Toronto Indie Rockers The Lightning Struck Share Debut Album, bolt from the blue
Indie rock act The Lightning Struck‘s sound didn’t happen by accident. In 2000, frontman Loren Davie moved to New York City after listening to The Velvet Underground and Nico one too many times. Over two decades of making music there later, Loren returned to his hometown of Toronto and brought the city’s sound with him. He formed The Lightning Struck with old friends Michael Milanetti and Blitz, and the trio was soon joined by Aussie ex-pat drummer Liam Baidon.
Debut full-length, bolt from the blue, is a straightforward rock release that treads a fine line between groove and noise – two genres that serve as essential to the band’s identity. While this could arguably be dubbed a pandemic album, it’s more of a recovery album. There is a struggle to come to terms with our current world both as a society and on a personal level. bolt from the blue explores our anxieties and negotiation with the world as we find it now.
Groovy focus track, “Rock n Roll Ending,” looks at the 21st-century situation of “burnout” – read as systemic exploitation – and rejects it entirely.
“Don’t want a culture where we eat our young,” Loren protests. “Caught in a web of scams before we’ve begun.”
Listen to bolt from the blue below and learn more about The Lightning Struck via our Five Questions With segment.
Care to introduce yourself to our readers?
We’re the Lightning Struck, an indie rock band from Toronto. We are about a year old as a band now, although most of our members go way back with each other. The band was founded by Loren Davie (lead vocals, guitar), Michael Milanetti (guitar, backups vocals), and Blitz (aka Michael Kaler, bass). Loren and Michael met back in the 90s and were in a band together. Blitz and Loren were roommates, but have never been in a band together in the past. Blitz formerly was the bass player for Ron Hawkins and the Rusty Nails. Recently we were joined by drummer Liam Baidon, a recent transplant from Australia.
Tell us a bit about your most recent release.
This is our debut album, bolt from the blue. We recorded it in our homes over the winter. The idea was to make an album that almost had a bit of a vintage feel to it, avoiding some of the hyperbolic production that seems so popular in modern music.
Where do you tend to pull inspiration from when writing?
Loren essentially is just trying to translate emotions into music: positive, negative or otherwise. He feels a lot of the anxieties of living in the 21st century, from exploitive productivity culture (Rock n Roll Ending) to encroaching anhedonia (What Remains).
Michael is focused on telling stories, using songs as narrative. He looks at things like the cumulation of choices gone wrong (My Name is Sarah) and random tragedy (Lidocaine).
On a musical level, we’re trying to tap into a lot of the energy of New York’s Lower East Side: Velvet Underground, Television, Ramones, Sonic Youth, and so forth, and reforge it into original and modern music. That’s the goal anyway.
Do you have any upcoming shows you’d like to tell us about?
We are playing at the Horseshoe Tavern on May 31st.
What’s your goal for 2023?
At a high level, we just want to introduce ourselves to the world this year. We’ll have a music video for Rock n Roll Ending in the near future and are planning on several more releases of music this year. And hopefully, play as many live shows as possible.