Photographs by Fred Loek
A little over a year ago, I was sitting in my room listening to Fleet Foxes’ full-length debut when I discovered something in the LP’s sleeve for the first time. Printed on a large piece of parchment was an anecdote which captured the essence of why I love music like nothing I had read before. In it, the writer cautions us of photographs, which he claims are almost like fake representations of what we think to be memories. Do you really remember your third birthday, or has a picture that you’ve seen repeatedly, mixed with accounts of the day from people who were there, created a false sense of memory, now almost indistinguishable from the real thing? The authenticity of a memory is definitely questionable when it has been cognitively inserted into your thoughts through photos and their accompanying captions. Music, on the other hand, claimed the writer, has the ability to evoke much more genuine memories, taking you to the time when you heard a song, what you felt then and what was around you:
“Ask anyone who loves music and they’ll tell you that certain albums and songs remind them of particular places and people; loved ones who may now be gone, good and bad times, or particular evenings spent driving for the sake of wanderlust all somehow take sustenance from the songs that accompanied them. The trick is that the memories enhanced by the music come to life more readily and with more force than memories triggered in any other way.”
Music can take you to places. Now I know I haven’t shed any new light on this special but well-known dimension of music, but I will say that there are few albums and bands which can evoke this journey for me – especially in this era of music over-consumption that we’re in. Fleet Foxes are definitely one of them and I discovered another this past Fall when I was invited to go see a new band called Make Your Exit play an album release event in Toronto.
Make Your Exit – Leave This Town
Make Your Exit – Kids
Make Your Exit – Smokes and Lint
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Cherry Chapstick hail from Kingston, Ontario and consist of Julian Flavin, Evan Mullen and Nigel Ward. The trio celebrated the release of their debut EP Silencer last weekend at the Wolfe Island Music Festival where I had the opportunity to meet up with the guys and talk about what’s going on.
The band were open, humble and really excited to be there; in my mind all of the necessary hallmarks of great musicians or great-musicians-to-be. These guys have been playing together for a few years – in fact, they met back in high school, but have only existed as Cherry Chapstick for the past three months. Three months isn’t long, but while the rest of us were playing in the sun, the trio have been busy writing and recording an their excellent EP, booking shows and winning lots of hearts. Including mine.
The music is incredibly well-mixed, well-balanced shoegaze or electronic indie dance. A couple of tracks have a touch of a disco beat which have won me over heart and soul. The band cite Fred Falke, Daft Punk, the Radio Dept, M83, French House, and the 80s in general among their influences. In short, they’ve got taste.
For now, Chapstick are going to be taking an eight month hiatus come September (something about education and future careers), but will be back sooner than we know it with a full album that will be knocking us off our feet and taking our breath away. “We’re planning for World Tour oh-eleven,” Evan told me, and I’m going to hold him to it. By then they’ll hopefully be able to incorporate some new sounds including one from a crazy synth Nigel told me about that “sounds like a tiger or a chainsaw, just more major.”
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On top of having just been announced as being on the Polaris Music Prize 2009 long list late last week, Toronto’s Bruce Peninsula have just started their three week Canadian tour with their first performance taking place on Saturday in a slightly soggy Kingston, Ontario at the annual Skeleton Park Music Festival. More a collective than a band, the group usually consists of anywhere from 7 to 12 members. Started in 2006 by Matt Cully and Misha Bower, the group has grown to include a dynamic cast including Neil Haverty, Andrew Barker, Steve McKay, Leon Taheny, Kari Peddle, Daniela Geshundheit, Katie Stelmanis, Caseey Mecija, Maya Postepski, Isla Craig and Doc Dunn.
Bruce Peninsula’s sound ranges from folk to gospel, from jazz to soul. Focus is put on choir vocals. Honest, uninhibited and gutty, they use beautiful harmonies and call-and-response singing to utterly enchant their listeners. I challenge you to listen to them without finding yourself wishing to be a part of that beautiful choir, or at least thinking you’re lost in some alternate ethereal universe.
Listening to Bruce Peninsula is a pleasure. They are an awesome gang with an awesome sound. In the spirit of awesomeness, I sat down with Matt and Neil. Rather, I sat, they stood. What else can you do when its pouring rain and you have to crash the remnants of a bake sale tent to make sure your paper stays dry? As you read: start with a listen to ‘Shanty Song’, included below, off the well-deserved Polaris nominee A Mountain Is a Mouth.
So we didn’t steal the last lonely muffin or the crumbs that sat next to it, but we did talk some music. I learned some pretty cool things about this band, two things in particular that need to be shared: how Bruce Peninsula has chosen to approach their music and what their up-coming tour means to them.
Matt let me know that when putting the band together it was important for them to make sure they were doing so from a non-commercial standpoint. Therefore, they weren’t going to allow themselves to be in any way constrained by questions of “why?” but ask instead, “why not?” So when they added instruments or their amazing choir there was no need to consider whether or not they could do it. As Neil put it, “we want to hear what we want to hear.” Never mind the rest. Following on that same ethic, they told me of how the Bruce Peninsula sound is a result of songs being worked and re-worked – that writing a song can take up to six months – that the sound cannot be accepted without everyone getting to put their own hands in the plasticine and everyone having their say. As Matt put it, “we are our own audience.”
Bruce Peninsula – Shanty Song
Bruce Peninsula – 2nd 4th World War
Bruce Peninsula – Weave Myself a Dress
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Ask me for a list of my favourite things and three things will invariably find themselves near the top: film, indie pop, and musicals. Regular Ca Va Cool readers may remember my unabashed love for the quirky underside of Broadway or my yearning for certain bands to return to their indie pop roots. Needless to say, when I heard that Belle & Sebastian frontman Stuart Murdoch was working on a movie musical, I immediately set out to learn as much as possible about the project. Hours of tireless investigative journalism later (read: I googled it), here’s what I know, and what you should be excited to learn, about God Help the Girl.
About five years ago, while out for a jog, Stuart Murdoch first had the idea for a song entitled ‘God Help the Girl’. In his head, Murdoch could hear the tune sung by female vocals backed with strings. He realized this was something new, which would have to be separate from his songwriting work with Belle & Sebastian. During the recording and subsequent touring of Belle & Sebastian’s latest LP, The Life Pursuit, more songs came to him. He started to identify two or three main characters behind the words to the songs. Murdoch held auditions and internet-wide singing contests, searching for the voices to match these characters. He found three main vocalists: Catherine Ireton, Brittany Stallings, and Dina Bankole. Along with seven other vocalists, including Neil Hannon from the Divine Comedy and Asya from Smoosh, the trio recorded the soundtrack of a musical film which has yet to be written, much less filmed. The result is an album which shares the title of that very first song, set to be released June 22.
Murdoch is currently writing the screenplay to accompany his soundtrack, with plans to film sometime in 2010. Though the final script has yet to be written, we do know that God Help the Girl (the film) will be about a three-woman singing group, that it may end tragically, and that the music will be beautiful. God Help the Girl (the album) features two songs previously recorded by Belle & Sebastian (‘Act of the Apostle II’ and ‘Funny Little Frog’ from The Life Pursuit) and a host of new songs which showcase Murdoch’s original vision. Gorgeous vocals from Ireton, Stallings, and Bankole, along with sweeping orchestral accompaniment hint at the cinematic potential of the finished product. The remake of one of my favourite Belle & Sebastian songs, ‘Funny Little Frog’, allows for a direct contrast between Murdoch’s two musical minds, with the new female version trading in the the Scottish group’s indie pop jangle for 60’s-inspired strings and harmonies.
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It’s rare to find a band that surprises, excites, makes you think, gets you dancing, and causes unstoppable fits of laughter. The Burning Hell does all of these and then some. Lead singer/songwriter Mathias Kom may say that his band is dorky but I would have to disagree. The Burning Hell are the coolest kids around.
To try to describe the nature of The Burning Hell’s sound would be unjust. You will have to trust me and give them a listen. But to describe their intellectual and darkly humoristic lyrics, I hunted down Mathias Kom to ask him about his songwriting.
At the very outset Mathias made it clear to me was that his music has only three themes: death, things, and conferences. The first two of these shouldn’t come as a surprise; they are themes found in just about every artist’s music. But conferences? In truth, until relatively recently, Mathias taught history. As such, he is very interested in conferences (what historian wouldn’t be?); not only in how they produce important historical decisions, but more especially in the social anthropology occurring in the backrooms and behind the official text. Mathias told me that, “it is impossible for a conference to be anything but exciting and dynamic.” And he means it. If you ever have the pleasure of seeing them perform live you will question your life and wonder why you don’t attend more conferences. Here, about the Berlin Conference of 1884-85, from Baby released March 17, is ‘The Berlin Conference’.
The Burning Hell – The Berlin Conference
Mathias’ other major interest is death; talking about death, deconstructing it and proving that death is not necessarily an end. In our conversation he told me that he sees death as being a product of North American culture; that our obsession with health and fitness and living our lives stems more so from our fear of death than our embracing of life. Honestly, I find many of the Burning Hell’s songs on the subject pretty macabre, but to give you a taste here is ‘Dance, Dance, Dance’ from their album Tick Tock.
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