There’s a weird kind of clarity that cuts through distortion—and Ribbon Skirt seem to know this instinctively. The Montreal band doesn’t ease you into their debut album, Bite Down; it just starts, like you’ve walked into someone’s half-finished thought. The music is fragmented and poetic, intentionally disoriented. There’s no neat resolution, no big reveal. Just echoes, pulses, and static. And somehow, it works. Brilliantly.
At the heart of it all is Tashiina Buswa—vocalist, guitarist, and lyricist—who co-wrote the album with guitarist/bassist Billy Riley. Their creative partnership is the gravitational pull that holds everything together. The band, formerly known as Love Language, have re-emerged as Ribbon Skirt with a sharper focus and a shift in tone: darker, more abstract, more personal.
Recorded at Studio Saint Zo in Montreal, Bite Down was produced by Scott ‘Monty’ Munro (Preoccupations) and Marlaena Moore, both of whom also play on the record. The production is tactile but never slick—deliberately raw in places, gently hallucinatory in others. Mixed by Greg Saunier (Deerhoof) and mastered by Mikey Young, there’s a lot of careful craft behind the record’s loose edges.
“Cellophane” starts with a primal, panting rhythm and then unfolds into something restless and surprisingly danceable. The track has an elasticity to it, stretching between restraint and release. You can hear how well this group knows when to lean in and when to hold back. Lan Thockchom’s drumming throughout the record adds another layer of push and pull—never flashy, always responsive.
“Off Rez” is among the most immediate entries. It sways between defiance and irony, with Buswa’s voice coolly skating over a jagged bassline. The lyrics refuse containment. “They want 2000s Buffy Marie / They want my status but they’re getting my teeth,” she sings. It’s funny, disarming, and quietly devastating. The result is protest music in its most subtle form—slippery, lived-in, and unsentimental.
Elsewhere, the tone shifts. “41,” based on a car crash Buswa survived in British Columbia, is delicate and disoriented. Her Auto-Tuned vocals act as a kind of buffer, providing a sense of distance. “Smudging stars across the pavement Sunday night,” she sings, and it feels like a line lifted from a fever dream—detached but sharp, glinting with clarity.
That haziness is a defining quality throughout the album. “Wrong Planet” is an understated standout, with a loping guitar line that evokes the scrappy warmth of Violent Femmes but cloaked in something heavier, more resigned. “Right timing / Wrong planet,” goes the refrain.
On “Mountains,” the atmosphere turns low and brooding. Ambient insect sounds buzz quietly beneath Buswa’s vocals, creating a strange, uneasy calm. “When I’m walking to the corner store / Feels like I’m sinking to the ocean floor,” she sings. The lyric hits without telegraphing its emotional weight. That’s a recurring trick on this record—how casually it delivers its most affecting moments.
The final track, “Earth Eater,” pulls everything inward. Buswa sings about drowning, haunting maternal figures, and floodlights—all layered in a lush swirl of backing vocals and guitars. It feels like the album closing in on itself, not in a claustrophobic way, but as if collapsing into memory. There’s a sense of ritual in the repetition, of healing that doesn’t need to announce itself.
One of Bite Down’s quiet strengths is its refusal to translate. Buswa doesn’t explain her Anishinaabe identity or heritage—she inhabits it. The record doesn’t exist to educate or explain. It exists because it needs to. There are cultural references here, but they aren’t footnotes. They’re embedded.
This kind of work rarely comes from nowhere, and Bite Down is the result of a truly collaborative process. Alongside Buswa and Riley, contributions come from Moore, Munro, Thockchom, and Lucas CA on bass, with Heather Lynn providing the striking album design.
The Montreal connection is more than geographical. There’s something in the city’s musical lineage—its openness to noise, texture, ambiguity—that feels deeply embedded here. Yet, Ribbon Skirt are building something of their own out of contradiction and clarity, fragmentation and flow.
Bite Down doesn’t try to be profound. It simply speaks in the language of someone still figuring things out in real-time—grief, identity, embodiment, survival. There’s beauty in how tentative it sometimes feels. And there’s strength in its refusal to collapse into bitterness. Even at its heaviest, it holds space for contradiction, for discomfort, for complexity. And in that space, something powerful begins to take shape.
Ribbon Skirt play an album release show at Toscadura in Montreal on April 25. BUY TICKETS
Bite Down is out April 11 on Mint Records.
Share this :
