4. 

If you’ve found a Station 4 cassette card in a bar or cafe and chosen it, thank you. If you got wind of Station 4 somehow, maybe watched a “Times Five” episode and found your own way here, I love it. You said yes to something weird and new from someone trying hard to find new ways to reach you. And maybe you had to do a little bit extra to sniff out what Station 4 was, but now it’s yours, and I hope it has a chance to open itself up for you and do its thing. 

Five songs make up the debut EP. Between them in a hazy way, they stretch over experiences of mine that have been at times elating, numbing, soothing, maddening, and inspiring. Relationships ending in weird stalemates and new exciting ones starting up; my previous band finally making its own kind of triumph before cracking apart at the seams; the winking shrug of new things learned opening up problems you had no idea could exist. 

The EP was recorded in the winter of 2016-17 with Derek Downham producing and Tim Foy engineering at The Nelson Room in Toronto. Derek played tons of instruments, I did guitars and sang, and we were helped out on vocals by Gillian Story and Sarafina Di Felice. Immediately I recognized and loved the way some of my listening obsessions emerged distinctly, but also hung together as something new: the chilly Big Star-style intensity of “It’s Nice,” mixed with the shoegazey doo-wop of “Try Me” and “Yesterday’s Makeup” for example. I was having visions of the Shangri-Las and Teenage Fanclub on some kind of time-traveling double bill. We knew in the studio something uncommon was going on. 

I’m still so into these songs, and of course I want to see them out in the world, socializing and making friends. (Getting invited to parties?) In this day and age there are a lot of ways to get them to reach a lot of people. But getting a page view isn’t the same to me as winning a new fan, which means so much more. Fans aren’t just reached, they’re affected. So when I thought hard about the music that’s affected me when I’ve needed it most, it was the music that I went and looked for. And the music I chose to let in. 

So take it if you want. It’s free, it’s yours, you’re the best. Thanks. 

— Rob Webster