It’s hard not to feel a MySpace-era déjà vu when a band like Often Wrong shows up in your inbox — a three-piece from Vancouver building something emotional, loud, and unvarnished, operating off posters taped around a university campus and a basement recording setup that feels almost too on-the-nose in 2025. But the story tracks.
The band formed after Oscar Gaitens–McManus put out a simple call for collaborators, following a long-held desire to start a band. What began as an indie shoegaze idea slowly bent toward post–hardcore and screamo as his interests shifted, and that pivot defines the sound of “The Figs are Starting to Rot,” their EP arriving November 28th, but available early right here in this special premiere feature!
The whole release was tracked live in Oscar’s basement and mixed and mastered by his dad, with Oscar lending a hand. He went straight to Unwound for reference points on how to make a live recording land with the right kind of DIY weight.
The result is firmly in line with a combination of emo and post–hardcore, informed by groups like Slint and Unwound, and delivered through spoken-word passages, screamed choruses, and soft-to-loud dynamics that underline themes of isolation, depression, and fear of abandonment.
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The EP’s tracklist — “Kintsugi,” “Your Tailor,” “Embrace,” and “Slipping Under” — stays close to that emotional axis.
Oscar calls “Slipping Under” the focus track, the one he’d point to first.
Oscar talks openly about where the band’s internal world comes from. He mentions Kafka, and the way some lyrics naturally drift into that territory, but the bigger thematic marker is something more grounded: figs. His friend Matteas Mura, who created the artwork, works in pen and ink, and Oscar says the imagery fits the band’s tone.
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The figs draw from Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar,” specifically the image of a person frozen in front of a fig tree while every unchosen path starts to rot. “I think every young person can resonate with this,” he says, describing the paralysis that comes from having too many possible lives and only one to actually live. “It can sometimes make you feel helpless and it’s definitely something I feel with music sometimes.”
Vancouver itself sits at the center of their story. Oscar points to PISS, Computer, and Emma Goldman as bands that shaped his thinking — groups with strong records and even stronger live shows. Despite the talent around the city, the infrastructure hasn’t kept pace.
“What it currently lacks is an expanded network of DIY venues,” he explains. Green Auto and Takeurtimeback are doing the work, but the cost of running anything in Vancouver makes longevity difficult. Still, the energy is there: “There is definitely hope,” he says, crediting the active scene and organizations like his UBC club, Blank Vinyl Project, which hosts free shows every other Thursday at a campus bar.
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The EP’s themes echo across the band’s official bio as well. Oscar frames the release as an extension of their DIY ethic, recorded at home and leaning into dynamic, emotionally vulnerable writing. It situates them between Vancouver’s screamo/skramz world and the city’s art-rock currents, with “tragic monologues” that rise into heavier passages and hold close to the feelings that shaped them — isolation, loneliness, abandonment.
For a band this early in their timeline, the roadmap is already sketched in. Their first single, “Slipping Under,” landed November 7th, followed by the EP on November 28th. They have an EP release show at Green Auto with Computer, Cherrypick, and Scarlet Fever, a summer tour planned across Vancouver Island, Interior B.C., and Alberta, and an album slated for 2026.
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Oscar sums the whole thing up without trying to pretty it over: Often Wrong is a small band working within the limits of their city, their budget, and their own shifting lives — but the songs are grounded, the themes are clear, and the EP captures exactly the moment they’re in. It’s a picture of young musicians trying to choose a fig before it drops.
