Dylan Forshner is back with a slab of basement-born rock. “It Ain’t So Bad,” out of Welland, Canada, shows a songwriter finding his footing, his band locking in, and a whole lot of vintage amp noise colliding in the best way possible.
Recorded in drummer/producer Joe Labrie’s basement on GarageBand, the track captures the live-wire energy of a band clicking. They ditched the click track, opting for the gut-realness of how they sound when they jam. And it shows. You can imagine the basement air and feel the floorboards vibrating. Labrie’s production and drums, combined with Jody Mayne’s melodic bass riffs, create a formidable, driving backbone. This is a power trio in spirit, a unit that met through a Facebook group and now sounds like they’ve been tearing up dive bars for years. Mixed by Jay Crafton, who added just the right amount of vocal effects to elevate the vibe without sanitising it, the track proves that feel trumps perfection every time.
The ghosts of 90s alt-rock and 2000s angst are all over this thing, but Forshner isn’t doing karaoke. He’s absorbed the language. Tuned to a heavy Drop C#, the guitar tone is a glorious, ear-splitting fuzz that swings between grunge’s classic quiet-LOUD dynamics. He name-checks Nirvana’s “All Apologies,” System of a Down’s “Lonely Day,” and the weirdo genius of Presidents of the United States of America as direct inspirations for the chord choices, and you can hear it—not as a rip-off, but as a fluent speaker adding his own dialect to the conversation.
This is a song of hard-won optimism. Written after moving to Welland, finding his band, and hitting six months of sobriety, it’s Forshner shaking off a dark period and letting the light back in. It’s about his heart opening up again after a brutal breakup.
“It Ain’t So Bad” tells us about Dylan Forshner and his band—Labrie, Mayne—finding their collective roar. This is not only a promise of good things to come; it’s the proof, delivered with a wall of fuzz and a whole lot of soul. Welland, you’ve got a new rock champion.