Northern Dial Artist Profile

The Age of Electric

The Age of Electric emerged from Saskatchewan at the turn of the 1990s, built around two pairs of brothers: Todd and John Kerns and Ryan and Kurt Dahle. Years of playing Western Canadian clubs gave the group a tight, high-energy foundation before the independently released Ugly EP began attracting national attention. The band then moved to Mercury Records, bringing a Prairie-rooted alternative-rock act into the major-label Canadian rock system at the height of the 1990s guitar boom.

The 1997 album Make a Pest a Pet became the group's defining full-length statement. Its lead single, "Remote Control," reached the Canadian Top 10, while the album was certified gold in Canada. Songs such as "I Don't Mind" and "Don't Wreck It" reinforced the band's combination of distorted guitars, melodic hooks and restless arrangements. The record arrived just as its members' parallel projects were becoming increasingly important, and The Age of Electric's original run ended not long after.

The band's significance extends well beyond its relatively compact catalogue. Ryan and Kurt Dahle had already formed Limblifter, which became a major outlet for Ryan's songwriting, while Kurt later joined The New Pornographers and Todd Kerns built a long international career that eventually included work with Slash. The Age of Electric reunited in the 2010s and revisited Make a Pest a Pet for its 20th anniversary, underscoring how the band functions as a connective point in Canadian rock: a Saskatchewan act whose members fed directly into several important strands of the country's later alternative and power-pop history.