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Kate Killet

Partner are a Canadian duo who love smart-ass stoner humor almost as much as they love insta-classic alt-rock riffs. That formula worked wonders on their 2017 debut, In Search of Lost Time, where singer-guitarist BFFs Josée Caron and Lucy Niles sold songs like “Everybody Knows” (about being really high at the grocery store), “Angels from Ontario” (like “California Girls,” but for Canada’s most populous province) and “Sex Object” (about finding more than you bargained for in your roommate’s sock drawer) with wild-eyed musical sincerity straight out of 120 Minutes.

Their commitment to the bit continues with “Long and McQuade,” from their upcoming EP Saturday the 14th. It’s a fantastically catchy slack-core tribute to a music-store chain that, as I understand it, is their nation’s answer to Guitar Center. I’ve never stepped foot inside a Long and McQuade, but Caron and Niles make its fluorescent aisles come alive, with hilariously literal-minded lyrics (“Guitar straps with flames/Drumsticks and strings/Long and McQuade has all of those things”) and an all-in fake-grunge mope-yowl arrangement. It’s very funny, but it also totally shreds. Who else could make this song work? Maybe Weird Al or Adam Sandler at their Nineties peaks, but truthfully, neither of them had riffs this tight on deck.


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