If you’ve had occasion to peruse the back catalogue of Good Charlotte, or most pop-punk acts for that matter, you might have picked up on a certain theme: they’ve given enough of their time to small-town shenanigans. Not Charlottetown’s Little Cities. The band has just released a new single called “Roots”, which celebrates their love of where they came from with what they describe as an “anti-pop punk song”.
Little Cities is on a bit of a kick. You might have guessed from their name that thematically they know what they’re about. For much of their music careers, they’ve been bound to Prince Edward Island, keeping their excursions across the bridge to a minimum. It seems that, for the most part, that’s just been fine with them.
“‘Roots’ is about growing up in a small town thinking the place you live in, and where you are, is what’s holding you back. Then getting to a place in your life when you finally realize that you just need the right people around you to be happy and appreciating your life and surroundings from a new angle,” says Little Cities’ Mathew Hannah.
Where the band is content with where they’re at, at least physically, they’re taking the opposite to change the direction they’re headed artistically.
“We laugh and joke about ‘Roots’, calling it the ‘anti-pop punk song’. which is suiting for us as a band as after we finished recording this EP we decided it is to for us to experiment with our sound for future releases!” says Hannah. “We find that in the ‘generic pop-punk’ songs it’s always ‘I hate my hometown’ and blaming other people for my problems etc., ‘Roots’ is more of a ‘I don’t know what I was complaining about before, I’ve actually got it pretty good here.’
“We are very proud and humbled to be from the smallest province in Canada and being a pop-rock band in a place where it is prominently folk music!”
Of course, with no one touring anywhere for the moment, it might be best if we all try to find a few more things to love about wherever we happen to be living.