The Carringtons - The Reunion
When we previously encountered The Carringtons through BOOTLEG VOL.1 (LIVE AT SQUARE WAVE), those two live recordings captured a Quebec City band whose principal weapon appeared to be speed. Songs arrived, delivered their hooks and disappeared again with very little ceremony. Three months later, The Reunion provides a more complete answer to where that energy might eventually lead.
Released on October 2, 2026, The Reunion contains ten songs compressed into approximately twenty minutes. That brevity is not simply the consequence of playing punk rock quickly. It has become an important part of The Carringtons' songwriting philosophy: introduce the riff, establish the melody, hit the chorus and leave before any of those ideas have time to become exhausted.
The Carringtons have existed in various forms since 2014, beginning with Deep Underground before releasing the Cursed City EP in 2018. Their current identity, however, really begins with the band's reformation in 2023, when Ben Fortier, Joey Savard, Alex Charron and Dave Chamberland established the line-up responsible for their recent burst of activity.
Fortier handles lead vocals and rhythm guitar while also acting as the group's principal songwriter, lyricist and producer. Savard contributes lead guitar, backing vocals and arrangements as well as the band's graphic work, Charron plays bass and works on their video material, while Chamberland completes the quartet on drums.
Calling The Reunion a comeback album would therefore only tell part of the story. The Carringtons never entirely disappeared, but the group that has emerged since 2023 feels sufficiently focused to resemble a second life.
That period has produced a remarkably steady stream of music, including “Refugees,” “Distance,” “Swimmers,” “Stories / Paralyzed” and “Ex.” Rather than disappearing into a studio for several years, The Carringtons used those individual releases to gradually refine their sound, sometimes changing recording environments and collaborators along the way.
An important relationship developed with Adrian Popovich at Mountain City Studios in Montreal, who had already worked with the band on Stories / Paralyzed. For The Reunion, Popovich recorded and mixed the complete album, and the difference between this record and the deliberately rough immediacy of BOOTLEG VOL.1 is immediately significant.
The live release demonstrated how The Carringtons function onstage. The Reunion asks what happens when that same band takes advantage of the studio.
The answer is not to slow everything down.
The fundamental economy remains intact, but the sound surrounding those short songs has become considerably larger. Guitars can be layered rather than simply reproduced as they would appear live, while synthesizers and electronic textures occasionally expand the arrangements. The punk-rock skeleton remains clearly visible, but considerably more has been built around it.
This helps explain why The Carringtons can comfortably occupy several neighbouring territories at once. There is garage punk in their directness, power pop in their obsession with immediate melodies, indie rock in the guitar interplay and a broader alternative-rock sensibility in the production. None of these descriptions feels entirely sufficient alone, but together they explain much of the album's character.
Comparisons with The Strokes make sense particularly in the band's melodic instincts and guitar work, although The Carringtons frequently play with considerably more aggression. The restless momentum associated with Bad Nerves and the more unruly side of Viagra Boys provides another useful reference point, while the sheer economy of the songwriting keeps everything moving at remarkable speed.
“Noise”, released shortly before the album, demonstrates that formula particularly well. In approximately two minutes, abrasive guitars, a highly mobile bass line and relentlessly forward-moving drums surround a melody that is considerably more immediate than the roughness of the performance might initially suggest.
That contradiction runs throughout The Reunion. The Carringtons can sound chaotic without actually writing chaotic songs.
Underneath the distortion, most of this material is tightly controlled. Hooks arrive quickly, arrangements waste very little time and individual parts rarely remain once they have completed their purpose. There is something almost hardcore in that refusal of excess, except that it is being applied to songs whose melodic instincts frequently belong much closer to power pop.
The lyrical world creates another useful contrast. Titles including “Trust,” “Hope,” “Emptiness,” “Romance,” “Isolation” and “Obsession” reduce complicated emotional conditions to individual words, almost as though each song were attempting to isolate one state of mind before examining it under pressure.
That introspective tendency has existed in the band's recent writing for some time. “Refugees,” for example, approached the idea of mentally constructing a place of safety when reality becomes difficult, connecting loneliness and uncertainty with the need to find some form of internal refuge.
Consequently, the exhilaration of The Carringtons' music can sometimes disguise a considerably more anxious centre. The guitars rush forward while the lyrics repeatedly return to uncertainty, isolation and emotional instability. The songs may last only two minutes, but the feelings inside them are not necessarily simple.
The band's recent live activity has also been central to this second phase. Since reforming, The Carringtons have appeared at events including Pouzza Fest and Envol & Macadam, toured Ontario and, during 2026, completed their first European run with shows across France, Belgium and the United Kingdom. Their live sets reflect the same philosophy as their records, with twelve to fifteen songs capable of fitting inside thirty minutes and considerably more packed into a longer performance.
That experience makes The Reunion an especially appropriate title.
It refers naturally to the band's reconstruction around its current line-up, but it can also describe the way the album gathers together everything The Carringtons have been testing since 2023. The singles, different recording sessions, relentless short-form songwriting and increasing live activity finally meet inside one concentrated record.
This is also what separates The Reunion from BOOTLEG VOL.1. The live recording captured the band with virtually nothing between the listener and the performance. The new album preserves that velocity while recognising that studio production can do something entirely different. Additional guitars, synthesizers and carefully constructed textures increase the scale without burying the songs beneath unnecessary decoration.
For a band so committed to eliminating excess, that distinction matters. Bigger does not have to mean longer.
The Reunion therefore feels less like the culmination of twelve years than the point at which those twelve years finally come into focus. The Carringtons began in 2014, but the version of the group that exists today was effectively rebuilt in 2023 and has spent the intervening years discovering exactly what it wants to be.
The answer appears to be fast, melodic, abrasive and extremely economical: garage punk with the instinct for hooks of power pop, the nervous energy of indie rock and enough studio experimentation to prevent those two-minute explosions from becoming interchangeable.
When we heard BOOTLEG VOL.1, the obvious question was what The Carringtons would do next with all that live energy. The Reunion provides the answer without wasting a second more than necessary: make everything bigger, keep everything moving and still be finished in twenty minutes.
© Thusblog
