NOBRO

Due out October 27 on Dine Alone Records, Montreal new-age punk outfit NOBRO’s debut full-length record Set Your Pussy Free is a caustic, celebratory, glorious party-punk firework show. It’s a record about the ecstatic pursuit of personal escape and liberation even as the walls are closing in, a 21st century power-punk analog of Born To Run that rages against modern life’s restrictive pressures and dares them to a game of chicken. If a hurricane is bearing down on NOBRO, they’re spitting into it, arm-in-arm, with middle fingers raised.

“As a musician or artist or even a woman, you have to throw off the weight of societal pressures and expectations, especially as you get older,” says vocalist and bassist McCaughey. “You have to take risks and chances.”

NOBRO is the space where the four members—McCaughey, Karolane Carbonneau (guitars), Lisandre Bourdage (keys/percussion), and Sarah Dion (drums)—get to take those risks and chances. It’s a place for cultivating power and happiness in a hard, mean world. That means the stakes are high. “Music is where we lift each other up,” says McCaughey. “I wish it was more like a fairy tale. We just want this fucking thing to work. But we’re all gonna succeed together, or we’re all gonna fail together.”

Produced by Dave Schiffman, Set Your Pussy Free is the culmination of years of work, hundreds of shows, and thousands of miles since the band’s creation in 2014. McCaughey, Carbonneau, Bourdage, and Dion have been building NOBRO into one of the most fierce and exciting bands in Canada. The new record rides the momentum from a string of blazing singles and EPs, capped with 2020’s Sick Hustle and 2022’s Live Your Truth Shred Some Gnar.

Listeners big and small have been taking note: Iggy Pop played their track “Bye Bye Baby” on his BBC Radio 6 show, and a fictional band in the Netflix series The Imperfects covered their songs. Aside from taking their raucous live shows to every dive bar across Montreal, the band has also toured across North America and Europe with PUP, Alexisonfire, Billy Talent, Fidlar, and The OBGMs. In May 2023, they opened for Blink-182 at Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena. And they’re just getting started.

Don’t say we didn’t warn you.