Norah Jones Exclaim online news story

From April 27th on Exclaim.ca

By Andrea Warner 



 
There were plenty of raised eyebrows when it was announced that Norah Jones would be making her next album with Brian Burton, aka Danger Mouse. She's ruled the adult contemporary airwaves since her 2002 Grammy Award-winning debut, the softly pleasing radio staple Come Away with Me. Jones's talent is indisputable, but there's been plenty of scorn levied her way about what she does with her gifts.

Her upcoming record, Little Broken Hearts, is a defiant middle finger to her critics and the man/men that have done her wrong. Not that Jones really cares what anyone thinks. But she knows that once people have come out of Hearts' other side, her "good girl" reputation may not be intact. The album dwells in some dark and dangerous corners, including the stellar "Miriam," a spooky stand-out that finds Jones sweetly singing a fantasy about killing the woman who stole her man.

"Obviously I care a little bit about what people think, but I try not to," Jones tells Exclaim! "I feel pretty secure in who I think I am and what I know I do. It's not like I do anything crazily different [on Hearts], just a couple of songs were a little mean. It's not like I'm such a bad girl. I'm an adult. I'm not a little kid... It's not like I'm pulling one over on people. I am a nice person."

Plus, Burton's own fingerprints are everywhere on the album, including on the actual song composition. Jones says it was an unusual experience, sharing songwriting duties with another person, but feels the record benefitted from their mind meld.

"Since we wrote all the songs together, there were definitely things in the songwriting that are different from what I would normally do, which is great, and made it a collaboration," Jones says. "But also the sonic landscape. I went out to L.A. to record in his studio with his engineers, because I wanted whatever he had. I wasn't really sure what that was because he's so versatile. I just knew he had a different sonic language that he used.

"He's kind of a gear head, they know how to turn a lot of knobs and make a simple acoustic guitar sound really different. But they never go too far, it always sounds interesting and beautiful. You can go too far with that stuff sometimes, but I just never heard him do that. He's so good at striking that balance of playing natural instruments and producing in a way that kind of feels right."

The two had talked about making an album together for years, so it was a twist of fate that when the timing came together; Jones happened to arrive in L.A. fresh from breakup.

"I never really intended to write about [my breakup] and it's still kind of encrypted," she says. "We've all gone through things and had those moments. Whether you're going through a breakup that's serious or casual or you're jealous of something. We've all had twinges of these feelings at some point. Or, the older you get, you will.

"It became more about me and Brian being a little bit more philosophical about relationships. We definitely got inside each other's heads. I wouldn't have been able to write these kinds of songs with somebody I didn't know that well. We would take a feeling and kind of run with it... but the album's not a diary. I was never nervous about writing it, because I know what's real and what's not."

Little Broken Hearts arrives May 1 through Blue Note/EMI.

Sinead O'Connor

My timeline of Sinéad O'Connor is in this month's Exclaim and online.

Sinéad O'Connor: Nothing Compares 2 Her

By Andrea Warner

Has there ever been a more conflicted, tragic, talented musician than the bald child advocate, bipolar-afflicted, anal-sex-loving, Pope-picture-tearing, angel-voiced former-priest Sinéad Marie Bernadette O'Connor? In short, no. And though she's been recording and making music since she was 14 years old, O'Connor's actual artistry has mostly taken a backseat to her highly publicized personal problems. Appropriately enough, her new album is entitled How About I Be Me (And You Be You)? But after the last few months O'Connor has experienced ― a quickie Vegas marriage (her fourth!) already on the rocks mere hours after saying "I do," a suicide attempt, public cries for help on Twitter, and her subsequent hospitalization ― she might like a chance to be somebody else for a while. Love her or loathe her, it's impossible to argue: it's tough work being Sinéad O'Connor.

The Shins

My online news story with James Mercer of the Shins, a preview before the print feature in April.

James Mercer Talks the Shins' 'Port of Morrow'

 

By Andrea Warner 

It's been five long years since the Shins' Wincing the Night Away proved just how far the Portland-based band had moved beyond indie obscurity. Buoyed by the 2004 film Garden State, as the band Natalie Portman promised would "change your life," the Shins lead singer-songwriter James Mercer was suddenly an icon to millions who loved his brand of poetic indie pop: dark lyrics steeped in metaphor contrasted with hooky choruses and breezy melodies.

Then suddenly Mercer made a radical shift, forming a new collaboration with hip-hop producer/songwriter Danger Mouse, aka Brian Burton. As Broken Bells, the duo released a hugely successful full-length and toured extensively, leaving Shins fans to wonder if their beloved band would be another casualty of the indie-goes-mainstream boom. Even Mercer himself wasn't sure.

Wilco review

My review of Wilco's fantastic show at the Orpheum is online at Exclaim.ca

Wilco

Orpheum, Vancouver BC February 5

By Andrea Warner 

Nine songs into one of the best shows the Orpheum has ever hosted, Wilco's Jeff Tweedy finally spoke to his rapt audience, most of whom had been on their feet from the moment the band took the stage. He spontaneously congratulated one couple on their engagement and guessed that another guy had recently lost a pet, jokingly explaining to the crowd that he was psychic.

Well, he might be. There's really no other way to explain how eerily prescient the band's set list proved to be for one disastrous relationship that imploded in halting highs and lows, distractingly, publicly, in the front row throughout Wilco's career-spanning two-hour set.

The drama began about 15 minutes before Tweedy and crew hit the stage, when some kind of argument -- the woman was furious, the man was attempting to cajole her into good spirits, it seemed -- escalated, and the woman suddenly slapped the man across the face. She stormed out and it seemed perhaps the drama was over before it began. Sadly, she came back just as the house lights dimmed and the overhead lights illuminated the beautiful stage design -- long ropes of knotted white cloths that looked like miniature homemade ghost costumes hanging in rows and rows.

The band opened with the beautiful Whole Love weeper "One Sunday Morning (Song for Jane Smiley's Boyfriend)." As Tweedy sang the chorus, "Outside I look lived in / Like the bones in a shrine / How am I forgiven? / Oh, I'll give it time," the man mouthed along, attempting to put his arm around the woman's shoulder, only to have her eventually shrug him off angrily. This continued through a stunning version of "Poor Places" and a psychedelic light display for the psych-rocking "Art of Almost," followed by the peppy, almost joyful "I Might."

As the couple's fighting continued, the band moved onto one of their biggest hits, "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart," with the whole audience belting along with the soaring chorus. Tweedy's lyrical poignancy increased on the heart-breaking "Radio Cure" -- "All distance has a way of making love understandable" -- and the fight got physical again as the woman pushed the man about four feet and stormed over to security. After an intense discussion, which Tweedy seemed to watch out of the corner of his eye while he jammed on the guitar, security left them both where they were and Wilco kicked up the beat.

There was a little country edge of "Born Alone" before the band made their way to the stirring "I'll Fight," with Tweedy promising, "I'll fight, I'll fight, I'll fight, I'll fight for you / I'll kill, I'll kill, I'll kill, I'll kill for you / I will, I will, I will," and of course the man sang along while the woman shooed him away. When Wilco busted out "Via Chicago" and Tweedy sang, "I dreamed about killing you again last night / And it felt all right to me," he seemed to sing it in their direction pointedly, a gleam in his eye and a smile on his lips.

Security came by again for the couple -- and left almost as quickly -- just after Wilco came back for their encore following a thunderous standing ovation. Tweedy turned on his falsetto for a beautiful version of "Whole Love" before segueing into fan favourite "Heavy Metal Drummer." The big, bold finish came courtesy of the crashing crescendo of "Outtasight (Outta Mind)," the perfect end to an amazing show, and a fantastic kiss-off -- hopefully -- to love gone wrong.

Bahamas online

My news story on Bahamas is online at Exclaim.ca

 
By Andrea Warner

In the space of four years, Afie Jurvanen has gone from a part of Feist's backing band to a solo star of his own as alt-country folk rocker Bahamas. His 2009 debut, Pink Strat, was a richly textured examination of a romantic relationship seemingly staggering towards its end. His follow-up, Barchords, comes on the other side of love's slow death, and brings with it the kind of aching sadness, lingering anger and objective clarity that only comes well after you've given back the other person's stuff.

The new LP arrives Tuesday (February 7) on Universal/Republic in Canada, and all week you can stream the album here in Exclaim!'s Click Hear section.

Speaking to Exclaim!, Jurvanen says of Barchords, "I was struggling with something that was on and off and on and off for a long time, and it was something that was wonderful and amazing, but it was also something very difficult and painful. It was one of those things that just took forever to process, you know? Both of my records kind of chronicle this period of my life. So, yeah, it's a breakup album. All of my albums have been breakup albums."

And everyone loves a great breakup album. While touring in support of Pink Strat, Jurvanen earned the support of a slew of famous fans-turned-friends, such as Elvis Costello, as well as the attention of American label, Brushfire Records. The company re-released Pink Strat in the U.S., which delayed Barchords' release by a full year.

"In a way it's kind of strange now, it's going to go out into the world and have a life of its own and people are going to react to it," Jurvanen says. "For so long it was just something on a spool of tape and on a computer and every now and then I'd listen to it again to make sure I didn't hate it!"

Admittedly, Barchords is a vastly different landscape than its predecessor, but it's quite a natural evolution. Everything, from lyrics to influences to production, feels more complex. Melancholy haunts every song, from the sad cabaret of "Montreal" to the ironically titled "Overjoyed." Even the most upbeat, triumphant moments, such as the gospel-tinged "Never Again" and "I Got You Babe" are rooted in loss. When Jurvanen sings, "Do I hold you back in all the ways I lack?" it's another standout moment of heartbreaking self-awareness.

"Making it personal has been my foundation for writing songs since I began," he says. "I've made forays into more storytelling or conjuring things or exaggerating things but they're not the songs that resonate."

With the album's release date just around the corner, Jurvanen has been familiarizing himself again with these songs that catalogue his heartbreak. Thankfully, time and circumstance have him firmly separated from dwelling too deeply in the past.

"My domestic situation is much healthier," he laughs. "Personally, I'm in a much better place. And even musically, I don't know if confident is the right word, but I just feel comfortable. I feel comfortable singing, and I think when you're younger you spend a lot of time trying to find your voice as a writer, a singer, a performer, but in the last few years we've just done so much touring, it's really nice to get to a point where you can just play and stand behind your songs and stand next to them as something you've created and something that's a part of you. That's a nice feeling right now, to be starting a new record that way."

To hear those results, simply click here. And to read more of Exclaim!'s interview with Bahamas, head here. Plus catch him on Exclaim! TV here.

My interviews with Béatrice Martin appear in December's Exclaim and online.

Coeur de Pirate

Interviews From The Magazine Dec 2011

By Andrea Warner

Béatrice Martin may record as Coeur de Pirate (aka, heart of a pirate), but her new album, Blonde, could be subtitled "Heart on Her Sleeve." At first listen, it's sunny-sounding, '60s-influenced, piano-based pop that builds on the winning formula of her 2008 eponymous debut: hooky keys, winking vocals and catchy choruses. But even her non-French speaking fans can't help but pick up on a few lyrical cues that something has made the 22-year-old blonde more than a little blue. "I was kind of invisible when I was a teenager," Martin says. "I didn't really have a lot of friends. I didn't feel like I belonged anywhere. Then all of a sudden I was releasing a record and everybody knew who I was, especially in Quebec. Suddenly everyone knows your story and it's so weird!"

That sudden fame brought its own strange loneliness, Martin says. On top of the innate learning curve of growing up from an 18-year-old into a 22-year-old, she says she didn't have a clue about boys or managing friendships. And then she had to deal with falling in and out of love in the public eye. "I started getting attached to people who could understand where I was coming from, and the bad part was I was falling in love with these people and I wanted to learn everything from them, and that pretty much set the tone for Blonde."

Martin's reluctant to name her heartbreak, but concedes that it's pretty obvious to whom she's referring: Jay Malinowski, the singer/guitarist for reggae-rock outfit Bedouin Soundclash, and Martin's collaborator on their short-lived indie pop band Armistice. "It's really just a tribute to him," Martin muses. "It was really complicated and I was just pushing him away all the time because I was so scared of being lonely. I really talk about that in the songs."

She laughingly says she's her own worst enemy, but she's working through her insecurities. "I cope with it through writing and that's really what happened [with Blonde]."

Coeur de Pirate Grows Up with 'Blonde'

News Nov 11 2011

By Andrea Warner 

Three years ago, Coeur de Pirate's eponymous debut became one of the few French-language albums in Canada to become a crossover hit with English speakers, thanks in part to singer-songwriter Béatrice Martin's modern, youthful twist on the timeless art of piano-driven pop. Her follow-up album, the recently released Blonde, finds 22-year-old Martin all grown up, delving deep into the '60s for influences from the Beatles and the Beach Boys, crafting sunny-sounding tunes about heartbreak and loneliness.

"I was thrown into an adult world quite quickly," Martin tells Exclaim! from her home base of Montreal. "I was kind of invisible when I was a teenager. I didn't really have a lot of friends. I didn't feel like I belonged anywhere. Then all of a sudden I was releasing a record and everybody knew who I was, especially in Quebec. And suddenly everyone knows your story and it's so weird."

She admits that on the surface it would seem as if she had it all after Coeur de Pirate came out. She wanted to fit in and please people, so she attended everything and in return everyone told her she was wonderful.

"I felt really lonely at times," she laughs, ruefully. "Not a lot of people understand that, because they're all like, 'This is so great! You should be livin' the life!' And it was more complicated than that. Through all of it, I didn't really know how to act with boys and keep friends because I was always away. I started getting attached to people who could understand where I was coming from, and the bad part was when I was falling in love with these people and I wanted to learn everything from them, and that pretty much set the tone for Blonde."

The main person she fell in love with was Bedouin Soundclash's Jay Malinowski, with whom she briefly collaborated with as Armistice. She declines to talk specifics about the breakup, but says that the relationship acts as Blonde's throughline, and at first, the songs were written just for her to vent and try to move on, though it took a couple of tries to make it stick.

"There was an angry moving on," Martin laughs. "There's a trying to win back the other person moving on, which is not really moving on, but still. I've been through a couple of phases, especially with this one. I'm really not bitter when it comes to what happened between -- it's fine. It's really just a tribute to him, or how I love too much, maybe? I love too much, but I wasn't even there. It was really complicated and I was just pushing him away all the time because I was so scared of being lonely. I really talk about that in the songs."

Well, if you can understand them. But even if you're not fluent in French, there's a melancholy that lingers just beneath the surface of many of the songs, even though sonically the album is arguably one of the happiest, swingy-iest, warmest kiss-offs yet. Particularly since the album ends on an emotional high note: a song inspired by her current boyfriend and a welcome forecast to the future. Martin is actively working to make sure her romantic past doesn't repeat itself.

"I was my own worst enemy, it was terrible!" she laughs. "Now how I deal with it is I ask, 'Is this what I want for myself?' Do I want something that will make me feel uncomfortable and insecure, or do I want something that will make me feel better and good and wanted and loved? I think that's just something you have to deal with on your own. But I like to cope with it through writing and that's really what happened [with Blonde]."

Blonde is out now on Grosse Boite, and Coeur de Pirate plays Toronto's Mod Club tonight (November 11).

Feist Exclaim cover

My interview with Feist is also Exclaim's October cover!



"I didn't want to play music anymore. I needed to think maybe I was gonna open a bookstore or learn how to surf and never come back."

It was 2008 and Leslie Feist, Canada's indie pop darling (and occasional Broken Social Scenester) was ready to quit being Feist. For seven years the road was her home, thanks to non-stop touring in support of back-to-back platinum-selling albums Let It Die and The Reminder. During that time, she taught Elmo her famed "1234" song on Sesame Street, provided a soundtrack to the great iPod explosion of 2007, and won a Grammy (as part of Stephen Colbert's 2008 A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All).

"I just wanted to stop and be in one place for more than a day," Feist says. "It's like the way some people take a vacation and travelling to them is a novelty. They cram all their curiosity into seeing something they've never seen, or unwinding and laying still or whatever you seek out in your vacation. To me, coming home and trying to be domestic was equally alien. I still haven't figured it out. I just came back from France and I was home for about two weeks before I noticed, like, why is there no food in my house, why are there are no groceries? There are spiders in the sink. I still don't know how to live in a place even when I'm living in it."

She didn't become a homemaking goddess during her self-imposed exile, but Feist managed to achieve a certain domestic bliss: she sewed, harvested and devoured at least one crop of tomatoes, and adopted two dogs so she could bask in the warmth of "furry love crawling all over" her. Though she eschewed the road, she indulged in periodic side projects: a documentary about the making of The Reminder called Look At What the Light Did Now, recordings with Wilco and Beck, and an experimental choral piece using puppets with visual artist Clea Minaker for Casteliers, Montreal's contemporary puppet festival. Despite the soil on her fingertips and the bounty of distractions, she also found herself engaged in a lengthy staring contest with her guitar, which sat perched in the corner of her room.

The guitar won.

Metals, Feist's fourth album, hits stores October 4. Some of its influences sound familiar, but there are dramatic forays into thumping beats, shouted choruses, and punched-up rock riffs. This is what her time off wrought: a fresh start.

"When I first got off the road, it was of the mindset that I don't care about the future, I just care that today I am not on tour anymore," Feist says. "I'm not picking up that guitar over there and it's sort of squinting at me and I'm going to squint back at it but I'm not going to play it. It's not that I hated music – I wanted to do other things, some normal stuff. I took enough time off that there was a fresh, mental clean slate. That guitar I was squinting at, eventually I picked it up. Eventually I got curious about it again. And then not only was I curious but I got completely ignited and I was back."

Feist wrote the album last fall, locking herself inside a derelict garage in her own backyard. She soundproofed the space and covered up the windows, creating her own deprivation tank in which she erected a little altar decorated with postcards alongside her piano, a floor tom and a broken, vintage Sears Roebuck guitar and amp. It was a guitar she didn't know very well, but after years of treading water – revisiting the same music, songs, and her beloved Guild Starfire – she felt it was time for a new conversation.

It was in the autumn that I really started, in September or October 2010, when the film [Look At What the Light Did Now] was done," Feist says. "I was so sick of looking at the past, via that film, that I really was much more curious about looking into the future, which I've never done. I'm pretty nostalgic. I've never been interested in the future, but I just got whiplash from too much looking back."

For some artists, moving forward means working with new producers and collaborators, creating new conversations with actual people, not just guitars. But, when one's long-time collaborators and friends are the chameleon-like musicians/producers Chilly Gonzales and Mocky, vocal shorthand can spark a much wilder reinvention.

Of all the people on the planet, I knew they were the last two on earth that would want me to recreate Reminder-type tones," Feist says. "Like, 'Yeah, The Reminder, that was ten seconds in the total story, so why would we?' I knew there was going to be the chance to really begin again. This record is not about recreating a past or reacting to it, too much."

Metals definitely indicates a forward momentum. Sonically, it represents the connective tissue between Feist's past and present, with echoes of whisper-light whimsical pop and jazz, and achingly beautiful moments of piano threaded with crunchier guitars, throbbingly sexy drums, and twinkles of flute.

Gonzales has nothing but praise for the ways in which his old friend has grown as a musician. In an email from his home base in Paris, he offered his analysis of Metals: "The songwriting is less conventional than before. She's being much bolder about getting away from default song structures than I could probably ever be. The songs sound simple but are actually more complex than one would think. She would play me a sketch, and I would feel as if I had understood the song – but when I tried to play along, I noticed a lot of counter-intuitive details. Her singing and guitar playing are just off the charts now since she toured so much. Having so-called 'credibility' – my fingers can hardly type the words – and big success is a huge boost to her confidence. Between the first two albums she went far into 'owning' every note of the album and was rewarded by all that love – so the leap between [The Reminder] and [Metals] is a bigger and more sure-footed leap. The wind is at her back now."

The only person who might not know that is Feist herself. After all, this success is still relatively new. And worldwide name recognition can't eliminate the inescapable truth that creativity is a tempestuous mistress and she never knows when, or if, inspiration will strike.

Every song I write I think is going to be the last one," Feist admits, laughing. "It's as if I'm of ten minds and I'm standing in a circle and each of me takes a tiny baby step closer to the centre of the circle and each of me is holding something in their hands until we all get to the very centre and we all converge and it's sort of hard to know what the hell is going on. Sonically, thematically or a little totem, an oracular totem that I kind of superstitiously fill with meaning – all the things that sort of converge to become a song, are weirdly, totally unknown. Of my minds, it sort of seems to be a collective process in terms of the way I – I'm totally alone, but it's not a quiet, calm place when I'm alone. There's a lot of ruckus in there."

Occasionally the din is coupled with old-fashioned self-esteem issues, which surface even when she's working with two of her closest friends.

I don't know music theory," she says. "Mocky and Gonzo both have degrees in music and they would roll their eyes if they were to read this – I mean, I know what both have achieved has nothing to do with the fact that they know theory – but as someone who's never learned it, it's an intimidating skill to not have in a room full of people who have it, even if they aren't consciously accessing that stuff. Say I'm showing them 'Graveyard,' a song I wrote alone in the room, they have their interpretive conference like, 'Yeah, on the B minor we should probably not have the F sharp because that will make it too major,' where all I can contribute is, 'Wait that resolves it too much, no, no, that sounds like an unfinished thought, this has to still be a question by the end!'"

She laughs as she says this, but Gonzales insists that Feist's intuitive approach to songwriting is a credit, not a detriment.

Leslie has a huge part of her creativity that is feeling-based so she pushes me to get to that emotional intensity," he offers. "She was the A&R for Solo Piano, what we called 'PrePro RepCon' for pre-production repertoire consultant. She helped choose the songs, which takes of the songs, and the album order. The whole thing was strongly under her influence and it's my best-loved album, I think, and that's largely to her credit."

Feist calls it speaking in purples and mauves, and she's grateful to have this shorthand between them. She believes that while she may write the songs, they're really just a starting point, a common ground for the three of them before they begin arranging.

It's why I credit the arrangement, because between the writing and the producing there is that part of things," Feist explains. "When you're a solo artist, you're bringing people in who don't normally play with you, so those decisions on what the bass is going to do and how the drums are going to interact, all of that stuff, is kind of a much more conscious effort of arrangement. Not in a write-it-down-on-musical-staff or something, but it's definitely a conscious part of the equation. That's inventing the landscape, which we did together."

After arranging in January, Feist, Gonzales, Mocky, percussionist Dean Stone and keyboardist Brian LeBarto holed up in Big Sur, California, and recorded the album in a little over two weeks. From embracing music again to wrapping Metals, it took just five months – a privileged position for any musician. And Feist's good fortune is not lost on her. Her gratitude and delight at making another record is genuine: 15 years ago, she didn't know if she would ever sing again due to major vocal cord strain from her five years touring with all-girl punk band Placebo.

"Other singers, we roll our eyes about it all the time because there isn't a formula to make it all work out: You have to take flights, you have to sleep in the wrong kinds of environments, you have to maybe not sleep at all sometimes," she says. But instead of lingering on the what-ifs, she clings to a realization she arrived at many years ago on the road. "I was in Manchester, that drench-y, cold place, sick and unhappy and playing a solo show at some university. I remember having the conscious thought that there's nothing I can do right now except use whatever's left and use it with the same intention, which isn't necessarily about hitting notes. It was just a moment of freeing myself from any type of precision-chasing."

But, that threat to her livelihood and her main creative outlet remains a very real ghost that – fresh start or not – lingers over every decision she makes to this day.

I think about that a lot [not being able to sing]," Feist admits. "There's a kind of helplessness you feel, like why do you wake up one Tuesday where I just can't [sing], I don't have it. I'm exhausted or been in an air-conditioned room and I'm just rendered completely hobbled. It has so little to do with what I can control. It's made me obsessively into guitar tone because you can touch something and move a knob and you can control it with your hands. It's just a freedom. I always say to people in my band that they can go out and have a conversation and drinks or whatever and I'm kind of like the maimed, lonely singer, drinking tons of water, watching some movie in the bus, because it is something I have to be careful about. I don't know what I'd do if I couldn't [sing]." 

Bon Iver Exclaim cover

My interview with Justin Vernon of Bon Iver is this month's Exclaim cover story.

Bon Iver

Imaginary Places

Features On the Cover Jul 2011

By Andrea Warner 

"I just don't give a shit if I make a record that everyone hates if I love it."

Justin Vernon, aka Bon Iver, is a few weeks from launching his highly-anticipated second album, the eponymous Bon Iver, Bon Iver. It's been four years since he self-released For Emma, Forever Ago, a painfully beautiful debut with a compelling mythology surrounding his now-infamous heartbreak. The blogosphere was almost united in singing its praises, building such strong word-of-mouth that it was re-released a year later by indie label Jagjaguwar.

Between then and now is the stuff of a surreal, Hollywood-styled fairytale – complete with a cameo from hip-hop's crown prince, Kanye West, and falling in love with a famous musician he'd idolized. But, the 30-year-old singer-songwriter has no interest in succumbing to the glitz and glamour. For example, rather than sitting in some board room in an office building in LA or New York, Vernon prefers to fulfil this press obligation from the normalcy of his pre-fame existence: walking around his hometown of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, killing time while his "shitty car" gets a tune up.

I can't seem to give up the ghosts in this one," Vernon says. He's referring to the car, but it's fair to say the sentiment has broader implications.

The first time Vernon was in this position – waiting for his record to drop – barely anybody knew For Emma was coming and very few people cared. Four years later, the situation couldn't be more different. "It's kind of weird, to be honest with you, sitting here and doing interviews at this time and having the album not really be out there," Vernon admits. "The first record, I just made and it was just out there, it could do whatever it wanted to, I didn't have to sell it. I feel a little bit of like we're selling it now, but whatever, I'll live and learn. It's the waiting and like, marketing plans and shit for your record. It's what everyone does, I guess."

The stakes are higher this time around – he has labels, management, and those pesky marketing plans – but Vernon tried not to think about it when he sat down to make his second record, resolute in his convictions: art first, fuck business. And his commitment to his craft has paid dividends. Sceptics worried about a sophomore slump, or those concerned about Vernon's transition from DIY-indie to label-indie, can take a seat. Bon Iver is big, bold and beautifully orchestrated. It's a more challenging, sonically complex album than For Emma, that Vernon says, start to finish, is even more personal.

"The first thing I worked on, the riff and the beginning melodies, was the first song on the record, 'Perth,' back in early 2008," Vernon recalls. "The reason I called it that right away, is because I was with a guy that I didn't know very well. In the three days we were supposed to spend together – he's a music video maker – in those three days, his best friend [Heath Ledger] died. And his best friend was from Perth. It just sort of became the beginning of the record. And Perth has such a feeling of isolation, and also it rhymes with birth, and every song I ended up making after that just sort of drifted towards that theme, tying themselves to places and trying to explain what places are and what places aren't."

The entire album carries that theme, each song crafted and named for a specific place. "Beth/Rest," the album's risky closer is a glorious summation of the album's numerable '80s flourishes – electronic keyboards, vocal distortion, moody saxophone. The Decemberists' Colin Meloy is such a fan of the song, he shared via Twitter that it "never fails to evoke fifth grade me, desperately making out with the crook of my arm." Vernon laughs at the one-sentence review, but also feels compelled to defend it with the earnestness of someone who can't quite take a gently teasing compliment.

That song is like I bit off a lot because I'm going to have to chew on it for a while," he says. "People – and I don't really blame them because I'd probably be doing the same thing – but for me, living with that song and writing it when I wrote it, and putting it at the end of this album that I'm so, so proud of to be truthfully honest, the song doesn't come from some kind of ironic push. I don't know how to explain it. It's like, deeply serious." He laughs at himself, but continues. "All those sounds... have been crafted by engineers and people trying to be cool, but I don't give a shit about being cool. I definitely recognize using the sounds that I did in that song might seem like I was trying to do something to not be cool, but that's just how uncool I am, I guess."

He may be deeply sensitive, but it's hard to argue he's uncool. If his reluctant celebrity status doesn't afford a certain level of cool, then his starring role as Kanye West's right hand man last year does. Their collaboration on West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was the stuff of a hipster's wet dream, and Vernon himself sounds like he still can't quite believe it was real.

"We'd heard that he was interested, but I was working on my album and said, 'Well, if Kanye wants to work together, have him come out to Wisconsin," Vernon recalls. "But then his flight got cancelled and we ended up having a really long conversation on the phone and he's just like, 'Dude, it's fuckin' cold in Wisconsin. Let's hang out in Hawaii.' So we did the Hawaii thing for about three weeks."

Vernon's fame got him on Kanye's radar, and it's also partly responsible for the new love in his life: Toronto-based alt-country singer-songwriter Kathleen Edwards. According to published reports, the two struck up a professional friendship, which quickly turned personal over a year ago. He's also co-producing her upcoming fourth album. One can easily hear Vernon's grin as he talks about how important she's been to him, even before they knew each other.

I've been a fan since 2003 when Failer came out and meeting her last year, it's just been one of the best relationships, you know?" Vernon says. "It's been so fun and easy and just being such a fan of her music – I'm like beyond a fan of her music. Like, her music was my music for many years. Like, it was just crazy how much I needed her records to be in my life."

Statements like these echo the appealing foundations of Bon Iver's music: an unguarded sincerity that should seem fragile, until one realizes how much strength there is in honesty. It's what his fans respond to, consciously or not. Vernon admits that his heart-on-his-sleeve approach has made parts of his life difficult, but it's preferable to the industry's status quo of manufactured bullshit.

He credits his first industry friends, Kelly Crisp and Ivan Howard, the couple behind indie rock band the Rosebuds, with showing him the importance of being genuine as well as negotiating the move from DIY to label artist. Back in 2007, when he was deep in the mire of his pre-For Emma existence – reeling from the dissolution of his band, DeYarmond Edison, and his romantic relationship – Vernon found himself alone and far from home in Raleigh, NC, contemplating the remnants of his tattered life. He had few friends and nowhere to go, until he met Crisp and Howard.

They'd heard I kinda knew how to record stuff and produce so we kind of went out on a limb to work with each other," Vernon says. "We didn't really know much about each other, but I ended up staying there for about six weeks making a record [Night of the Furies] with them. They were really my first friends who were in a professional band that toured... I was in awe of them and learned from them. They were so kind and so do-it-yourself, like truly indie and independent. And watching their relationship with Merge blossom – I don't know. Going right from there to going to work on my album – it was actually during that six weeks that I wrote my first song, 'Flume', for my record and then I took that and went up to the cabin. It was my last time in Raleigh before I went off and made that record, so it was a really, really big deal."

After For Emma came out, Vernon could have just blended into a sea of similarly bearded folkies, but his falsetto and the layers of lush harmonies and distinctive chamber-folk rhythms were a stark contrast to his genre's brethren. People responded to his unique sound, possibly in part just celebrating diversity in a fairly conformist, commercially-driven industry.

"Even really good people who are in A&R departments across the country – they are, unfortunately, not in a job of creativity, they're in a job of trying to match artists with a market," Vernon says. "We can sit around and talk about it, but guess what happens every ten years or so: somebody comes along and changes the entire game with their music. It's important for an artist to have some knowledge of that sort of thing, if only so they know they should be concentrating on music and nothing else."

The maelstrom of changes between then and now have inevitably taken their toll. While he's grateful for the luxury to afford making the kind of record he wanted to, there are other demands with which he's still struggling, such as the business of self-promotion.

There's this New York Times article coming out this week and there's nothing in it that isn't true, it's just that the little facts that were chosen to try to like, oh, what is it called, amplify the writer's wishes, or like, the editor trying to make something 'sexy' or something," Vernon says. "It seems so obvious to me. It just feels like Sesame Street to me, you know. But at the same time, that's how everything is, that's how all things are minus a few random artists or writers that choose to not play those games. That's what we were talking about early on with Kelly and the Rosebuds and DIY. Don't play the fuckin' games."

Keeping company with Kanye and falling in love with Kathleen are also indicative of just how surreal Vernon's journey from no-name to brand name has been. But, in part, it's Vernon's contempt for the hype machine – which has caused more than a few egos in the music business to self-combust – and his Midwestern sensibilities that have helped ground him. It's also provided some much-needed perspective about his new album, successful or not.

You start to believe for a quick second, like, oh man, maybe I am weirdly chosen for some weird fuckin' thing, but luckily I realized that's just totally inappropriate and self-involved. I'd much rather just have a life that I get to choose and change and adapt and grow and love and die, you know?" he laughs. "It's much more enriching for me, and I feel much more healthy in the relationships with the people around me as opposed to what you could end up feeling like if you follow that other path down the road. With that sort of attitude, I just don't feel any pressure. I'll just sink back in to my Wisconsin-y vibe and keep doing what I always did."

Bon Iver Exclaim online news piece

My online news piece can be read at Exclaim.ca

 

Justin Vernon Talks New Bon Iver Album and Its Heath Ledger Connection

News Jun 15 2011

By Andrea Warner


Justin Vernon, aka Bon Iver, hasn't been twiddling his thumbs since the release of his critically acclaimed, self-released 2007 debut For Emma, Forever Ago. He was Kanye West's unlikely accomplice on the hip-hop artist's last album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. He founded Chigliak Records, his own imprint on his home label Jagjaguwar. He's also co-producing Kathleen Edwards's upcoming album with Arcade Fire studio whiz Craig Silvey. And, of course, writing and recording his own remarkable follow-up, the wildly inventive and sonically ambitious Bon Iver, streaming here on Exclaim! this week.

The new self-title album is a gorgeous confluence of '80s influences, from synthesizers to saxophones, with Vernon's trademark falsetto leading the gentle charge through his own orchestrated wonderland.

"It came from building sounds in the studio... It was music and melody and taking it one step further, kind of calling it vocal sound, like vocal sort-of ramblings dictate melody and also which vowel I'd be using. You basically sing until you've written a song in non-English, if you will." Vernon laughs in a recent Exclaim! interview. "And then I sit down and basically try to dictate what it could be, and then I spend a year taking those dictations and trying to make them into something that would work as a piece of lyrics."

But it wouldn't be a Bon Iver album if there weren't a deeply personal story at its source.

"The first thing I worked on, the riff and the beginning melodies, was the first song on the record, 'Perth,'" Vernon says. "That was back in early 2008. The reason I called it that right away, is because I was with a guy that I didn't know very well, but basically, it's a long story, but in the three days we were supposed to spend together -- he's a music video maker -- in those three days, his best friend [Heath Ledger] died. And his best friend was from Perth. It just sort of became the beginning of the record. And Perth has such a feeling of isolation, and also it rhymes with birth, and every song I ended up making after that just sort of drifted towards that theme, tying themselves to places and trying to explain what places are and what places aren't."

Every song on the album takes its title from a city or a town, and Canada's represented beautifully by "Calgary." It's a sweetly soaring number, and Vernon admits that the Alberta city has been long-romanticized in his mind, even though he's never been there.

"Just being from the upper Midwest, I think there's an affinity [for Canada] with most folks that I grew up with," Vernon laughs. "I've never been to Calgary, still, and I've always imagined Calgary and, like, thought about Calgary, but the song's kind of like a wedding vow song between two people that haven't met yet, you know, sort of making promises to each other and I think that's what that's about. There's a danger and a beauty to envisioning a form, in this case love, or a place where love exists or can come from."

This kind of sincerity is evident throughout Bon Iver, which is in keeping with Vernon's desire to ignore the trappings of fame and focus instead on making music that makes him happy. Despite the massive differences in his life between releasing his first album and now -- Kanye on speed dial, label support, money -- Vernon had just one goal for himself when he began working on his follow-up.

"I sat down to make it and I was just like, I'm just gonna pretend -- no, not even pretend, I'm going to assume that no one's going to give a shit, 'cause why would they?" Vernon asks. "I'm gonna be making a record that's just for me and my best friends and try to make us happy, because that's all I can really do or experience or understand."

Bon Iver is set for release on Tuesday (June 21) via Jagjaguwar. You can currently stream the record here on Exclaim.ca and view the project's upcoming North American tour dates below.

Little Scream

My interview with Little Scream is in this month's Exclaim!

The Art of Little Scream

Interviews FROM THE MAGAZINE Apr 2011

By Andrea Warner

Montreal-based singer-songwriter Little Scream, aka Laurel Sprengelmeyer, has plenty to shout about. Set to receive her Canadian citizenship later this year, she's just a few weeks away from embarking on a North American tour, and finally, after four years in the making, Little Scream's debut album, The Golden Record, hits stores on April 12. Though it's not unusual to spend a lot of time crafting one's debut, Sprengelmeyer laughingly acknowledges she took her sweet time getting here. After following a boyfriend to Montreal, the Iowa-born musician found herself distracted by her new adopted hometown. She played in a band, but didn't record anything until she started working on Little Scream songs in 2007.

I was working two jobs and playing shows whenever I could, but it kind of took a while to get everything together to record an album," she says. "It's been a little bit slow, but I'm glad it's finally happening!" The wait was worth it. The Golden Record is a moody, bold, artful declaration that Sprengelmeyer admits borrows from a host of influences: Joni Mitchell, Cocteau Twins and Ricki Lee Jones all serve as inspirations. But, ultimately it's Arcade Fire and Bell Orchestre's Richard Reed Parry, who serves as the album's co-producer, that Sprengelmeyer credits with helping her shape a recording aesthetic.

Aesthetic is a word that comes up often when discussing Little Scream. Sprengelmeyer, who also painted the album's cover illustration, admits that crafting an overall creative experience is part of what makes Little Scream a labour of love. "I want to have everything that comes out reflect part of that aesthetic, and I don't always have time," she laughs. "I'm looking forward to focusing on other aspects of the creative process: sonic landscapes that are coming out in live performances, the visuals in live performances. It's this cohesive picture in my mind. Whether or not that translates into reality..." Sprengelmeyer trails off, a Little Scream with no words left.

My cover story for Exclaim! The Decemberists :)

The Decemberists

Barnstorming

Features ON THE COVER Feb 2011

By Andrea Warner 

"After this record, we're going to take a nice long break." 

Colin Meloy isn't ready to call it quits with his indie rock band the Decemberists, but after a decade together he's looking ahead ― which means tying up some loose ends in the form of the band's sixth album, The King is Dead.

While nothing in the band's discography hinted at this destination, Meloy himself, like a fairy tale character trailing breadcrumbs through the forest, has spent the last ten years winding his way back to this very spot: a rough and tumble, country-inflected folk-rock record. Flirting with vintage Americana and Celtic rhythms, The King is Dead might not sound like a Decemberists' album, but Meloy insists that it's a "natural progression."

"It was something we ― or at least I ― have been threatening to do for the last three records," Meloy says. "None of this crazy, over-the-top stuff ― we're gonna do it in a barn in two weeks, that was sort of the joke. But each record seemed to get more and more complex, and each time we finished it was the same threat: the next one's going to be the barn record. I think after The Hazards of Love, it was the perfect time to make good on that promise. It felt like a natural and very normal thing to do to make something more stripped-down."

The left turn into alt-country territory might seem natural to Meloy, but the band's fans might be a bit more confused. At the very least, the blueprint for Hazards, a high-concept rock opera, had been laid in the foundations of the Decemberists' earlier work. Picaresque (from 2005) and The Crane Wife (2006) are thematically different, but utilize many of the same components ― storytelling songs, dramatic flourishes, interweaving mythologies, song cycles, and everything from Gypsy beats to chamber pop ― that can be found on Hazards.

If anything, The King is Dead, is the antithesis of its predecessor, down to earth and humble, whereas Hazards might be viewed as the zenith of Meloy's excessive ambitions. Meloy admits that the band, including guitarist Chris Funk, keyboardist Jenny Conlee, bassist Nate Query, and drummer John Moen, were grateful to get back to basics.

"I think everyone was a little relieved," he laughs. "I mean Crane Wife, a lot of that stuff was written specifically for Jenny and Chris in mind, because I knew that they would love playing that. The Hazards of Love, I thought it might be a little much to take in, but I knew that they'd come around to it and be into it. It didn't take a whole lot of convincing, but there was a little bit of head scratching. With this one, I think we're all on the same page, and it would be a very simple and organic process, and to a certain degree it was. It was very intuitive for everybody."

The last time Meloy made a record that sounded even remotely like this was over a decade ago when he lived in Montana and fronted an alt-country band called Tarkio. With a return to his roots, Meloy wanted to recreate one of his favourite elements in classic "barn" country-rock: marrying male and female vocals. Famed Americana singer-songwriter, Gillian Welch, a California girl with Nashville in her blood and a permanent twang in her voice, was his first choice.

"Colin had in mind a consistent ― not quite a duet voice, but he had a consistent other character, female, in his head for this song cycle, this set of tunes," Welch says. "Flatteringly, I was his first choice."

Welch, a staple of the American roots scene, has appeared sparingly in the indie music realm, recording songs with Bright Eyes and Ryan Adams in the past. Her biggest crossover hit came from the somewhat surprising popularity of the Grammy Award-winning O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, on which Welch sang two songs and also associate produced. But it's her critically acclaimed 2002 effort, Time (The Revelator) that established Welch as one of the best singer-songwriters of her generation.

The pair had sung together once before, when the Decemberists came through Nashville, and Welch and her partner, David Rawlings went to see them play. Welch remembers them hopping up on stage and singing AC/DC's "Sin City" and Welch's own "Miss Ohio."

"It was a really fantastically pleasant surprise to get in there, get into the studio, and have the tracks start coming up," Welch says. "I think we have a really above-average natural blend!" She laughs at her own review of their harmonies. "One thing I wasn't really sure about is that Colin's got that really exciting, emotional quiver voice, and I sing much more like a hillbilly in that there's no vibrato. I just go 'heeeh'" ― she makes a car honkin sound ― "and it's much more old time. I wasn't really sure what was going to happen.

"Once we got in there it went really easily and organically," Welch continues. "The only thing was, I needed lyric sheets! His vocabulary is a little less colloquial than mine, to put it mildly. One of the beautiful things about his writing are these unexpected words, which you don't get from just anybody."

On the surface, Meloy and Welch couldn't make music that's more different, but both are narrative writers, excelling in songs that tell complete stories. The stories they tell, though, are drastically different. Whole message boards and websites are devoted to dissecting Meloy's numerous literary references, while Welch writes songs that are rooted in everyday experiences, the grittier the better.

"I think she brought kind of a swagger [to the album]," Meloy says. "She was such an amazing and versatile voice, and such a character and quality to it, I think it imprints itself into the songs and on certain songs it brings out kind of a sweetness and there's other songs, like 'Down By the Water' and 'Rise to Me,' it really gives it this rough swagger, which is really an eye-opening thing to hear."

If Welch brought the swagger, R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck brought the wish-fulfilment.

"I mentioned to him, while we were on the road, that I was writing fake Peter Buck riffs, and I would love it if he would consider coming and playing them," Meloy laughs. "Everything that [the Decemberists have] done is sort of an R.E.M. paean ― some more than others. On this one, I was really just trying to get back to the stuff that drew me into music and R.E.M. and the Smiths were a big part of that. I feel like I was deliberately trying to reconnect with that."

When it came time to record The King is Dead, Meloy made good on his promise (or threat) to shack up in a barn. The Decemberists had recorded Picaresque in a church, but the intervening years were spent in traditional recording studios. They recorded in rural Oregon and its influence is palpable. The album's spirit is rooted in that rustic environment, a perfect complement to the songs' earthy vibes, many of which have nature-based references.

A lot of the songs are meditations on our immediate surroundings as Pacific North-westerners," Meloy says. "So part of it was, 'Let's get out in the countryside and record this,' so when you look out the window you see an open field and when you take a lunch break, you go and sit by a campfire, or when you have to go to the bathroom, you have to put on your Wellies and go slog through mud and go to an outhouse. In some ways it's a nice thing, and a bit more challenging certainly, but it adds the intangible dimension to the record itself."

That element has fascinated Meloy ever since he first heard Scottish folk-rock band the Waterboys' 1988 album Fisherman's Blues, which was recorded in Spiddal House on the West coast of Ireland. For Meloy, the house became as vital a component as any of the musicians.

"In many respects, this is my attempt ― or our attempt ― at making Fisherman's Blues. Who knows how many records I have left in me or how many years I have left on this earth?" Meloy ponders. "I could get hit by a bus at any moment and I would not have made my version of Fisherman's Blues, which is an album that resonated hugely for me."

Between its homage to the Waterboys, R.E.M., and traditional "barn" country-rock, The King is Dead could come off as a melting pot of disparate effects. Instead, the album feels like Meloy's most personal work. In part, this is thanks to his decision to mine his past for influences. He's also, finally, letting his guard down as a writer. But it hasn't been an easy place to get to.

Though he possesses one of the most unique songwriting voices in modern music, Meloy knows that not everyone appreciates his ability to negotiate the rougher edges of a sentence. "A decade ago, I was working at a pizza place and living in a warehouse and freaking out over my student loans," Meloy recalls, laughing. "It was a different time. I would get called 'college boy' at the pizza place, because I was the only one there with a college degree, which is sort of sad, in a way, but it's probably true. What was I doing there?" In short, paying the rent.

"College boy" has made the most of his time between then and now. Since the band's first album, Meloy has been exorcising his English degree demons with tangents into British folklore, Japanese fantasy, various historical eras, ultimately creating his own strange mythological world on Hazards. The King is Dead is the first album that's mostly devoid of lavishly orchestrated narratives, consisting instead of his most personal songs to date.

Yeah, I think that would be fair to say," Meloy says. "I mean, certainly it has its moments of flights of fancy, I can't really get away from that, but the songs are personal meditations about my immediate surroundings and a lot about family life." ("Henry," for instance, finds Meloy offering advice to his young son.) "I'm not as sensitive as I was about [exposing myself]. Initially, I was very protective of my private life. I think it was just my initial reaction to becoming a not-so-private person, inevitably with whatever degree of so-called fame, you give away a bit of your privacy and I think that was a sort of shock to me. Maybe I've just grown more accustomed to it, so I've just grown more comfortable to discussing these things."

Going forward, Meloy and his family are likely going to be the subject of even further scrutiny, thanks to a three-book deal he and his wife, artist Carson Ellis, signed in 2010. The first book, Wildwood, launches in October later this year. It's another example of Meloy closing the gap on a ten-year cycle.

My wife Carson and I have been wanting to do this for a really long time," Meloy says. "Our collaboration as writer and illustrator actually pre-dates the Decemberists. We started working on a long-form, illustrated novel in 2000, 2001, and had to shelve it just because of our own separate careers happening. Finally we're getting back to it."

Meloy anticipates that the next four years will be about a lot of "book-ish" things. He lets out a loud exhale when asked how songwriting and novel writing differ for him. "God, I feel like the only thing that is similar about them is that they involve the written word!" he says. "That's where the similarity ends. Two processes couldn't be more different involving the same core element. Writing a song can take five minutes. Writing a paragraph can take all day. It's almost like a different definition of time. I'm still trying to get my head wrapped around it. They both really satisfy in a way that's very different from each other, and I feel like I'm really driven to do both things, but they're so very different."

Having turned The King is Dead into a catch-all for all his various influences, homages, and inspirations, and with his publishing obligations ahead of him, one can't help but ask Meloy where he sees himself, and by extension, the Decemberists going. He acknowledges the band will spend a lot of the year touring in support of this album, but he's not making any promises about the future. "While I won't ever leave music completely, I am really excited about exploring other modes of expression, stuff I've been putting off."

Arcade Fire

My Exclaim cover story: an interview with Win Butler of Arcade Fire!

Features YEAR IN REVIEW Dec 2010

• Top Stories
• Pop & Rock: Year in Review 2010
• Metal: Year in Review 2010
• Hip-Hop: Year in Review 2010
• Punk: Year in Review 2010
• Folk & Country: Year in Review 2010
• Electronic: Year in Review 2010
• Soul and R&B: Year in Review 2010
• Improv & Avant-Garde: Year in Review 2010
• The Russian Futurists Clean Up
• Kids and Explosions

1. Arcade Fire The Suburbs (Merge)
Anything you think is great, half the people think is bullshit." As the lead singer and co-songwriter of Arcade Fire, arguably the biggest indie band in the world, Win Butler knows a thing or two about maintaining perspective. "There's been backlash since we put out the first EP," he says. "It's been a normal part of my life for the better part of a decade. I think we learned pretty early on that the way people perceive you is outta your hands."

The few months have done nothing to quell the outraged masses. It's been a phenomenal year for the sprawling, Montreal-based outfit. Their third album, The Suburbs, debuted at number one on all the major charts following its August release, and earned critical raves for its compelling narrative structure and the surprisingly fun sonic left turn towards '80s influences like Depeche Mode. Now Arcade Fire find themselves poised to take the top spot on many year-end lists, as they do here, while on the receiving end of thinly-veiled potshots from bands like Kings of Leon, quoted disparaging large bands with members "doing everything but contributing musically" and being "dicks."

You know, go back and read articles on the Clash and people were slagging them," Butler says. "Almost every record I've ever loved, the band was already broken up or it was ten years removed from reading any press about them. Really, the music has to stand for itself. I love that idea that in ten or 15 years, you hear how it holds up and that the album speaks for itself."

The Suburbs could be one of those that stands the test of time. It speaks to generations of people who identify with the album's varying themes of isolation in commonality and loneliness in superficial communities. It's a perfect actualization of the suburbs as metaphor for the classic North American dream: a smoothly perfect veneer covering up the lush complexity of motivation. It's not just metaphor, but goes a step further to exemplify the quintessential Arcade Fire sound ― a controlled frenzy, pushing and reaching for something more.

The album's visceral qualities are no accident. Until the age of five, Butler lived in a small hippie town outside of Lake Tahoe, but the rest of his childhood was spent in a Texas suburb following his family's relocation to Houston. "I really remember being a little kid and getting off the plane in Houston and feeling this incredible heat," Butler recalls. "It was the summertime, and there it's always like 95 percent humidity and 100 degrees and I really remember ― just the landscape and the feeling of the town and the weather, it was so extremely foreign."

It was a feeling that came rushing back to him just a few years ago. "It would always rain a lot in Houston, but it was this warm rain that doesn't happen much in Montreal. We were down last summer in Louisiana and it started raining and all of a sudden these crazy memories came back that I hadn't thought about in a long time, just because of a similarity in weather. It's interesting, the things you hold on to."

Butler's reluctant to overanalyze his songwriting process, declining to say whether he and his wife and bandmate, Regine Chassagne, dug deep into their own suburban childhoods while writing the record. But he does admit that they found it "interesting" comparing their experiences of growing up.

"Regine grew up on the south shore of Montreal, and I've been to her childhood home over there, and it's dramatically different from Houston, but there are a lot more similarities than you would think. The emotional landscape is very similar at least," he laughs. "There's something similar about growing up in the suburbs. You can have your first kiss in a T.G.I. Friday's, but it's still your first kiss. There's a universality to it you can appreciate."

It's Arcade Fire's ability to capture and translate those moments meaningfully that recently sent fans into an early-grieving process when Butler was quoted saying he couldn't see himself doing "this" in ten years. Butler sighs.

"People take stuff like that pretty out of context," he says. "I can't see us doing exactly what we do indefinitely. Once you lose that connection to the songs, I don't think there's really any point to doing it exactly the same way. The reason people connect to this band is that when we play live, every night we really try to connect to the songs. If the audience connects to the songs, too, we kind of meet in the middle."

Butler alludes back to the Kings of Leon comment, a sentiment he's heard plenty of times before. "Sometimes we get flack for the kind of theatricality to the way we perform, but it comes from a very real place," he insists. "It comes from the music. Our band, we're like sprinters. We put this insane amount of energy into our shows. We can't really tour and behave exactly the same way as other rock bands often do, because it takes so much out of us to do the show."

Butler says he's excited to find new ways to relate to the material and the other musicians, evolving as they go. But, the longevity of Arcade Fire remains a question that's never fully answered. "It's not like there's an expiration date on doing it, but it's like being an athlete. People stop playing hockey at a certain age. You can't be getting punched in the face forever," he jokes. "That being said, it's been really inspiring seeing Springsteen playing and he's probably in the best shape of his life... But our band is busting our ass a lot harder than the E Street Band, you know what I mean?" he asks, laughing.

With no plans to call it a day in the immediate future, Butler hopes to spend the winter writing, giving Arcade Fire a chance to break up the touring cycle. "The greatest thrill in the world is the first time you play a new song, bringing a new song into the world," Butler says. "I'm really excited to get into that head space again." Excited but guarded, of course. Asked if he can offer a sneak preview of the fourth album's direction, Butler's reply is succinct but perfectly pleasant.

"Hell, no."
Andrea Warner

Arcade Fire

My online news story on Arcade Fire can be found at Exclaim.ca

Win Butler Sheds More Light on Arcade Fire's "Expiration Date"

By Andrea Warner

It's been a big year for Arcade Fire. The Suburbs, the band's third album, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard charts in August, and lead singer Win Butler immediate freaked out the masses with his Spin magazine quote about "pop being a young man's game," saying he couldn't see doing this in another ten years. But as Butler recently explained to Exclaim!, people like to blow things out of proportion.

"People take stuff like that pretty out of context," he says. "I think what I mean is that I can't really see us doing exactly what we do indefinitely. Once you lose that connection to the songs, I don't think there's really any point to doing it exactly the same way."

The physicality of Arcade Fire's live shows have won them legions of adoring fans, but it's that very factor that Butler's alluding to.

"It's not like there's an expiration date on doing it, but it is like being an athlete," Butler explains. "People stop playing hockey at a certain age. You can't be getting punched in the face forever."

Now Butler's looking back at the year that's passed, though one foot's already planted in the future.

Butler admits, "2010's a big blur. When I'm writing the date on a cheque, I still have to always check the year. This next year, I'm really hoping we'll do a bunch of writing this winter and break up the touring cycle a little bit. For me, the greatest thrill in the world is the first time you play a new song and bringing a new song into the world. I'm really excited to get into that head space again.

"We're writing all the time. If I get a couple days off, we've been kind of taking little chunks of time off in between tours, and usually the first couple days I just sleep all day and it's kind of like this recovery period. Then by day three I'm like, 'Okay, I'm bored now. Let's play music.' It's nice to still be bored."

The Suburbs is out now on the band's own Sonovox records in Canada.

Scott Pilgrim's Musical Little Life

My cover story for August's Exclaim! features Edgar Wright, Bryan Lee O'Malley, Jason Schwartzman, and more talking about the music of Scott Pilgrim.

Scott Pilgrim's Musical Little Life By Andrea Warner Scott Pilgrim will knock you on your ass. His superpower? Being awesome. Thanks to Bryan Lee O'Malley's six-part graphic novel series, the 23-year-old slacker musician has become the unlikely literary hero for a new generation ― a jobless bass player in a band called Sex Bob-omb who transforms into a lover and a fighter when he falls for ninja delivery girl Ramona Flowers and learns he'll have to defeat her seven evil exes. This month he embarks on the coveted, if rocky, path set out before him by the likes of Batman and Spider-Man when director Edgar Wright's Scott Pilgrim vs. The World hits the big screen on August 13. A live action adaptation of all six books, filmed and set in Toronto, the movie features Brampton-born Michael Cera, the young prince of awkward comedy, in the title role, Jason Schwartzman as a big bad evil ex, and a host of high profile Canadian bands in the background. Scott Pilgrim's ascent to the top of the pop culture pyramid is the culmination of six years of slow-building buzz. The series is perhaps the first to successfully meld all aspects of geek culture, from videogames to comic books to music, in a humorous and heartfelt way. The story also flirts with a slightly alternative reality: a Toronto with subspace travel, where defeated exes dissolve into coins the hero can collect. Think of it as the precursor to the popularity of The Big Bang Theory and a further indication of the importance of San Diego's Comic-Con: geeks have inherited the earth, they are the harbingers of cool. What really attracted me is that the books are amazing and the central premise is really interesting," director Wright says. "It was a chance to make a comedy that was really magical and fantastical. It has a great sense of metaphor and there's this fantastic chance to be really visually interesting with it." If the British filmmaker (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) is successful, he will have accomplished more than just making a hit out of his biggest film to date. Wright will be presenting a new blueprint for the Hollywood blockbuster: make it all about the music. "I'd done comedy and action before, but I hadn't really had a chance to do a film that indulges my passion in music as well," Wright says. The writer-director got his wish when he was recruited to adapt Scott Pilgrim. Both the film and the books are in essence a love story set to music; the universe of O'Malley's creation was ultimately inspired by just one song: Plumtree's "Scott Pilgrim." And like all the best love stories, this one started with a mixtape. "I made this mixtape called Scott Songs before I even started writing [the books], so I had this mood board I would go back to all the time," O'Malley says. Scott Songs became the sonic foundation for the architecture ― thematic, visual, and narrative ― of Scott Pilgrim's "precious little life." It included everything from '70s AM gold to '90s Canadian indie rock, including Plumtree, the relatively obscure and long defunct, all-girl Halifax band. (See sidebar.) Plumtree's songs are way more complicated than they seem," O'Malley says. "They seem like harmless pop songs, but there are complicated guitar parts and the lyrics have a lot more shading. Obviously I listened to them in high school and that was a big influence on the way I view the world and the way I write." The band also featured prominently on the first mixtape O'Malley gave Wright, and their shared penchant for playlists helped forge their initial bond. "Scott Pilgrim's" lyrics ("I've loved you for a thousand years") are a faint blueprint for the series, which follow Scott and Ramona's tumultuous relationship and the ongoing fight against her evil exes. As their collaborative relationship deepened, Wright and O'Malley bonded further over music. According to O'Malley, songs from those initial compilations were played on set during filming, and several became the bones of the film's soundtrack, itself the last word in Scott Pilgrim mixtapes. An energetic explosion of indie rock, snarling garage punk, and Britpop, the album features a diverse group of award-winning musicians, from Beck to Broken Social Scene. Wright wanted to stay true to O'Malley's books by filming in Toronto, though as of press time we can't confirm which local haunts made it into the movie. We can confirm that it was Canadian filmmakers and music aficionados Bruce McDonald and Don McKellar who pointed Wright towards Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning of BSS to help authenticate the film's Toronto vibe. "Someone arranged for Edgar and I to go have dinner and we kind of went on this blind date," laughs Drew. The "date" went well, and BSS ended up working on the film's score with music supervisor Nigel Godrich (famed Radiohead producer), as well as writing the music and performing as rival punk band Crash and the Boys with actor Erik Knudsen. "In the book there's this joke that Crash and the Boys do songs that are 0.4 seconds long and stuff," O'Malley laughs. "Kevin and Brendan, they really embraced that. Like, really ridiculous, songs that are only one note. Their longest song is, like, 50 seconds... It sounds kind of like the shitty bands I used to play in, but way better obviously." Grammy-winner Beck wrote the music for Pilgrim's fictional band Sex Bob-omb, as well as writing and performing an original song. "When I first heard Beck was doing it, I was like, wow, that's really weird," O'Malley admits. "I was a fan of his Mutations, and his singles, like the crazy over-the-top stuff, but I didn't know the breadth of his work." Wright was convinced that Beck was the right choice, particularly when he revealed that his inspiration for Sex Bob-omb's songs came from the first book where O'Malley had scrawled 'The Archies' across a drum riser. He ended up turning the songs around in just 72 hours. "I think it goes back to some of his earlier, more punky garage stuff," Wright says. "The Sex Bob-omb songs are very much in that raw and rough sounding garage-bubble gum mode." The actors portraying Sex Bob-omb also needed to know how to play, so Wright hired Sloan's Chris Murphy to run his own school of rock on set, working tightly with Cera, Alison Pill, and Mark Webber. "Michael can play guitar and he's a multi-instrumentalist, but Mark and Alison both had to learn their instruments," Wright explains. "The Canadians in the cast ― well, like, Alison was extremely dumbstruck that Chris Murphy was going to be her teacher." According to Wright, music became such a huge part of the process that everyone kept rocking behind the scenes, thanks in part to the numerous actors who happen to lead double lives as musicians. "Michael's a really good guitarist, and you can see he really goes for it," Wright says. "There are two scenes in the film where he's playing live and he sings the Beck 'Ramona' song himself live on guitar, and he sings the whole thing in one shot. He was completely on top of it. There was a lot of music on set. Even people not playing [in the movie], like Jason Schwartzman ― there were all these guitars around, either prop guitars or people just bringing them in, so there was a lot of music in between takes." Schwartzman, a long time fan of Wright's work and a musician himself (The O.C. theme song "California" is by his former band Phantom Planet), plays Gideon Graves, the leader of Ramona's evil exes. He bonded with the director the same way O'Malley did: through mixtapes and play lists. "We met in Los Angeles, and we found a lot of the same things funny and liked a lot of the same music and it just seemed like, you know, we could be friends," Schwartzman says. "My dream was to work with Edgar one day and we became friends after having that meeting, emailing each other movies to see and records to listen to and it was an exciting friendship. One day he called me and we had a Scott Pilgrim discussion. He described the movie, gave me all of the books, and he gave me the script. It was very unusual. That's not usually how ― or at least for me ― that seems like how a lot of the big stars get a movie, you know what I mean? I'm used to auditioning ― and failing ― a lot." The sixth and final book, which came out July 20, is the first one to prominently feature Schwartzman's character. It hadn't even been written when filming began, though O'Malley provided an outline to help finalize the script. Schwartzman says he relied on music to help him flesh out the character. It's a practice he's come by honestly after a long working relationship with filmmaker Wes Anderson. "When I first met Wes, right after I got the part in Rushmore, he gave me a cassette tape of the soundtrack to Rushmore," Schwartzman says. "We would shoot the movie with the songs actually playing on set, and I think that just kind of spoiled me or conditioned me to make music so much a part of what I do. One thing that I find really helps ― well, it's a really dumb thing, but, like you hear about Robert DeNiro gaining all this weight or Christian Bale losing all this weight ― I like to make iPod play lists for my characters. So it's not as in-depth, but I make these play lists and then I listen to that music exclusively." (For the record, Gideon's play list includes Pulp, Stereolab and Blur.) And, also just growing up in the '80s and then the '90s, and watching really cheesy TV shows and the girl walks away so queue the song," Schwartzman laughs. "When I was in high school and a girl would leave me, I would queue the song in my own head. I've always done everything to music." Exactly like something Scott Pilgrim might say.
******************** Who is the real Scott Pilgrim? Carla Gillis of folk-pop group Sister is a little floored. Her former band, Plumtree, a female power pop quartet from Halifax, broke up ten years ago, but suddenly they are the second song on a soundtrack to a movie they inadvertently inspired, sandwiched between Beck and Frank Black. "It's crazy!" Gillis laughs. "Never in our wildest dreams did we ever imagine something like that would happen." It's all thanks to their song "Scott Pilgrim," a catchy ditty with driving guitar riffs, an earnest low-budget video heavy on cheesy charm that has over 40,000 views on YouTube. There isn't really a Scott Pilgrim," Gillis reveals. "It's just a general feeling of pining for people but feeling a bit helpless on acting on those feelings." In fact, the song title came after the song, the result of an inside joke. "We had a friend named Scott Ingram, and someone was telling a story about him at practice," Gillis explains. "We'd also been recording with a guy named Philip Pilgrim, and whoever was telling this story about Scott mixed up the two names and said Scott Pilgrim and we thought it was the funniest thing, just trying to imagine these two guys merged as one, and we were like, okay, that'll be the name for our new song." The real Scott Ingram, himself a former Exclaim! writer, has another "starring" role in the book series: after author Bryan Lee O'Malley met him, he named Ramona's third evil ex Todd Ingram. "I read online that he chose Todd because it's a bigger, more bad-ass version of Scott," Ingram laughs.

The Pack a.d. feature

My more in-depth feature on The Pack A.D. is in this month's Exclaim!

The Challenges of Pack A.D. By Andrea Warner "This is the first album we've recorded that we're kind of happy with, which is either a good thing, or could be the worst sign ever. We don't know yet." Maya Miller, drummer for the East Vancouver-based garage rock duo the Pack A.D., laughs a little, but she's not entirely joking. We Kill Computers is Miller's and singer-guitarist Becky Black's third record in four years, and the pair have made a name for themselves as badass, blues-loving, rock hellions. Critics, bloggers, and fans wax poetic about the pair's unique ability to harken back to a time decidedly cooler and yank it by the chest hairs into the future. And, while it's true that in the past the Pack A.D.'s blues-drenched sound evoked a stylized imagery — raw and raucous, new yet familiar — the duo are taking deliberate steps away from what's defined them. Over the phone in a car in the middle of a mall parking lot in London, ON, Miller is candid about the band's mini-evolution. The whole reason we were even playing in this blues vein, to be honest, is because it came easier," Miller admits. "And over the last few years, we've just started moving away from that naturally." We Kill Computers packs plenty of evidence to support the duo's musical exploration, from the incendiary tribal beats of "B.C. Is On Fire" to the verging-on-indie-pop "Crazy," which has become the album's first radio single. ("It actually has a chorus," Miller points out. "None of our other songs do.") Computers also treads familiar territory, with classic blues and rock numbers like openers "Deer" and "Everyone Looks Like Everyone," but even these bear signs of blurring the lines between soundscapes. Computers itself is a little bit strange to me, because it touches on a few different genres and sounds so separate from each other," Miller says. "If you put 'BC Is On Fire' next to 'Big Anvil' or 'Cobra Matte' it's a little bit strange, like it's kind of a different band, but I like it." Computers also indicates a bit of a shift in the way the Pack A.D. do business. After essentially shrugging themselves into existence — their reactions to being asked to play their first show and record their first album, Tintype, two months later: "Sure, why not?" — Miller acknowledges it has been a massive learning curve. We spent maybe $200 on Tintype," Miller laughs. "And it's totally rough and in our opinion, kind of awful, but apparently has an awful sort-of charm to it, so that's fine. We recorded it and we didn't know what we were doing and that's why it's 17 songs long. We were like, well, we don't know if we'll ever record another album, so let's just put every song on it even if we don't like it." Now, just four years later, they've recently hired a manager, Aaron Schubert, who helped resurrect Vancouver's Biltmore Cabaret, whom they initiated trial-by-fire style during one of their five South by Southwest shows in March. "One of the shows was a terrible technical disaster and nothing was working, and we did manage to play some songs, but we were also very drunk," Miller recalls, almost giddily. "For the first time ever after a show we got wrist-slapped to lay off the booze, which we found secretly kind of awesome, because we don't actually get drunk that often. And we have a reputation of being drinkers, but we're not really drinkers, so the one time we get wasted and he has to see it, and we're the bad kids now. It was kind of gratifying to have someone play dad." Even with a dad figure to keep them in line, the pair's reputation as "bad kids" has been years in the making. Miller admits that when she and Black scrap, it's mostly the silent treatment for a couple hours until one of them cracks the other up, usually by reading something stupid on a signpost. When prompted to reveal their most badass behaviour, Miller stumbles momentarily, first revealing they played Magic the Gathering in the bar before a show recently, then recalling when Black drunkenly punched a fan in the face during a gig, before confessing that she herself likes to drink wine and take sleeping pills when flying. But, even with all that under their belts, it might just be that the most badass things about them are their reproductive systems. Because they like to play loud music, rock out, and sometimes start shit in mosh pits, plenty of concert-goers and reviewers have seemed stupidly stunned that Miller and Black are — gasp— girls. They write that we play like we have 'balls' like it's some sort of credit," Miller sighs audibly. "At first we weren't really aware of [the sexism], but we've noticed it a lot more lately. Or people coming up to us after shows and saying, 'Wow, you really rock out for girls!' And, what does that have to do with it? Our approach is that we're human beings playing music and we play it the way we like to play. Maybe it seems strange to play so loud. I guess women are supposed to just be sluts. I say sluts, because women are often marketed in a Shakira fashion. And I think it's really unfortunate, because it just makes the music irrelevant, and it's a time-old tradition of how women are supposed to sell themselves based on how they look instead of what they're doing, and I think it's really shitty and I think it comes up a lot. I wish it didn't, and it's nice when it doesn't. Ughh, you know neither of us is on stage thinking, 'I am a woman playing music.' If you think about it, it's like, you're not walking to a bus stop thinking I am a woman walking to a bus stop, or I am a woman going to dinner. Men don't think about it like that. And it's frustrating, because we're not just a duo, we're a lady duo. It's weird. And hopefully it will start going away at some point."