NOBRO

"NOBRO walk an adrenaline-fuelled trapeze" - CLASH

"NOBRO are the bundle of energy you need in your life" - Kerrang! Magazine

"Explosive and full of attitude" - UPSET

"Exhilarating riffs, penetrative harmonies, and infectious melodies" - The Quietus

"This Canadian quartet are winding up to deliver a great big rock 'n' roll masterclass" - Rock Sound

NOBRO has also been supported by BBC Radio 1, 6 Music, DIY, Dork + more

Montreal modern-punk outfit NOBRO release their debut full-length record Set Your Pussy Free today on Dine Alone Records: a caustic, celebratory, glorious party-punk firework show.

“Who The Hell Am I?” is the featured track, delving into the agonising journey of self-discovery. The band explains that it’s “written about feeling trapped—both physically in a room and metaphorically within yourself. It's a commentary on the moments when we are alone and left to wonder whether we truly belong anywhere.”

Produced by Dave Schiffman (PUP, Rage Against The Machine), SYPF is a record about the ecstatic pursuit of personal escape and liberation even as the walls are closing in, a 21st century power-punk analog of Born To Run that rages against modern life’s restrictive pressures and dares them to a game of chicken.

If a hurricane is bearing down on NOBRO, they’re spitting into it, arm-in-arm, with middle fingers raised. “Set Your Pussy Free is an explosive unapologetic sonic manifesto where we refuse to play by anyone else's rules,” NOBRO declares. “With unbridled energy and a fearless exploration of themes such as 'Let’s Do Drugs' and 'Set Your Pussy Free' and 'I Don’t Feel Like It'—it is a raw outpouring of our own emotions of empowerment and rebellion against societal limitations and expectations. Set Your Pussy Free is a testament to our enduring spirit of punk rock!"

A standard black vinyl is available for purchase through the Dine Alone Store, along with splatter and Dine Alone Exclusive tri-colour. 

Accumulating years of work, hundreds of shows, and thousands of miles since 2014, McCaughey, Carbonneau, Bourdages, and Dion have been building NOBRO into one of the most fierce and exciting bands in Canada, now riding the momentum from a string of blazing singles and EPs, capped with 2020’s Sick Hustle and 2022’s Live Your Truth Shred Some Gnar. Listeners big and small have been taking note: Iggy Pop played their track “Bye Bye Baby” on his BBC Radio 6 show, and a fictional band in the Netflix series The Imperfects covered their songs. Aside from taking their raucous live shows to every dive bar across Montreal, the band has also toured across North America and Europe with PUP, Alexisonfire, Billy Talent, Fidlar, and The OBGMs. In May 2023, they opened for Blink-182 at Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena.

NOBRO were playing a show the day after the United States Supreme Court overturned the right to access an abortion in the country. The four band members, all women, were shaken and furious, but that night vocalist/bassist Kathryn McCaughey led a righteous toast against the decision: “This next song is dedicated to setting our vaginas free!” It was a spur-of-the-moment response to the news, but the phrase stuck with McCaughey. It began to feel like something more than a throw-away slogan. It felt like something deeper, a defiant rallying cry to kick against the exhausting struggles of life. 

From the opening sleaze-rock thunder of title track “Set That Pussy Free” through to the sprinting glee of closer “Gimme More (Party Through The Pain),” bandmates Kathryn McCaughey (vocals/bass), Karolane Carbonneau (guitars), Lisandre Bourdages (keys/percussion), and Sarah Dion (drums) make clear that they aren’t interested in playing by whatever rules have been set around them. “As a musician or artist or even a woman, you have to throw off the weight of societal pressures and expectations, especially as you get older,” says McCaughey. “You have to take risks and chances.”

NOBRO is the space where the four of them get to take those risks and chances. It’s a place for cultivating power and happiness in a hard, mean world. That means the stakes are high. “Music is where we lift each other up,” says McCaughey. “I wish it was more like a fairy tale. We just want this fucking thing to work. But we’re all gonna succeed together, or we’re all gonna fail together.”

McCaughey wrote most of Set Your Pussy Free with Toronto-based producer Thomas D’Arcy (July Talk, The Sheepdogs, Yukon Blonde), and Schiffman joined the band in Montreal for nearly a month to prep and record at Mixart Studios in the dead of winter. “We allowed ourselves to go in crazier directions, just to see where it would take us,” says Bourdages. She adds that because of how it was recorded—live off the floor, all four members playing at the same time, mistakes and all—it represents who NOBRO are more than any other release. Through the weeks of 12-hour studio days, McCaughey was still working full-time at a bar at night. It was a long month. “The desperation in my voice on the record is real,” she grins. “It was a struggle, but I felt like I stayed true to myself, you know?” 

The record’s opener establishes the tone with dark, grimy riffing and McCaughey’s all-too-real exhaustion: “Wanna think big, wanna dream big, but I gotta clean the puke out the bathroom sink,” she groans on the verse. The tongue-in-cheek romp “Let’s Do Drugs” gives way to a brain-melting power-punk internet spiral (“Delete Delete Delete”) that sets up “A.I. Sexbots,” a conga and bass driven reflection on doing your own thing.

It’s true that the desperation on the record is palpable, but so too is the joy. The road-dog punk-rock anthem “Where My Girls At” recounts the band’s formation and early days playing the dive bar circuit, selling t-shirts out of garbage bags and building the bonds that have taken the band to where they are today. “Where my girls at, where my girls at?/Gonna start me a rock and roll band!” McCaughey calls on the jubilant chorus. “Let’s Get Outta Here” furthers that energy with restrained verses that burst into a wide-open, keys-pounding chorus: “This day job ain’t doing much for me/If we get outta here I know we’ll be free/Let’s get outta here!”

Closer “Gimme More (Party Through The Pain)” is a warm, riotous celebration of love and companionship, as McCaughey belts, “If the whole world goes to shit, and we all say to hell with it, I know I got you, you got me, I got you, you got me, and we’re gonna fuckin’ party!” It ends the record with a reminder of what this is all about: finding moments where you feel free and happy, whatever that means for you. “You can’t lose that childlike enthusiasm towards what you’re doing,” says McCaughey. “It’s so fun to play music and forget about your problems, even if it is momentarily. Even if you know that it’s not gonna make you happy long-term, for like a minute, you can maybe let yourself believe that you will be.”