Retro. At the beginning of the beginning of the 2000s, amidst boredom and decadence, pop started to reach across the intergenerational firepit, not longer equating youth with progress and angsty innovation, and thus stopped being shocking. Fathers began to enjoy The Strokes just as much as their daughters did. In the great search for a lost zeitgeist, content has given way to posturing, Simon Reynolds has become the Fukuyama of pop music, and Urban Outfitters has emerged as the museum shop of youth culture. Anyway. The three Courtneys from Vancouver don’t seem to be particularly interested in this kind of pseudo-intellectual cultural theory. The dollar stores of the Canadian west coast are still full of tie dye t-shirts, skateboards, and electric guitars; the wind from Seattle and Portland blow far over the border, and while Drake reigns from high up in the CN tower, the not-IRL realms of Facebook and Instagram down on the street have gotten boring. The Courtneys are evidence of a North American DIY culture continuum. The west-coasters enjoy their friendship and frolick in the sun of the Pacific coast, and in their spare time they produce hit after hit. Nothing wrong with that!

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