Diamond Rings

 My interview with Diamond Rings (aka John O'Regan) is in this week's WE. 

MUSIC: The substance and sparkle of Diamond Rings

Posted By: Andrea Warner

03/09/2011 12:00 AM

 

Diamond Rings, also known as John O’Regan, takes WE’s call at a pit stop in Fredericksburg, Texas. He and his tour mates, Canadian indie-rockers PS I Love You, are stretching their legs outside a custom winery, en route, eventually, to their co-headlining Vancouver gig Friday, Mar. 11, at the Biltmore. “It’s hot,” he says. “Oh, with daily tastings! Maybe when we’re done, we’ll taste some wine.”

This life on the road is a far cry from O’Regan’s recent stint opening for pop star Robyn, and it’s an even bigger leap from where Diamond Rings got its start: as a collection of acoustic songs O’Regan, a founding member and the lead singer of post-punk outfit the D’ubervilles, wrote while hospitalized over the summer in 2008 for Crohn’s disease. Since then, O’Regan has transitioned into his Diamond Rings persona with the same glam-adrogynous fury that made David Bowie famous, and released his debut, Special Affections, to critical acclaim, fan fervour, and plenty of speculation about his personal life.

WE: I’m fairly sure this is the best art to have ever been made from a hospital bed.
John O’Regan: [Laughs] Thanks!

How did that experience help shape the sound?
It didn’t really. I mean, I wrote some of the songs, not the whole record, when I was in the hospital and they were all acoustic. Other than ‘All Yr Songs,” which, you know, I had a shitty keyboard and a shitty guitar and the drum sound on that album is from the keyboard, it’s Casio rapman, but like I didn’t even conceptualize the songs as being electronic pop songs until later when I was out and about, living in the city, and messing with Garage Band for fun.

Was there a part of you that had always wanted to make music that sounded like that?
It was more recent. I was really into post-punk and more straight-up indie-sounding rock music when I was younger, and this is the result of listening to more music and refining my palette a little, finding a certain sensibility that I’m drawn to and trying to achieve that sonically.

Do you remember the first song you ever wrote?
Yeah. It wasn’t very good, but I remember every song I’ve ever written. Well, at least the ones I write down and record.

So the ones when you’re just singing about getting out of the shower...
Yeah, I don’t really... I’m always busy, I’m always working on stuff, but I’m not the kind of artist who’s churning out a track a day. I think maybe even from the background I come from, studying art formally in school, having a degree in fine art, and the program I was in in Guelph was really based in conceptual work, steeped in theory, and what we had to do as artists was learning how to critique and defend our own stuff. I have a very sensitive filter to my own ideas, and if I’m not feeling something, I generally try to cut my losses and work on something else. It’s really hard for me to finish a song and have it be a throw-away. If I get to the point where it’s all done, I’m usually really happy with it.

Your music videos support that as well. They’re DIY, but very adorable.
We’re going for what we can do, we’re having fun. I work with my friends and family, literally, and it’s just about being active and learning. Every video’s been a learning process and we’re constantly trying to critique it and refining that whole process. With Diamond Rings, we, and by we I mean myself and Colin Medley, who I live with and who’s directed a lot of my videos, we didn’t want to wait. Typically so many bands in Canada, it’s all about recording an EP and recording an album and maybe you’ll do a video if it does really well. We wanted to do the complete opposite and I think a lot of people responded to that. When the first video came out, no one even knew I’d been recording songs on my own, so it was a big surprise. [Laughs] I think that’s always awesome, especially now. You have to do a lot more in 2011 to stand out away from the pack.

You have a strong aesthetic. Would you call Diamond Rings part performance art?
I’m not going to kid myself into thinking I’m necessarily a performance artist. I am an artist, that’s what I know. I know how to mix my paints better than I know the fret board of a guitar, but I really believe in the power of music to connect people... Performance artist, that’s someone like Chris Burton nailing himself to the roof of a Volkswaggen with the engine running. [Laughs] I don’t think I’m necessarily in that realm... But, maybe now we’re seeing a delineation between a typical gallery space and the concert stage. Maybe they’re not separate entities as they were at one time. I’d like to keep putting more art into what I do, but for now I’m a pop artist.

The media seem obsessed with your identity, specifically who you do or don’t sleep with, which also lends itself to the label of performance art.
People are going to bring whatever they do or don’t want to the table. Because what I’m doing is so striking visually, it ends up being one of the talking points, like, this guy’s wearing makeup, what’s the deal? When we started, it was never really a big deal, it was just the aesthetic I wanted to cultivate. It’s important to what I do, it’s fun, it’s liberating, but that’s all.

Diamond Rings and PS I Love You perform Mar. 11 at the Biltmore, 8pm. Tickets $13 from Zulu, Red Cat Records and TicketWeb.ca.

Indigo Girls

My interview with the Indigo Girls appears in the current issue of Xtra West.

OUT IN FRONT. "It was scary to be gay - we didn't want that to be our identifier at first," the Indigo Girls' Amy Ray (back, with Emily Saliers) admits. "We had mentors who were women artists and had seen them be so pigeonholed."

The Indigo Girls on how they stay relevant
By Andrea Warner

Their image might be as fashionable as socks and sandals, but the Indigo Girls’ Amy Ray and Emily Saliers don’t care.

In fact, the lesbian folk-rock duo has made a career ignoring the naysayers and bulldozing the barriers of convention. How else could they have survived more than 20 years in the music industry, navigating a male-dominated, heterosexual hierarchy?

Ray admits it hasn’t been easy. The Indigo Girls released their first major label album in 1988 and earned a Grammy Award in 1990. They continued to generate Billboard-charting albums, building a large fan base even before joining the women-only Lilith Fair festival, which may have marked the height of their popularity.

“I feel like women are still stuck in that cycle where for a while it’s really trendy to have more strong women and more women played on the radio, and then there’ll be a backlash against it,” Ray says.

She and Saliers agree that rock music is the biggest hurdle for women in music.

“Rock is still really male and really white,” Ray says. “Folk music, that’s where women are either kind of trendy or they’re not.

“When we started, we were coming on the heels of our mentors who had to struggle to have a word in the studio,” she continues. “The producer would run things and take the instruments out of the women’s hands and put them in some studio guy’s hands, and that was the story we were told by our older friends in the corporate major label world. Then Heart came along, and other groups, that made it obvious that women can do it themselves.”

But the Indigo Girls weren’t just women being self-sufficient. They were also lesbians, publicly out in virtually untested waters.

“It was scary to be gay — we didn’t want that to be our identifier at first,” Ray admits. “We had mentors who were women artists and had seen them be so pigeonholed and were so bitter about it. You know, ‘Don’t just play to a gay audience, it will be your doom.’ After our second CD, I started talking more about it in the press, and Emily was coming around to talking about it. We definitely came out through a time when fear was a big part of it.”

Being openly gay allowed the Indigo Girls to mine a built-in audience, but it’s proven to be a double-edged sword. For better or for worse, their music has been described as “political lesbian folk music.”

“We might sing to an audience of political lesbians, and we might be political lesbians, but I don’t know if you can categorize our music that way,” Rays says. “I understand why people use that. I think we’re still in a queer movement in music where we’re trying to be part of an infrastructure where the gatekeepers are still straight white men. But I don’t really pay attention to it anymore. In my opinion, it’s not really a way to define music.... It’s like when they say, ‘That guy plays white hip hop.’ You know they don’t mean anything good,” Ray laughs.

“I can see why we’re labelled as such,” Saliers says. “There’s not a lot of open-mindedness. Once you’re gay, you’re gay and you’re pegged. My first fear was that we would be pigeonholed and we were, but that’s just short-mindedness. It’s just life. Not all of our songs have political content, and they’re not all about lesbian reality, though that’s the lens with which we view life, obviously. Can’t get around that.”

It’s also impossible to ignore the fact that plenty of other rock and pop acts have surpassed the Indigo Girls in popularity. Lady Gaga (Ray is a huge fan), Katy Perry and a host of others have recently claimed the spotlight, but neither Saliers or Ray is concerned about fading into obscurity just yet.

“The proof is in young people experiencing our music in a positive way. If you can speak to young people, then I think your music is still relevant. We’ve been around so long that our first generation of fans all have kids now, practically, so we get their kids, thank God,” Saliers laughs.

“Amy and I write songs about what’s happening in the world, and we’re deeply troubled by war and injustice and inspired by nature, and that subject matter will always be relevant. It’s a human concern; it doesn’t matter if you’re a lesbian, an artist or a postal worker.”

The recently remounted Lilith Fair will likely broaden the Indigo Girls’ audience, and the timing couldn’t be better. They’ve recently given the middle finger to conventional record labels, successfully going independent again and reclaiming their roots with their most recent album, Poseidon and the Bitter Bug. Their last independent release was 25 years ago.

“It’s so liberating,” Saliers says. “There’s nothing a label can do for us that we can’t do on our own. We have the same management and the same agent, and we’ve had the same touring people for a long time, so we can do it ourselves. There’s nothing a label does for us except get in our way, slow down the process of getting stuff out and take a chunk of our money.”

“We’re older, we’ve been around for a long time, we’re queer, we’re political, all those things that record labels don’t know how to deal with,” Ray adds. “It’s funny. It’s like they were better about it in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s, dealing with that strident artist personality that’s doing something against the grain.

“Major labels are for people who can be part of the mainstream and that’s fine, but we don’t fit in there,” Ray says. “It feels good to be doing what we want. That’s how we started and it’s always been where my heart’s at.”

Hal Willner's Neil Young Project w/ Joan as Policewoman

My interview with Joan as Policewoman appears in this week's WE.

Under the watchful eye of a Policewoman: Joan Wasser honours a Canadian icon for the second time with the Neil Young Project.

Credit: supplied

Indie-rocker staying Young at heart

Posted By: Andrea Warner

02/10/2010 9:00 AM

The last time producer and Saturday Night Live music supervisor Hal Willner and singer-songwriter Joan Wasser (aka Joan as Policewoman) worked together on the Neil Young Project was 2004. A sprawling tribute to the iconic Canadian singer-songwriter, the touring series featured over 30 musicians performing for nearly three hours. On February 18-19, the Cultural Olympiad is presenting a remount of this ambitious effort featuring a hodge-podge of indie-rock all-stars that includes Lou Reed, Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning of Broken Social Scene, Iron and Wine, and Joan as Policewoman, who’s back as both a performer and the event’s musical director. WE spoke with Wasser about doing it all again, six years older and six years wiser.

How did you get originally get involved with the Neil Young Project?
Hal asked me to be the musical director. I’d known him for a number of years before that and I like him as a friend and appreciate him as a producer and curator.

It’s six years later. Is this latest incarnation an evolution or is it a similar beast to what you put on back then?
Honestly, that original show almost killed me. [Laughs] It was definitely the most work of anything I’d ever done, and that’s saying a lot, because I think a lot of people would probably call me a workaholic or something of that sort. At that point it was a 10-piece band and I got to choose the band, so that was great. I got to work with people that I love. But then you’re also dealing with about 30 singers and the prep time is very small in relation to the amount of work you have to get done. It was fantastic doing it, it was just a gigantic amount of work. It’s going to be a little bit of a different beast this time.

Has Neil Young given you any thoughts about the Project?
He has absolutely nothing to do with it and we’ve had no contact with him, so he cannot be blamed for anything that happens with the show. [Laughs]

Your own biography has featured collaborations with a number of amazing musicians, so this seems right up your alley.
I feel like Hal did really choose me to do this because of my background. I grew up playing in bands as a musician only, as a violin player. I studied it classically and played in an orchestra and chamber music. It was a really natural transition to start playing in rock and pop bands, and then my name kind of got out there as people wanted to have violin on their records. But then I started writing my own songs and became the leader of my band, and I really just love playing with other people. I really work with each singer to make each arrangement of the song something everyone’s really happy with. I have no interest of pushing my own ideas on a song someone else will be singing, unless they want my ideas. I also understand the discomfort of jumping up with a band you don’t know.

What are the different things that you bring to the project now, versus then?
I’d done about six months of touring solo, and I had a trio in New York City, but since then I’ve been touring pretty much non-stop with my own music since 2006. I just got home today from doing some shows, then I leave on Tuesday for Europe, and then I go to Ethiopia to do this project that Damon Albarn (Blur, Gorillaz) asked me to do called Africa Express, then Vancouver. But I’ve just been on the go since [the Neil Young Project] happened, so I’m actually really looking forward to doing it and finding out for myself how it’s going to change. I certainly don’t have the anxiety that I had originally, because I know much more. Things happen the way they want, so I’m looking forward to approaching it in a more flowing manner.

Sarah Slean

My interview with Sarah Slean appears in WE and at WestEnder.com

Sarah Slean: “I need to be constantly evolving” — and that means working outside the major-label industry.

MUSIC: Sarah Slean revels in newfound freedom

Posted By: Andrea Warner

With her intelligent songs, swan-like neck, and ruler-perfect posture, Sarah Slean personifies the word regal. Heck, even her speech patterns are so pleasantly polite and mannered, it’s hard not to mentally curtsy at the end of our conversation. (It’s no real surprise she called her 2008 album The Baroness.) The Toronto-based singer-songwriter (and part-time painter and photographer) has spent 10 years cultivating her cabaret-style pop, defying the traditional conventions of career pursuit with a lengthy sojourn in Paris and a baby grand piano at the ready.

Having amicably ditched long-time label Warner Music a few months ago, Slean is now officially self-employed, overseeing every aspect of her career — from her website to her costumes to carbon-offsetting her current Recessionista tour. While becoming a true Renaissance woman, she’s also found time to get engaged and become a university graduate (a Bachelor of Arts in music and philosophy, natch).

WE spoke with Slean over the phone from her home.

Can you talk a little bit about your decision to leave Warner and go indie?

Slean: Sure. I have nothing but great things to say about Warner Music. The people there were incredible. They did the very best with the system and machinery that exists [there], but for an artist like me who’s never really going to be a major radio artist — and I’m constantly changing my sound and experimenting. You know, I’m not doing one thing and making five albums and hoping people catch on. I need to be constantly evolving. And [Warner] perfectly understood that. I’m really excited now to have this business where I know every arm of it is ethical. It’s important to me to do that, and when you’re with a major company like that, you’re not really sure how things are going down. So, I really want to keep a watchful eye on my business and make sure it’s great.

Are you working toward a new album right now?

The next project for me is something called the Art of Time Ensemble. I did a record with these guys, coming out in June, and it’s a handful of jazz and classical musicians and me, and I chose 12 of my favourite songs by Canadian songwriters, and then we did cover versions of them arranged by people for this ensemble. It’s really cool. We recorded on tape — basically live takes — and we’re going to tour that in the fall. Basically, the remainder of the year I’m probably going to be writing.

What’s the biggest difference for you from being in your twenties to now being in your thirties?

[Laughs] Girls love this question! Isn’t this time the best? I’m doing this show on CBC this week about what you’d write in a letter to your 16-year-old self, and I’m thinking: Forget 16! I had it all figured out then. [At] 24, however? I was a real mess then. If I was to write a letter to that person, I’d say, Just relax! Relax and trust that the universe is taking care of you — even though you can’t tell — and everything is going to be fine. I remember some dark nights of the soul from my twenties when I thought, “I cannot go on.” And I can’t fathom having that thought now.

You talked a little bit about how you’re wanting to create different sounds. What are your influences?

Everything: when I read poetry, when I’m curious about the world — which is kind of a constant state for me. I read up on quantum entanglement, and I’m fascinated by all aspects of life. It’s so insanely diverse and complex; everywhere you look, you could pursue something for a lifetime. I’m looking out my window right now and there’s a seagull flying by, and I could study thermal currents forever and never know it all. That, to me, is what’s exciting about getting up every day.

Ting Tings

My interview with Katie White from the Ting Tings appears in this week's WE.

The Ting Tings’ Jules De Martino and Katie White: “We’re still completely normal, but our lives aren’t normal,” says White.

MUSIC: The Ting Tings — from nowhere to everywhere

By Andrea Warner

They’re the U.K.’s prettiest, most perfectly packaged dance-pop duo since... well, ever. But what makes the Ting Tings’ success that much sweeter for Katie White and Jules De Martino, who share vocal and drum duties in the band, is that they’ve done the whole damn thing themselves, shunning label interference by taking charge of everything from aesthetics to sound. They may have the silliest-sounding name on the music scene, but the duo’s debut album, 2008’s We Started Nothing, boasts some of the catchiest, bounce-worthy tunes of recent times.

Their debut single, “That’s Not My Name,” took the top spot on the U.K. singles chart, making them unexpected overnight sensations. The band’s buzz then caught the attention of Apple’s head honchos, who chose “Shut Up and Let Me Go” to anchor last summer’s iPod/iTunes ad campaign. Nowadays, their audience knows no bounds: Whether toddlers or nostalgic Gen-Xers, straight or gay, everyone seems to love the Ting Tings.

Despite a whiplash-inducing year in which they went from unknowns to rock stars, White, calling from the road on the band’s current tour, insists she and De Martino are “completely normal.” Sure, De Martino has to wear sunglasses 24/7, à la Bono, after suffering seizures under the onslaught of flashbulbs on the red carpets. It’s also true that they can’t grocery shop in their home base of Manchester without being mobbed. And, yes, they’ve been on the road almost non-stop, crisscrossing the globe for the better part of the last 16 months. What could be more normal than that?

How did you and Jules come onto each other’s radars?
Katie White: We were in London about five years ago, and he was in a band and I was in a band. Actually, I don’t even know that he was in a band, but he was hanging out with them, and he recognized my accent being from the North of England. We started to write some songs together over the next few months, and we both liked a band called Portishead, and we eventually formed a band [Dear Eskiimo] with another member and that went completely wrong. (Laughs)

What did you want to do differently with the Ting Tings?
We didn’t want to do anything, to be honest. We’d been signed by a major label and dropped, and nobody wanted to work with us. If you’ve been in a band that’s been dropped, you’re not the hottest people around. We had loads of people we thought were our friends, and they just didn’t call us back the next day, and we haven’t spoken with them since. So, it was really weird and we were really down. But we still had three months’ rent on the space we were working with Dear Eskiimo — this space in Manchester that had 40 artist spaces, an art gallery — and we were just hanging out there, seeing what all the artists were doing and watching bands. And we’d honestly given up on thinking were were gonna be successful, that our chance was over, and so we just thought we’d stay until the rent runs out and then worry about what we’re gonna do. So, we were just playing some house parties for our friends — we had two songs, and I’d never played the guitar in my life, I’d just picked it up and started playing it. We didn’t really try, and then suddenly it actually worked! It was like, What the hell, couldn’t we have figured this out five years earlier?

It sounds downright magical.
We have had this year and a half where you constantly pinch yourself, to the point where I start to feel ill because I was so excited. You know, good news after good news, where two months prior to that we had bailiffs come knocking at our door. It was such a contrast: Just like, what the fuck, you know? If anything, what we learned, in retrospect, was to just not listen to anybody, because what we learned is that nobody has a clue what they’re doing, and everybody just bullshits their way through life. In the last band, we took a lot of shit from record labels, like you should wear this and you should write songs like this, and we were really quite naïve. This time, when left to our own devices, it worked, so we just walk around constantly ignoring people now.

The last year’s been incredibly intense for you. Do you feel out of your element, or are you getting used to the attention finally?
We’re used to it now, but it’s — you kind of go a bit weird with it all. You don’t live a normal life. We’re constantly on the go. You can’t really go to the supermarket, because you get constantly stopped by people. We’re stuck in this big bubble of the tour bus that goes around the world and on airplanes and stuff. I think we’ve finally got our heads wrapped around it, but I think if it all ended tomorrow it would take a good year to get back to being a normal person in society... We’re still completely normal, but our lives aren’t normal.

Do you remember playing your first sold-out show?
It’s weird, because we started playing house parties and then we did this festival. We did four house parties in our home and then the BBC in England found us and put us on the [new-band] stage at Glastonbury, which is this huge festival. That was kind of weird, because it was such a big jump. And you know, I can’t even remember the performance, frankly, ’cause we were just shitting ourselves. I’d been playing guitar for about six weeks, and I couldn’t believe I was playing in front of all these people, and I don’t even know what my B chord is — I’m just playing it. That was completely mind-blowing, and then the next day they played our performance on TV, out of, like, 30 bands, and it went out on late-night, but the response from that was huge. And then [producer and label exec] Rick Rubin sent us messages. It just went crazy, crazy, crazy. I’m still kind of scarred from our last band, though. You have to convince all your family members to turn up for gigs.

Ra Ra Riot

My interview with Ra Ra Riot appears in this week's WE.

Rising above adversity: Ra Ra Riot persevered after the death of their drummer in 2007, completing their debut album and initiating a music-oriented philanthropy project in the drummer’s name.

Credit: supplied

By Andrea Warner

Ra Ra Riot’s humble origins are the stuff of dorm-room legend: college kids at Syracuse University, facing graduation and not sure what the future might hold. Most of them were on the cusp of obtaining degrees that had nothing to do with music when they began jamming together, discovering an affinity for Kate Bush, and writing their own songs. Six months after their first hometown show, they became the buzz band of the day — or, at least, of their campus. But it was a tragic accident that ended up launching them onto the mainstream media radar a month before they released their self-titled debut EP in 2007. After playing a show in Providence, Rhode Island, drummer John Pike disappeared into the cold waters of Wilbur’s Point. His body washed up the next day.

The group grieved and persevered, and are now on the second leg of a tour promoting their debut full-length album, The Rhumb Line, which highlights the band’s skill for combining a raft of indie-rock and Britpop influences with a chamber-pop flair (the band’s membership includes cellist Alexandra Lawn and violinist Rebecca Zeller).

Guitarist Milo Bonacci took a quick break from Ra Ra Riot’s U.K. tour to chat with WE.

How does one go from studying architecture to playing guitar in a band?
Milo Bonacci: Well, I grew up playing guitar. Architecture’s a more recent development in my life. I guess when the time came to choose between the band and architecture, I though I could be a 60-year-old architect, but I don’t want to be a 60-year-old rock star necessarily. It was really just, “Let’s do this now while we can, and we’ll figure out our careers afterwards.”

String sections have really found a place in indie-rock over the last several years. Was it a conscious effort by Ra Ra Riot to incorporate that sound?
It was really just the combination of people who were able and willing to spend some time devoted to the band. I don’t think any of us really knew what to expect in the first couple of weeks, but from the start it was really satisfying to have that palette of sonic flavours.

You’ve covered Kate Bush twice now. What’s the draw there?
Originally, we started playing “Hounds of Love” in those first couple weeks when we were first forming, because we just needed songs to play. (laughs) Working on covers in our time together was easier, in some respects, than writing songs, because you can only do that so fast. Very early on, that was a very common bond between us. We were all fascinated by her songwriting. She’s very much an inspiration.

Have you had a chance to meet her?
No, no. (laughs) I think that’s a long way off. I’ve never even considered the possibility.

What are some key mistakes that up-and-coming bands should watch out for?
The most important thing is to play music that you’re passionate about and that you love. The worst thing is when you see a band and nobody is that interested in the music that they’re making. You have to love it if you expect anybody else to love it also.

What is the John Pike Memorial Project?
Basically, it would be a network of musicians and songwriters that people could use to further their own projects or ideas, part of that being a lending library — a library of musical instruments people could borrow. The ultimate goal is that there would be recording studios or free places where people could explore their interests. Mainly, it would encourage people to explore their creative energies instead of smothering it before it starts. It’s sort of designed to further the energy John had as a person. He was the type who, if he had an interest in something, he’d go out and read every book about it, explore the subject, learn how to play the instrument. This would allow for that sort of process. If all goes well, something really great could come out of it.

Belle Orchestre

My interview with Belle Orchestre appears online at WestEnder.com

Belle Orchestre

Belle Orchestre burns while Arcade Fire is dampened

Posted By: Andrea Warner

Instrumental pop isn’t for everyone, but listeners who appreciate soundscapes upon which to scribble their own narrative have fallen head over heels for Bell Orchestre. The Montreal-based sextet released their 2005 debut, Recording a Tape the Colour of the Light, while two of its members, Richard Reed Parry and Sarah Neufeld, were on hiatus from their other full-time gig with a little band called Arcade Fire.

Now, four years later — again while Arcade Fire is taking some downtime — Bell Orchestre is hitting the road in support of its second album, As Seen Through the Windows (due out in March). The band has upped the quirk quotient this time around, borrowing from plenty of styles to create an album that delivers a different experience on every track, from the Far East influences of “Elephant” to the spare, cold moan of Neufeld’s violin throughout “Icicles_Bicycles.”

Due back in Vancouver next week, WE talked with Neufeld, a former Vancouver resident.

You’re from Vancouver Island, but you lived in Vancouver before heading to Montreal, right?
Neufeld: I lived in Vancouver for a year, and I think I moved three times during that year. I was in the West End, the East Side, and Chinatown. It was one of those formative years. I used to work at Uprising Breads on Commercial, and I have such fond memories of that place. The former owner always wanted to hire musicians or artists or dancers — people he could just have a chat with, maybe not so efficient at mopping floors. [laughs] I was terrified on the first closing shift I had. This is a stupid story, but we would sweep and sometimes wax our floors, but I grew up in a country house — we didn’t have a mop. So, the first time I closed, they were like, “Okay, there’s the mop,” and I was like, “How do I do this?” All of a sudden, I was totally humbled.

What made you decide to pack up and go to Montreal?
Both of my parents had done that at that age. It seemed like a natural thing to do, to see a bit more of the world. I never backpacked around Europe or anything, but I felt like I should go to school, and I’d only applied to Concordia [in Montreal] and Capilano [in North Vancouver]. At that time, I wanted to stick mostly to violin performance, and I wasn’t interested in a hardline classical program; I wanted to choose faculty that would support improvisation on my instrument. It just felt more exciting and like I was moving forward [by going to Concordia rather than Capilano]. And my best friend lived out there and I knew a bunch of people who played in bands on Constellation Records.

In the chicken-or-the-egg way, did Bell Orchestre exist before Arcade Fire?
Yeah, but one of our first real shows, as Bell Orchestre, was with Arcade Fire, before Richie [Parry] was even playing with them. It was just this crazy party, and it was the first time we’d even seen them perform. Arcade Fire developed much quicker than we did, and it took us a long time to figure out we [Bell Orchestre] were even a band.

While you’re touring with Bell Orchestre, is Arcade Fire talking about recording a new album? Will you be caught in between both?
Yeah, I’m imagining it will be something like that... my gut tells me before 2010. I don’t drive the other ship, so I can’t really say.

Did you have any idea when you were younger that this could be the life of a classically trained musician?
My musical upbringing was so varied and confusing, I never felt like I fit into the classical world — I had just as much folk, and I did a lot of Irish stuff as a kid. The only way that my mom could make me practice was by playing this game where we would improvise and copy each other, so that was really what I wanted to be doing... I wanted to be in a band, and I quit everything at one point and was playing guitar and everybody was like, “You’re making the worst mistake of your life! Anybody can play guitar,” and the violin at that point was already an extension of my body. I’d been playing since I was two years old.

Violinists seem like good, proper people. Do you have a bad-ass side?
You’re quite right about the stereotypes of properness. To be a real classical violinist — which is why I couldn’t do it — you need to be completely devoted to it. Those people practice for five hours a day minimum, and maybe there’s a life outside of that, but I couldn’t do it. Am I a bad-ass because I have to have a life outside my practice room? [laughs] I don’t know. Sure. I’m a dropout violinist. I always want my teachers to see me with Bell Orchestre, but then I don’t want them to because my technique is all off. Like, my bow arm is totally lazy or whatever.

Broken Social Scene

My interview with Broken Social Scene's Brendan Canning appears in this week's WE.

Band may not come exactly as shown: Broken Social Scene, in one of their many incarnations. (Inset: founding member Brendan Canning.)

About 10 years ago, two guys in Toronto got together and, a couple of years later, released an atmospheric art-rock album that was virtually impossible to replicate live as a duo. A few well-placed phone calls later, they had drafted in numerous friends on an array of instruments, ultimately creating a signature widescreen post-rock sound on follow-up album You Forgot it in People (2002) that would come to define Broken Social Scene. A sort of mother ship for Canada’s recent rash of successful indie musicians, Feist, Final Fantasy, Metric, Stars, and Land of Talk are just a few bands with roots in BSS.

A co-headlining gig with Tegan and Sara brings the ever-mutating collective back to Vancouver this week as part of the Cultural Olympiad. WE caught up with founding member Brendan Canning from his home in Toronto.

I heard you were walking the dog when I first called. What kind of dog do you have?

Canning: We got a little chihuahua half-breed, a little chihuahua mutt. He’s quite cute, and we got him a little black-and-white camouflage jacket for the winter. (laughs) He’s not like a little pipsqueak either; he’s a big dog.

What’s the touring lineup for BSS right now?

It’s sort of the same as last year. We’re going out as an eight-piece: Kevin [Drew], Justin [Peroff], Charlie [Spearin], Andrew [Whiteman], Sam [Goldberg], Leon [Kingstone], and instead of Liz [Powell] with us, who plays in Land of Talk, it’s Lisa Lobsinger, who was with us in 2006 in Vancouver. She kind of floats in and out of the band.

You’re playing with Tegan and Sara when you’re here.

Yeah. Who knows, maybe we can even steal those guys for a song. It’s on my to-do list to call those guys.

The band’s Wikipedia page is this pretty great who’s-who of indie music in Canada. It seems like everyone’s been affiliated with you at some point, and some of the most successful indie musicians of the last five years have had something to do with BSS. What draws you all together?

I don’t know. Just between all of us we know a lot of people, and I think our whole thing has always been to be really as inclusive as we can, and a lot of the time we’re looking for people. The last year of touring, in 2008, we were getting different horn sections in different cities, and different vocalist who we’d never met before. I think we just try to keep that up, and it makes it more fun for us. If the shows can vary night to night — I mean, especially with bringing in different vocalists, it’s always sort of a kick. You meet this woman in the afternoon and you do a little soundcheck, but then the lights go down you have no idea what this person’s about to do on stage or what their moves are going to be like. So, it’s always pretty entertaining in that regard.

Anyone who stands out for you?

There was this one girl in Taipei who was really great. There were a couple different singers in Mexico City who did really well. There was a girl in Singapore, it was practically like Broken Social Scene Idol. She was really, really goin’ for it. It was quite funny. At one moment she’d be grabbing Kevin by the sleeve and singing really close to him, and then just throwing him away at the end of her line and really being theatrical about it. That was pretty hilarious.

Are you venturing toward another BSS album? [The group’s last album came out in 2005.]

Venturing... I mean, we don’t have any real firm plans, but we’re definitely in the talking-about-it stage. Everyone seems pretty excited this year to actually make a record, but there’s just no point in putting any real pressure on us to do that. It just wouldn’t be as much fun if we say, “Alright, we’ve got an October release so we really have to get this record in the can by May so we plan for press.” I mean, Charlie’s got a record coming out next month called The Happiness Project, and Andrew’s got his Apostle of Hustle record, and, unofficially, Kevin and I are still touring our records [solo albums released as part of the Broken Social Scene presents... series). There’s a wealth of material, but I think we will try to bust out a couple new jams on this upcoming run.

Matt & Kim

My interview with Matt & Kim appears in this week's WE.

Matt & Kim prepare to leave their mark on New York City.

MUSIC: Matt & Kim dare the hipsters to get happy

By Andrea Warner

Indie-band stereotypes abound in pop duo Matt and Kim. Based in Brooklyn? Yep. Met in art school? ’Natch. Nerdy glasses, tight jeans, and a nasal twang? Of course. And yet, Matt Johnson and Kim Schifino have one major quality that sets them apart from the other too-cool-for-school hipster bands who practice their pouts before propping up their instruments: They are the happiest damn people ever, and they’re not afraid to show it.

Matt & Kim’s brand of dance-punk-pop music sounds, at first listen, like kids goofing off in their parents’ basement — which isn’t far from the truth. The couple fell in love six years ago, made art, and decided to take up learning new instruments. Rather than focus on chords and scales, Kim banged away on the drums, Matt plunked out melodies on his keyboard, and they began writing songs by way of practicing.

The duo’s live shows and online presence garnered them a rabid fan base of kids who love to dance, thrash, and fling themselves with wild abandon. While preparing to embark on a North American tour for their new album, The Grand, Matt checked in last week from NYC.

I visited your MySpace page earlier today and one of your fans wrote, “I was listening to ‘Daylight’ [from Grand] earlier today, and my older brother asked, ‘Is this Weird Al?’”

Johnson: (laughs for a long time) Nice. I haven’t seen that comment yet, but I remember thinking true success was if Weird Al parodied one of your songs.

I was watching videos of your live shows and you look really happy onstage. What do you love about performing?

What is there not to love about performing, you know? There are so many bands who look really bored, and I don’t really get that — that’s more confusing to me. Playing music was always something I only did because I really like doing it. It had been an expensive habit for years, and now somehow I make a living doing it. We do it ’cause it’s fun. Kim, though — if she’s terrified, she just starts laughing and smiling. It’s sort of her defense. If she’s really nervous, too, in the movie theatre, if someone’s getting cut to pieces, she’s just laughing hysterically, so people just think she’s totally fucked up.

Was there anything different for you in writing Grand?

Oh, yeah, it was completely different. The first one [2006’s self-titled debut album], I mean, the songs we’d written were from within the first year we’d started even trying to play, and also we recorded that in nine days. This new recording we did over nine months. We were touring so much, every couple weeks we’d come back and work on it for a week. But it gave us a fresh perspective, like, “Oh, yeah, that sucks” or “That works.”

The dance-punk sound has really flourished in the last couple of years. Do you think it’s an emotional antidote to the political and economic climate? Are we just desperate for something joyful?

Well, in New York, for a long time there were these types of bands that were just too worried about looking cool to have any fun. I think people are just wanting to have fun with music again and have fun at shows again. And maybe that is part of all this shit that’s happening. Finally, I think, things are looking up. January 20th is coming, and Mr. Obama will be in.

Yeah, the national tension level should ease in about a week.

And it’s the day our album comes out. A pretty important day in American history. (laughs) 

Little Joy

My interview with the band Little Joy appears in this week's WE.

Little Joy (from left): Rodrigo Amarante, Binki Shapiro, and Fabrizio Moretti.

MUSIC: Little Joy springs forth from a Stroke of luck

Posted By: Andrea Warner

Up until about six months ago, almost no one had heard of Binki Shapiro, but now she’s one-third of Little Joy, the new laid-back indie-lounge band formed by her famous boyfriend, Fabrizio Moretti, drummer for on-hiatus rock hipsters the Strokes. Little Joy’s origins are as feel-good as their songs: Moretti met up with Rodrigo Amarante (singer-guitarist for Los Hermanos) at a Portuguese music festival in 2007, and the two became fast friends. Amarante then relocated to Los Angeles to work with Devendra Banhart, and he and Moretti met Shapiro. The trio traded musical ideas and ended up renting a house in the Echo Park neighbourhood to write and record, eventually naming themselves after their favourite watering hole. (It’s no accident that the songs on their Brazilian-tinged debut are perfect drinking music.)

Little Joy’s self-titled debut is receiving some high-profile reviews, thanks to the album’s rock-star pedigree and its lazy-day-at-the-beach rhythms. (It doesn’t hurt that Amarante’s voice has inspired more than a few people to double-check the liner notes to make sure it’s not Strokes lead singer Julian Casablancas.) Still, it’s a lot to get used to for Shapiro. The perpetually shy unknown is suddenly touring in a van with her partner and their band, and the first time WE calls to talk about her school-of-rock immersion, she demures, asking to postpone the interview until the next day because she’s too shy to chat in front of the guys. All together now: Awwww!

WE: What was your musical background before Little Joy?
Shapiro: I learned how to play the guitar a few years ago — I taught myself, and I wrote a few songs, playing at my house and doing songs on GarageBand and stuff like that. Fab and Rodrigo were really the first people I showed my songs to. I mean, I showed them to a few people before, but I was always really secretive or shy about it.

Were you scared about showing your songs to established musicians?
I was a bit, but it wasn’t about them. It was about showing them to anyone. Fab was really shy and timid to show me what he’d been working on, because he hadn’t really shown people before. He was sort of in the same boat as me, so it gave me comfort to do the same.

How did the band come together?
One thing just came after the other and it just sort of fell into place, and we were all getting to know each other and discovering who we were. We were in that beginning stage of friendship where everything is very fun and interesting and you haven’t heard people’s stories a million times, so it was just born out of having a good time and a common love for music. The sound sort of came from banging on something and going, “Oh, this sounds cool!”

Did you have a favourite part of making this album, or a song that really clicked for you?
I was at my sister’s house when Fab called me and, I mean, the amount of times I’ve gotten these phone calls from Fab and he’s like, “Wait, you gotta hear this!” and he’d set the phone down by the guitar and I’m, like, at the bank or something. This time he called me and said, “I wrote a song for you and I want you to hear it.” So I came home and he showed me “Brand New Start,” and he sat there and sang it very sweetly. While we were recording it, everyone who came to visit us during that time would leave singing the chorus. I’ve always had a closeness to that song.

Rosebuds

And, my Rosebuds piece appears this week as well in WE.

The Rosebuds’ Kelly Crisp and Ivan Howard.

Credit: Supplied

MUSIC: The couple that rocks together, stays together

Posted By: Andrea Warner

11/13/2008 12:00 AM

It’s been a beautifully morose few years for Ivan Howard and Kelly Crisp, the married musical duo also known as the Rosebuds. Death has had a profound effect on their last two albums: Crisp’s grandmother died while she and Howard were writing their third, 2007’s Night of the Furies; and the death of a neighbourhood fox inspired “Nice Fox,” the best song on their latest album, Life Like. Most recently — three weeks ago, in fact — the couple had to put down their 14-year-old Boxer, Jasmine, the subject of an inspired music video in which they cover Salt N’ Pepa’s “Push It” (it subsequently became a YouTube sensation).

But even with such dark inspirations, Howard is pretty upbeat, looking forward to embarking on a North American tour in support of the Rosebuds’ most thoughtful album yet. The North Carolina-based indie-rock darlings are known for creating albums that sound nothing like their predecessors, and this latest one is no exception. Recorded inside their little two-storey house, Life Like has an extraordinarily intimate acoustic sound that stands in sharp contrast with the electronic/pop-rock stylings of Furies.

WE caught up with Howard a few days before the band’s hometown tour-kick-off show.

“Nice Fox” is about a fox that died in your backyard. Do you take from nature and your surroundings a lot?
Howard: Yeah, I think. We did the [2005 album] Birds Make Good Neighbors, and we didn’t record it in our house, but I wrote everything in the back room of our house. We live in downtown Raleigh, and it actually has 10 acres of woods behind the house, so we actually have a wildlife rescue, sort of, in our backyard. When you’re around that many things, it’s liable to creep up in your imagery. Our last record, Furies, didn’t have much of the animal imagery — it was based more on our trip to Europe and the impending doom of George Bush, stuff like that.

How did you deal with recording this album in your house, turning your living space into your work space and vice versa?
Every day, you have to re-set up everything, which sucks, but it kind of gets you in the mood to work again. [We ended up leaving everything up] and just shutting the door. It was better than driving an hour to the studio every day and driving back. You just make room for it and then try to forget it’s there. It’s a tiny house, too — just two bedrooms. But it was fun.

It’s a pretty unique situation, working so intimately with your partner.
Yeah. It’s good. That part was really convenient. (laughs) But sometimes you need space to think about things for a little bit. When I show Kelly ideas, I like to work them out a little bit and then show them to her, and she does the same thing. But when we’re all over each other in the same space and recording, you don’t get a chance to do that.

Kelly’s time is divided between Raleigh and Brooklyn as she pursues being a stand-up comic. Is it difficult juggling both lives?
Yeah, but not that difficult. Before we got the band going, she was doing a lot of acting and comedy, and then we moved to Raleigh and, before we knew it, our whole support community was music-based. Then we got signed to Merge Records and, accidentally, we were in a band full-time. We went to New York in 2004 to The Onion’s Christmas party, and she ran into all these comics and she was like, “Wow, I forgot about this whole part of my life that I really love,” so she got a sketch group together back in Raleigh and they were amazing, and I was like, “Yeah, we’ve been doing my thing for five years. Let’s do yours.”

I know you’re into sports. I don’t hear many musicians say that.
The whole community in Raleigh is into basketball, so I think that’s a misnomer... in the south, anyway. One of my best friends, Justin Vernon from Bon Iver, that’s how we met, was playing basketball… But maybe you’re right. I’ve spent months on the road and never shot a basket. I really know more about the starting lineup of a team than how a song was written.