Its May of 2023. We zoom in on a generic catholic secondary school in an even more generic town within the greater Toronto area. I am 16 years old (in grade 11) and immensely terrified of my entire past, present, and future.
I want to escape from the small bubble of cookie cutter suburbia but the idea of my entire future being just a few months and an OUAC application away scares the shit out of me, so I drown it out with my headphones blasting House Of Sugar by Alex G and continue with my dull routine. I took the back entrance of the building to get to class, and on the door I saw printed black and white flyer. I didn't know it, but finding this would change my life completely for the next 3 years at least.
The flyer was for a "free hardcore/punk/shoegaze show" happening at the park near the library down the road that coming Saturday night. Three bands were billed: Julien's Donkey Boys, Mule King, and White Rabbit. I had been to a couple concerts at this point but never to a local show before, no matter how badly I had wanted to. My parents would never allow it in my mind and the transportation and money to make it work was a lot to beg for. These were my favourite genres at the time, and the scribbled and scanned drawing called for me, so I threw all logic away and took a picture before running to class.
By some miracle despite their hatred for my intense passion of music, I went to the show with a friend I hardly knew. After listening to everything I could find of the three bands online, I got to the park way too early, made embarrassingly awkward small talk with the lead singer of White Rabbit about post punk, and didn't know what to do with my hands so I just recorded every set until I felt comfortable enough to move my limbs.
Despite all of this, this is one of the fondest memories I have and I wouldn't change it for the world.
I left that night with a sense of comfortable community I hadn't ever felt before and the last Mule King T-Shirt of the night (which I still own and wear often). There was a electricity running through my veins. While every band was fantastic to watch that night, something about White Rabbit cracked me open. Maybe it was the knowledge that the two members, Ben Miles and Sabrina Perez, were around my age and went to the other big secondary school that was hitting me. Maybe it was just that I was really into shoegaze at the time so they stuck out more. Maybe it was just that debut EP, Zzz, was noisy-melodic perfection to me, even if it was still rough around the edges. Whatever it was, I became heavily invested in their music. I listened to Zzz and their second 4 track EP, Just A Little Bit, constantly.
They became the soundtrack to the later part of my teens. Screaming along to songs like "Don't Mean Harm" or "Stew" in my bedroom became my best source of catharsis, while "Zzz " and "Stardust" allowed me around the oversaturated summer streets of my hometown dazed and unafraid, just letting the sharp twinkly guitars wash away all my many worries. The songs had a specificity to the teen angst, love desperation, and annoyance, that aligned perfectly with events in my own life. It was a match made in heaven for me. They were also a reminder that no matter how much I loathed my hometown at the time, beauty and talent still resided in it. They were so close to home, it was impossible not to root for them from afar.
The next time I saw the band live, my life was seemingly entirely different. I had made it out of my hometown (temporarily) because I graduated, now going to university in Toronto and was living in a dorm. I had a new set of friends, a new set of overconfidence, and for once I felt like I could breathe in air from outside a small bubble I was suffocating in.
On November 23rd, 2024, now 17 years old, I went to my first house venue show for White Rabbit's debut album, Big Plunge. This show would be the first of many more It's an event I refused to miss, so I dragged whatever friend was willing to join me out to a small shack downtown to experience it all with me.
The night was nothing short of incredible. The band (performing as a trio at the time, though only Ben Miles and Sabrina Perez are credited on the album) had grown in confidence playing and showmanship significantly, a maturity in their playing that must've just come from age. I had left my hometown to escape from the mundanity, I had gone to the show to escape from my worries into music, and while that very successfully occurred, the songs off of Big Plunge seemed to transport me back to the kid I was the year before in all the best ways.
While the EPs were the soundtrack of my teen years, this album had captured the specific feeling of growing up there. "Do I Wanna Swim" evoked images of driving around town with friends just to have something to do during our spares. "Just Like This" was a nostalgic anthem for even the most mundane of recent memories for me. I listen to "Not Your Friend" and have flashbacks to trying to ignore ex-friends on my way to art class. "Now That The Dust Has Settled" was images of sitting in the floor of my childhood home and grieving the phase of my life I was leaving. While I'm sure it could apply to any bedroom community suburban town, the fact that they were from mine is what made it click harder. It had never happened before. To me, they were the first and only cool thing to come out of this bedroom community. Their music became a time capsule.
It was a bonus that the album is also really damn good.
At 8 tracks and only roughly 21 minutes, the album is brief but makes a strong statement. Miles and Perez balance the rougher edges of their music with the soft melodic shine on every song in a constantly shifting sliding scale. The music, the lyrics, and the meanings are always in sync, the vocal deliveries of both members are both so fantastic. The overall desperate feeling in the performance of "Now That The Dust Has Settled" makes it such a perfect closer and a great contrast to the softer tip toeing of "Do I Wanna Swim" on the opener. There isn't a single section on any song here that overstays it's welcome. Not a single element feels out of place, overdone, or generic. Every song relates to each other really well but all stand out and stand on their own. My personal favourites are "Play Fair," "Electrical," and "Now That The Dust Has Settled," but every song here has a great argument for being the favourite so that list changes frequently. There are parts where lyrically, they almost lean too far into a childish naivety in the lyrics of songs like "Just Like This" or "Not Your Friend" for me, but the vocal delivery paired with the incredibly playful guitars and hammering drums just sell the emotion so authentically. This album is the best most nostalgic parts of being a teenager for me and delivers well on all fronts.
By the third time I saw the band play on April 12th 2025, I knew in my soul they were going to be one of the biggest bands to come out of this scene. I was 18 now, my music taste had expanded far past the reaches of what I could ever imagine, and it only further confirmed how much skill these two had as performers and storytellers through their music. They were playing as a four piece, the songs sounder stronger than any of the recordings, and even despite some technical difficulties, they carried on and created a great atmosphere with their music. They all play these songs like they're trying to inject the sound into you, precise and powerful, full of passion and emotion through noisy pedals and soaring vocals.
Its now 2026 and White Rabbit are playing so many shows everywhere across the GTA and Toronto, including the Loveless Festival on July 26th. In a recent interview White Rabbit did with Around The Corner Radio, they discussed working on more music that I'm more excited for than any other release. White Rabbit has only improved in their capabilities with every EP, Album, and live show. This band is brimming with potential and I already know this is only a fraction of the beginning for what they can do.
For now, Big Plunge along with Zzz and Just A Little Bit are available on all streaming services including Band Camp. Please go and listen to the album at least, lying down in the grass on a nice summer day (if we even get one anywhere in the world this year) and let White Rabbit's music hit you back home. If not them, then please look around your hometown and support the incredible artists around you. Sometimes the band whose music will define an era of your life is composed by a bunch of teenagers that go to the next school over from you.
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