There’s a useful tension at the heart of Theo Vandenhoff, a band that treats posture and pulse as materials to be bent rather than brandished. One of Toronto’s most arresting live propositions, the sullen yet danceable post-punk of Theo Vandenhoff doubles as a mask for frontman-as-auteur Theo Klaver and a working surface for guitarist Callum Crombie and bassist Tom Nixon. European synthpop sarcasm rubs against Northern English clang; the result carries memory without museum dust. Everything here is handled in-house, a DIY ethic that sharpens focus rather than narrowing it.
The sound on their latest single, Wong Kar-wai, moves with wild vocals, jaunty guitars and chiming synths—slightly eerie, slightly strange—set loose with a sense of scene rather than sermon. That alignment sharpens when the song’s title is taken at face value. Wong Kar-wai reads as a clear homage to the Hong Kong filmmaker whose work redefined modern cinematic mood through fragmentation, repetition, and emotional suspension. Emerging in the 1990s with films such as Chungking Express, Happy Together, and In the Mood for Love, Wong built a visual grammar out of missed connections, saturated colour, and time stretched thin by longing.
The accompanying video mirrors that intent: a montage of televised moments stitched into symbolism, in the spirit of Wong Kar-wai, scenes lifted from Asian cinema and propaganda, images fractured by heavy glitch and soaked in saturated colour. It reads like a channel-surfing séance, history and feeling spliced into a jittery hymn for the present. The single and video land with the calm assurance of late-night art bars, that hour when ideas feel taller and the room listens harder. Hints of crooked croon and angular poise pass through, a restless drift that keeps the floor alive without pleading for it.
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On the debut full-length, Saviour on the Spilled Blood, the trio extend that poise into a larger frame. It’s an album that thinks in sequences, not slogans, letting themes breathe while the arrangements tighten. Identity and unease circle each other; politics brushes skin; the personal leans into the animal. The band sound sure of where to step next, crossing lanes without losing pace or presence.
“The three of us have been writing music together for a couple of years now, we’ve spent all this time writing single after single and figuring out what an LP from us should look like,” says Klaver. Saviour on the Spilled Blood is a culmination of all this time spent honing our craft; teaching ourselves how to traverse a handful of subgenres without compromising congruence. There is a noticeable confidence in these recordings that we’re very proud of. Most of the lyrics on Saviour began as poems written from the prompt ‘original sin’, my aim was to tell a story that blends the intensely personal with the political, the animal with the existential.”
Listen to Wong Kar-wai below and order the single here.
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