Andy Swan is the type of musician who often gets politely referred to as a "critic's favourite"—that's short hand for "really good, but tragically ignored". Unlike many critic faves, however, Swan's music doesn't require a wealth of musical knowledge or esoteric tastes to 'get'. In fact, whether as the songwriter for The Michael Parks (formerly Detective Kalita), or in his brand new solo incarnation, his music is just the opposite: direct, catchy, and immediate.

This is especially evident on his beautiful new album, Ottawa. In just over a half an hour, Swan plays thirteen songs whose choruses get comfortably nestled into your head the second you hear them; a good thing seeing as most of the tunes only last long enough to reach the chorus twice. Swan has stated a desire to make this record the kind of album that people would sing along to. It's an admirable objective—one as difficult as it is innocent—and when you listen to a tune like "Can I Pay You With Sunshine?", you gotta admit: he nailed it.

In person, Swan is as genuine and unpretentious as his fine album. He takes the art of making music just seriously enough to be good at it, but always stops far short of losing himself in self-importance. We spoke about the combination of thorough preparation and relaxed recording that brought about the record, as well as what Ottawa (the city) means to him, and his hopes for Ottawa (the album).

Soundscapes: Maybe it's just me, but I find it interesting that when members of bands decide to do a solo record, it often tends to be a country record.

Andy Swan: (laughs)

SS: What do you think is the appeal of that genre?

AS: Well, I can sort of only speak for myself, but I wanted to try something a little different for me. I kinda of liked the idea of writing songs that I could picture other people singing.

SS: Mm-hmm.

AS: That was kind of a slightly different experiment for me. I wanted to try it and I was playing with different players in a different town, so (this record) was just kind of a different type of thing, man. I don't know why. I never noticed that pattern before, but I guess you're right.

SS: Well, it's certainly not ironclad, but there just seems to be something about the country/folky stuff that people—I don't know if it's a sense of purity, which might be a bit of a naive way of looking at it—but, certainly these songs are very direct. They're very to the point. There's no fat or extra instrumentation on it.

AS: Yeah.

SS: Did you find that this framework of writing allowed a simplicity? That writing in the country style promotes a sort of directness?

AS: Well, I think basically that a lot of these songs are simple chord progressions, so that heart of the song really is about the words. And then basically, each song you try to make as pretty and suitable as possible. But also that may have had something to do with the way that we recorded it as well. We all just showed up at the studio and I'd sent (the other musicians) some demos of the songs, but we didn't have a lot of time to do anything complex. And I don't think we wanted to. The songs are simple—simple chord progressions, simple sort of sentiments most of the time—so yeah, just keep it simple. But also the fact that we were learning the songs on the spot contributed to that too.

SS: About how long did you spend on the recording?

AS: I think we did a total of six days in the studio. Three days in two different chunks. Three days one weekend and three days another weekend, and then just a few little touch-ups at home on somebody's computer.

SS: And everyone was pretty much left to their own devices? You didn't spend much time rehearsing (the songs)?

AS: No. We didn't have a single rehearsal. Some people came to the studio more prepared than others, but...

SS: Right, 'cause there's definitely a few instrumental lines on some of these tunes, as simple as it is, there are really some that show something beyond just mimicking the basic chords. Some of the guitar lines show a really great ear.

AS: Well, John Higney, who played guitar and a lot of the stringed instruments, like banjo, lap steel, pedal steel, he's just an amazing musician. So I was sort of pretty confident going in that, y'know he came a bit with some ideas for songs, but I knew that I was in good hands. He's an amazing musician and he teaches music at the University of Ottawa or something like that. He's a really serious musician.

SS: He plays with Two Minute Miracles, is that correct?

AS: Yeah, he used to play more than he does now, but he still fills in on bass once in a while now. He also plays in this instrumental band called The Flats. They're from Ottawa. The rest of the band (on Ottawa) are kind of a bit more scrappier players and he brought a real technical tightness and prettiness to it. Made it sound not like just another bunch of indie rockers doing a country album. He definitely brought a sort of style.

SS: Yeah, 'cause it doesn't (sound like indie rockers). A lot of the playing on it actually reminds me of (The Byrds') Sweetheart of the Rodeo. This very articulate, economical playing. It doesn't seem overly simple, it's just no one's going off too much.

AS: Yeah. I think we ended up cutting a song or two that had a guitar solo, so there's not much fat on the album. A lot of the songs are only two minutes. Definitely we tried to make it pretty simple.

SS: Did any of these tunes have extra verses or bridges but as the record took shape you kind of looked at things and said, "Aww, that's not really necessary."?

AS: Well, they were all pretty much as they were written and, I think a lot of old country songs are pretty short. Like a lot of Hank Williams songs aren't too much longer than two minutes or anything.

SS: Was that a big blueprint for you when you were putting this together?

AS: Not especially, but, um, I don't know. I guess personally I don't write a lot of bridges for songs for some reason. I'm a pretty simple guy maybe that's why this album worked out pretty well. We just got things pretty simple, just went in and recorded live.

SS: Yeah, but to paraphrase Spinal Tap, "there's a thin line between simple and stupid."

AS: (laughs) Yeah.

SS: Y'know, there's some really great turns of phrase on here, and I haven't had as much time to sit with it even so I'm sure there's more. Was this a record where working on the lyrics was a bit more of a task than assembling the melodies?

AS: Well, I definitely worked really hard on this album. Worked more than I ever had before, and the focus was definitely on the words and trying to get the words right. And basically, I had this room in my place where I wrote down words on all these little sheets of paper and stuck them up on the wall. And it was kind of in this public room. So basically, if there were any words up on that wall that I was embarrassed by, words that I would be worried if people came by and read them that I would be embarrassed by, then I knew that I had to keep working and keep working. So there was a lot of work that went into the preparation, so that by the time it came to recording, I was pretty well prepared and at least knew what I was going to do. Then to just show up and just the excitement of playing songs for the first time with things going on that were totally new, there was just this kind of excitement there, so yeah, it was good.

SS: So after all that preparation, the band setup kept things from feeling too laboured I suppose?

AS: Yep. But definitely I did work really hard on the words. I knew that was going to be the focus of the record, and not any fancy chords or arrangements like that.

SS: That's usually one of the hardest things, keeping things simple. I'm glad the free jazz metaphor made it! ("No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service" contains the lyric: "You may be free as/ some saxophone free jazz")

AS: (laughs) Yeah!

SS: That one's really good! In speaking with and reading about Ottawa musicians, many of them talk about the scene as being insular—not so much closed off, as much as it has its own self-contained chain of influences and major players that don't seem to make it outside the city as much.

AS: Yeah.

SS: I guess I'm speaking of people like Dave Draves, or Mike Feuerstack (Snailhouse) and so on. What's your experience with the city? What led you to do the record there and what does the town mean to you?

AS: Well, what kind of started the impetus of the record... it actually, it started because I had some family obligations to go to in Ottawa and I had a girlfriend at the time who lived there. I was supposed to go for back-to-back weekends for weddings, and I had this idea of maybe staying the whole week and trying to record an album with my friends there. that's sort of what started it. things sort of changed around, but basically I knew that I wanted to try something different and be out of my usual element. And these guys in Ottawa, I knew that if I just—y'know, they're my friends and I'd played with them before in different settings—that it would be a lot of fun and something different for me.

As for the Ottawa scene, I don't know, it's true. It seems that a lot of the bands out of Ottawa slide under the radar. But, Kelp Records (long-running Ottawa indie label) is pretty fun to be a part of, and it's getting more that, um, I think more people are finding out about Kelp Records as time passes. And clearly Jon Bartlett, who runs Kelp, is in it for the long haul. I think people know, at this point, that to be a not-too-successful indie label for as long as Kelp has been around, it sorta proves that, yep, he's in it for the long haul. His heart is in the right place.

SS: Yep.

AS: And when people talk about Ottawa and the scene there, I think, for me, that's what they're talking about is Kelp Records and Jon Bartlett, who sort of created this really family scene there, and I don't know, I just really always have a really good time in Ottawa. And sometimes people are like, "I hope your Ottawa is more exciting than my Ottawa." (both laugh)

SS: I do find that it certainly seems to be a city that doesn't give it self away as much. When you talk to band about it, they seem to have one of two opinions of Ottawa as a town to play: it's either dead and no one goes out to their shows; or it's one of their favourite places to play.

AS: Yeah.

SS: I'm sure a lot of it is the fact that it's sandwiched between Toronto and Montreal, both of which are magnets for attention. Ottawa seems like this middle-child; not the first-born, not the coddled baby. (both laugh) Do you think there's a reclusiveness about the city? It seems like the aspirations of many Ottawa musicians are a little different—they're just there to make music...

AS: Yeah.

SS: ...as opposed to going to Montreal or Toronto because that's where the spotlight is on. Do you find it's a little more homespun?

AS: I, I don't know, it's tough to tell 'cause...

SS: 'Cause I'm just kinda thinking out loud here (both laugh)

AS: I think probably people's aspirations are the same, but uh, I don't know, sometimes all it takes is the success of one band to shine the spotlight on the city, and maybe that's just never happened yet for Ottawa?

SS: Yeah.

AS: But, I first played, like started playing with Kelp Records at their fifth anniversary, which was seven or eight years ago?

SS: Right.

AS: So, I mean, since then, I've had a lot of great times in Ottawa, but when I go there, there's the old familiar faces and stuff. So, I'm sort of, kind of like, it is insular in the sense that just on a personal level... I lost my train of thought there!

SS: Do you mean that there's a loyal posse of supporters, but it's a small one and it doesn't grow?

AS: I think that might be sort of right. Definitely there is a posse, and it's a good posse, and it changes, but, I don't know, I can't really speak too much about the scene there. All I know is that I've had a lot of great times in Ottawa. I've seen a lot of great bands: Andrew Vincent and the Pirates, the Acorn.

SS: Well, your record reminds me a lot of ones by other Canadian songwriters like Andy Magoffin (of Two-Minute Miracles) or Nathan Lawr—not that it sounds identical—but it has this honest, homespun quality that seems to exist in its own world. That the musician is more interested in making the album, than touring it and quote/unquote "seeing how far it can go". How important is recognition to you?

AS: Well, it's nice to have somebody come up to you say that they think that you did a good job. So, you know, I like that. 

SS: But are your plans to do much more than a few shows around the area?

AS: Well, I think ultimately I do want to try and do a bit more touring for this record. To get more people to hear it. Umm. I don't know, that's kind of a tricky one. I want as many people to heaer it as possible. That's sort of the biggest battle of being an independent musician is trying to get people to hear it. Whether they like it or not, that's a different thing, but definitely I am trying, and Kelp Records is as well, we're trying to put a bit more of a push behind this album. Trying to get people to hear it. Basically, I'd definitely be a lot happier if I could spend more of my time doing music and pursuing that, but...

SS: Well, the interesting thing to me is that I almost feel like records like the one that you've made are more possible in a situation where there's not so much attention paid to it. Y'know, it's just that much easier to be honest and follow whims instead of worrying about other concerns.

AS: Right.

SS: Do you think this record would have been as easy to make if you had more of a spotlight on what you were doing?

AS: I don't know. I mean, I hope so. I hope that this idea of being able to call up a bunch of friends and saying, "Let's make an album."—that that will always be kind of easy. This album definitely did go incredibly smoothly in the recording and everything. It was probably as smooth a process as I've ever had while trying to make an album. But, I don't know if things would be different, but that's not really something that I need to worry about, so... (both laugh)

SS: Right, very true!

The music of Toronto group Holy Fuck is getting a lion's share of attention right now. Gigs with Wolf Parade, !!!, Clinic, M.I.A., an invitation to revered U.K. festival Glastonbury (which garnered them a nod as one of the top three new acts of the fest)--these guys are seemingly everywhere. Not bad for a renegade live "electronic" music project that had just as much potential to be maddeningly self-indulgent as it did to be thrilling.

Holy Fuck was born of the union of two under-the-radar Canadians, Brian Borchedt and Graham Walsh. Borchedt was a vet of a few bands, including By Divine Right (whose members also once included BSS players Feist and Brendan Canning). He also had a pair of excellent solo releases (The Remains of Brian Borchedt Vol. 1 & 2) released on his own imprint, Dependent Records. Walsh meanwhile was an ex-member of Hamilton shoegaze-pop act Flux A.D., and a busy producer working with A Northern Chorus among others.

How these two parlayed their collective knowledge of DIY guerilla tactics, a soundman's ear for gadgets, and an improv stage show into one of the country's most talked-about bands is a matter of happy coincidence and guts. Basically, the duo planned to take the stage with a bassist and drummer, make noise with their toys, and see what happened. In fact, one of the band's first shows was a Pop Montreal slot with a last-minute rhythm section and no structured songs. The resulting onslaught was so impressive that Brooklyn MC Beans immediately asked Holy Fuck to be his backing band at that year's Coachella Festival in Indio, California.

Since then, the ride has not slowed a bit, and given how good-natured and overlooked Borchedt and Walsh have been in their indie careers, it's hard not to feel anything but pride at these events. Now with their second full-length album, LP, just released, the more difficult task of rendering such live, kinetic music to a permanent record comes into the picture. Graham Walsh speaks with us about just that, as well as their onstage communication, and learning to ride the waves of hype without getting pulled under.

Soundscapes: When you're recording these songs, how long does it take for you guys to get that vibe, that feeling of, 'OK, this take is working for us'? Because, you don't have live energy of the crowd to feed off of which I imagine is the engine...

Graham Walsh: Oh yeah...

SS: ...that drives the improvisation--of knowing whether something is working or not. What sort of barometer do you guys have to know that what you're doing in the studio is how you want the band to be represented?

GW: That's a good question. It's hard. It's really hard. Basically, a lot of the stuff on this record we wrote live, we wrote on the road. And then refined it and got it into a state where at the end of the tour, like, "OK, let's go into a studio and try to lay this stuff down." And yeah, it's really hard to--it's still this struggle--really hard to get it, to make it come across. 'Cause in the studio, where you've got the headphone mixes and I mean, it's such a pain in the ass to get it overall happening. To get the right mix in (your headphones).

Yeah, the whole "no audience" thing, I think that we're aware of it and we try a bit harder--me, personally anyways--I just try a bit harder to, y'know, rock out a bit more and go crazy, as opposed to just sort of very calmly going through the motions. But yeah, it's a hard thing to know. Basically we just jam it a whole bunch of times and when you lay down a take, sometimes you just know that was the one. That's kinda how it goes.

SS: Yeah.

GW: Recently, I've started bringing my ProTools rig on the road, and I have 16 inputs in my ProTools rig, so I hook up my snake to the mixing board and I've been recording our live show a lot. There's the first track on the album ("Super Inuit") was recorded live in Philadelphia. So that's sort of another way to get around (the problem). But, essentially, it's just sort of keep trying it. I don't think it's ever going to sound like live, but then again, maybe I'm gonna kind of embrace that and make albums that are really good, and then when people see us live, it'll hopefully be better. I dunno.

SS: Right, right. Are you satisfied with the records? I know that listening to them, it sort of reminded me of what a lot of jazz players would say about their records--that the record were always more of a moment in time, an interpretation of a theme rather than a definitive version of the song.

GW: Yeah, I think so. I think that's exactly it. That's sort of the way we approach it. What we're gradually realizing as a band is to have that free jazz approach of it. And we're no longer totally, crazy-off-the-hook improv, where we don't know what we're going to do when we jump on stage. Now, we're sort of like improv jazz guys. We have themes and semi-structures to go on...

SS: Right.

GW: ...and then that's just it. And the beauty of that is that every show is different and the album is just a like a snapshot--one version of the song that can change every single time we play it. I like it. It makes it more fun for me anyways.

SS: So, have you and Brian worked out any kinda of James Brown/Miles Davis communication logic on stage? If one of you gets an idea in the midst of a show, how easy is it for you now to turn the band around when it's in full motion heading in the other direction?

GW: Umm... that usually doesn't happen. I think the extent of our hand signals and cueing, it's pretty much to the rhythm section and mostly just like, "Let's bring it down." I think that's the only thing that really happens, because when you're jamming, the tendency is to go all out...

SS: Right.

GW: ...and you sort of forget that you can actually stop playing and the music will still happen because of the other guys, so maybe tell everybody to tone it down. But other than that, there's not really any, there's no real defining things, like, "Hey, Let's stop and then start the beat on the 'and' with this half time thing." It's more to the drummer. The drummer is more able to do whatever he wants.

SS: Yeah.

GW: And God knows, the drummer and the bass player are the ones basically driving the train. They're the ones that can just say, "Hey guys!", and then totally change the feel and then Brian and I will follow suit.

SS: I find that in any music that is similar to what you guys do, the danger that happens is that the people who are in charge of making "the noise" have that one mode of application, where it's layer, layer, layer, layer and then it just becomes dense, but there's no sense of subtlety. How do the two of you work to make sure that it's not something that's always going up. Do you know what I mean?

GW: Yeah, I know exactly, well that's just, that's hard. It's basically just in... I just try to always have it in the back of my head: "Just listen to what everyone else is doing," because it's hard. You get stuck in your own little world and you think you're the one, when there's all this other stuff going on. We're always just trying to look at each other on stage and trying to reinforce the communication thing, and that's where the subtlety comes. And even still when we're going balls out and it's total chaos, it's nice when you can have that chaos be, what's that word? It's intentional and it's completely, it's finesse. Even though it's just an utter, big wall of noise, it all has purpose and it's organized.

SS: I know that you have a pretty strong history as a producer and sound engineer. I wonder how that prepared you to be in a band like this? Especially because in the best live bands, often the soundperson is as important, if not more important...

GW: Yeah!

SS: ...a member to making sure it sounds good. What do you take from being behind the (sound)board? Is being in Holy Fuck similar?

GW: Yeah, sort of. I definitely realize when I've done sound, I know, for me anyways, what makes a band sound good and what makes things easy for a sound guy. Therefore, I can do things on my end to make things (easier), y'know, we've got our system really, really streamlined down so that we have not very many inputs on the board. And just things like, I even thought about hooking up a delay on my signal and splitting it and making a psuedo-stereo to make my track sound super-huge on the PA, or...

SS: Yep, yep.

GW: ...I dunno, just neat little tricks like that. But the main thing that I've come to realize is that it's hard to find a good soundman, and I get frustrated because I feel like we need a sound guy, we don't have one, and the potential is there for a soundman to be the fifth member of the band.

SS: Yeah!

GW: And, you know Marty Kinack (superb soundman for Broken Social Scene, Sarah Harmer, Sam Roberts, and Apostle of Hustle to name a few), right? Obviously!

SS: Yeah. He's someone I'm definitely thinking of here. Marty's someone who anytime he does sound for someone, he gets right in there.

GW: Yeah! Yeah!

SS: It's amazing to hear.

GW: Yeah. He did sound with us once and he said he had so much fun, and I was like, "You see? C'mon! Come out with us! Be a part of it, get involved!" But, obviously, y'know he's like, well above where we are right now.

SS: I don't if I'd say that! But, it's definitely an example of an imbalance in music. Y'know how every kid wants to be a guitarist, so if you're young and you learn drums, you'll always have work?

GW: Yeah.

SS: I don't think people realize how needed really great soundmen are! (laughs)

GW: Yeah, yeah.

SS: Like a really great soundperson is such a rarity. I think it's why someone like Marty Kinack is never not on the road!

GW: Yeah, no, for sure. I often thought that if I wasn't doing this, I'd want to be a soundguy for a band. I've worked in, I've done the club thing (doing house sound for clubs), and I've never really been on the road with a band and that would be amazing. I guess the only way that the sound engineering transfers over into Holy Fuck is that I get to play with all my toys, and nerd out on technology, even more so than if I was in a (normal band). Well, I guess everybody (in a band) does in a way but, I feel like I have been more so. But I would love to be on the road with a band, be their soundperson, for sure.

SS: I was just interviewing Gruff Rhys from Super Furry Animals...

GW: Oh, cool!

SS: --another band who merge electronic and live band aesthetics and try to mash them up--and he was talking about, for him, one of the major difficulties of trying to merge electronic music into a live setting...

GW: Mm-hmm.

SS: ...is that (electronic music) is essentially a solitary pursuit. There's so much about knob-twiddling--even if you're not on a laptop--and dial-fussing. So what did you guys do to get over that hump? I know that you're not two guys sitting with a pair of laptops, but still, how do you make things kinetic live?

GW: Yeah, well... I don't know. I guess, it all happened so organically. I don't think Brian and I really thought about what we were putting together, we just kind of did it. It just came about, and often, like someone just asked me a question about that recently and I was just wondering if it's because we, like, all my life I've played in rock bands, and maybe it's just that's me translating it. I don't know. I'd feel kind of weird up onstage just sorta sitting there, even if I had an MPC and a couple of synths and stuff, not really doing anything. And I think the main thing that helps--and I think this is how we got out of the knob-twiddling thing--is having a rhythm section. I mean, I just look back and watch--we've had the good fortune of playing with some amazing drummers and wicked bass players--and that's what gets me into it. Brian's playing this techno beat and the drummer's just laying it down to it. You can't not get into it and sort of freak a little bit and start doing stuff to it. So, that's just what drives it and hopefully it translates to the audience and they see me freaking out and pushing on and off my DD-3 (both laugh) to the music. That's how it works I guess. I think it's just the live drummer and bass player that probably helps.

SS: Considering that both you and Brian have a lot of experience finalizing records--with production, mixing, and whatnot--what led to working with Eli Janney (ex-Girls Against Boys) and Dave Newfeld? What do these people bring (when you can do it all yourself)?

GW: Well, it's just good to have outside input. I've worked on some sessions where I've played on it and engineered it and it's just too much. I like dedicating myself in some ways, y'know, just being the engineer or just playing on it. With Newfeld you know you're in good hands, and Eli was a recommendation from our drummer Matt (McQuade), who had some records made by Eli, so he came highly recommended.

SS: And certainly, with Girls Against Boys, he'd understand at least a good chunk of what you were going for, I would say.

GW: Oh yeah, for sure, for sure. And yeah, just having outside input, I like it. With my own stuff, I have no idea and I take it as far as I can, then I like to hand it off. I have ambitions of one day I'll be able to do everything, but I don't know. I always dream that I'd like to one day have a Holy Fuck record that I'll record and mix, but maybe that's not the best thing to do. It's not good to burden yourself with too much work. I'll just focus on the music part of it and let somebody else handle all the recorded, technical stuff.

SS: OK, I know a lot of this is just the nature of how any band--particularly a band like yours--is gonna be talked about, whether it's PR people trying to make things exciting or the NME talking about what you do...

GW: Mm-hmm.

SS: ...but I wonder, does it ever strike you as amusing when what you're doing is being described as so revolutionary?

GW: (laughs)

SS: I don't mean this as a put down or a backhanded thing, but...

GW: Well, no, it is funny, I don't take it that way at all, because it is silly. I just take everything as it comes. I'm just happy to be here. I didn't expect that this would happen. I don't really pay too much attention to what people say because more often than not you read stuff and it's negative and that stuff really weighs on you, and then the positive stuff... I don't know, hopefully it doesn't go to my head. I don't think so. There's just so many bands out there that have done stuff like this before, y'know Suicide, and This Heat. I'm thinking of examples from way back...

SS: Yeah, for sure.

GW: ...who did this sort of thing. But I don't know, if we can pull one over on some people, then that's pretty cool, I guess! (both laugh) I like foolin' some people, sure! It is kind of funny, though. It is silly, but...

SS: Well, the way you're reacting to it too, it almost feels like there's this part of Canadian indie culture where--even given the number of acts who have broken out over the past five or six years and you know that it's not impossible anymore to think that a band from Toronto or Halifax or Vancouver or Montreal can be known around the world--when it happens, it's still like, "I didn't think that was going to happen!"

GW: (laughs) Yeah, yeah.

SS: Like, it's in our generation. Maybe the next generation will be expecting (success).

GW: Yeah, you're probably right. I think our modesty, our crippling modesty in some ways. (laughs) But over the four years, three and a half years we've been a band, I've just really started to realize that you can't get excited about anything. We've had so many opportunities fall through and so many great opportunities come out of nowhere--just stuff like, "I never would've guessed that!"--so you just sort of jump on the rollercoaster ride, and get in Mr. Toad's Wild Ride and just take what comes--"Whoah! Here we go!"--and hopefully the car doesn't fall off the tracks and we can make it to the end. I think it's a good attitude to have, for me personally. Like I was saying, I'm just glad to be here.

I first saw The Besnard Lakes in Hamilton in 2004. Their debut CD, the inconspicuously titled Volume 1, had just been released and as is the fate of many self-financed Canadian indie discs, it was to very little fanfare. The band--whose core was/is the husband-and-wife pairing of Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas--played a lovely, spacious show to about fifteen people, sold a few CDs and were off into the night. Volume 1's hazy mix of Spiritualized and Mercury Rev received some play in my house and then proceeded to fade from my mind.

So when 2007 began and the word on everyone's lips was, "have you heard The Besnard Lakes?", I was kinda surprised. The beautiful but somewhat narcoleptic band that I knew didn't really appear capable of generating such hype; not to mention that they hadn't exactly been playing many shows in the three years since I last saw them. Then I actually heard what was causing all the commotion...

By this point, The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse is a clear contender for Canuck album of the year, and it has already enjoyed the recognition of a Polaris Prize Nomination alongside bona fide stars Arcade Fire and Feist. While their debut concerned itself with extended drones, washes of oscillating Moogs and buried vocals, the writing and performances on Dark Horse--especially the string arrangements and singing--are upfront and confident. Without losing the touchstones of their sound, The Besnard Lakes grew with such hidden rapidity it is downright staggering. So how did it happen?

Owning your own studio (as Lasek and Goreas do, one called Breakglass) certainly must've helped this cocooning process. Finally finding a stable band to compliment the two lovebirds: ditto. But what else turned this Dark Horse into a sure thing? Jace Lasek talks about getting their new lineup together, waxes romantic about the miracles of the analog studio, and reveals his joy in playing music for people the same age as his dad.

Soundscapes: I wanted to pick up figuratively from when I last saw you, which would be you and Olga packing yourself up into a van in 2004 and driving off into the night...

Jace Lasek: Right, you mean yesterday?

SS: Right, right

JL: (laughs)

SS: (laughs) ...but what things changed in the development of the band after you finished touring Volume 1? Obviously, you found new members, but what was the mindset that you found yourselves in leading up to Dark Horse?

JL: Well, I know when we decided to make Dark Horse, we made an actual effort to try and make the record more poppy. And by that, we had to learn how to sing and we had to be confident with turning our vocals up in the mix, 'cause Volume 1 the vocals are very buried.

SS: Yeah.

JL: We knew if we wanted to make a pop record--well, y'know psychedelic pop record, whatever, but--the vocals were very important and they had to be good. So, we did a lot of practicing and realised that, in the end, we're not that bad as singers after all.

SS: Mm-hmm.

JL: For the first record, we were sort of finding our feet with what we were able to do, and how we could do it, if we could do it, because we weren't sure if we were singers at all. And then once Nicky (Lizee) joined, our keyboard player--along with Steve (Raegele), our guitar player. Steve joined first and then Nicky joined a few months after--she's a composer, quite an amazing composer. So when Dark Horse was getting made, she said, "Let me write some things for it. Let me write the strings and horns and see what you think." And they were absolutely, that just put the topper on the record. I always wanted to have those things on the record. That just finally solidified it as a pop record that was... (pauses) Because we wanted to sort of also have it rooted in the 50s and 60s. Y'know, the Phil Spector and the Brian Wilson stuff, but they were using orchestration from time to time as well, so in order to make the whole thing seem complete, maybe that's what was needed to make the record sound coherent even.

SS: Mm-hmm.

JL: I was worried about that when we started making it, that the record would actually be kinda disjointed and not have a direction. 'Cause I was writing songs for, "Oh, let's make an 80s sounding song. Let's make a 60s sounding song." They all end up meeting in the middle somehow and coming out lucky in that way I think.

SS: Getting ready for this compelled me to bring Volume 1 out and listen to it a lot. Certainly a lot of what was most prevalent there was the idea of space...

JL: Mm-hmm.

SS: ...or guess with both records, it's how you work with the open spaces.

JL: Mm-hmm.

SS: (On Dark Horse) there's less of the droning space and Moog washes, that kind of stuff. Did you get the sense with this record you were able to hand over those open spaces to allow other people to pass on some of their ideas?

JL: Yeah, yeah, definitely. And also having different players with abilities that are different than mine. For example, "Lied to Me" with the guitar solos at the end, I'm just not capable of producing a guitar solo like that. That's Steve and Jonathon Cummings (Doughboys, Bionic), who did the other guitar solo. I wanted that, but I couldn't do it so they did it, and they did it beautifully. It's nice to have people with different attitudes and different mindsets go into the recording to help add something that I wouldn't be able to think of. Especially with the strings and the horns. Because a lot of those spaces that she (Nicky) filled were just spaces. I'd been sitting on them for a while going this needs something but I'm out of instrumentation, there isn't really anything else that I can do to fill anything in there.

SS: Well, in the past it might have been, "Ah, I'll put some Moog in there."

JL: Yeah! Or drone. But since I'd already done that I didn't want to repeat myself. I would have probably felt that I'd failed if I just copied what I'd done on the first record. So to have Nicky come in and help out with that was just pretty awesome.

SS: Well, on a lot of the songs you and Olga are the main driving forces, but on a couple tunes, one of you sits the thing out (Goreas is absent on opener "Disaster", while Lasek misses out on the free-for-all of "Devastation"), which is really interesting given that you're the writers as well. How did that come about?

JL: Yeah, well, it just almost happened by default, I would've loved to have played on it but... you're talking about "Devastation".

SS: "Devastation", yeah.

JL: Yeah. Right, Oggy (Olga) had the idea that she wanted to take the Phil Spector-thing full on, so in order to do that, she said, "OK, let's put everybody into the live room."--and we've got really large live room (at Breakglass) so we were able to do this--and she said, "Let's go three bass players, three drummers, three guitar players, and record it live off the floor, straight to two-track (reel-to-reel tape machine)." So, I was like, "OK, that'll be fun." (both laugh) So, we got everybody together in the room and then I sat in the control room and mixed it as it came in. We did nine or ten takes and we took the ninth take, or the eighth take, and just recorded it straight to two-track. So, it was mixed as it was being recorded.

SS: That's even how old jazz records were recorded.

JL: Yeah, totally. And it was nice to have, y'know everyone came into the control room after, and it's this really cool sense of accomplishment. Everybody's working together in the same room. It's actually really efficient. We finished that song, that song was done in four hours. I remember George (Donoso) from The Dears, who was one of the three drummers--he had to leave in, like, he had two hours! He was like, "I've got two hours to do this..."

SS: (laughs)

JL: "...Learn the song, play the song and be done and gone with it." That was no problem!

SS: Yeah.

JL: He had time to kill after, y'know?

SS: Yeah.

JL: So, it was pretty cool experience.

SS: Yeah, it is an interesting thing given how out-of-step it is with how a lot of indie bands work today. In order to do that, you have to have a few things. You have to have the right room for it, but you also need players who communicate with one another and that sense of community.

JL: Yeah.

SS: And the more that home recording moves forward, sometimes these worlds get so insular and it seems so easy to do everything yourself.

JL: Yeah.

SS: Did you feel a little blissfully out-of-step when you were putting that song together?

JL: Yeah, I don't know, I think you can, not always, but sometimes you can hear when a record was made by one person. There's something--I dunno, I might be romanticizing the whole thing--but I sometimes think you can actually hear the organic-ness of people working together in the same room. 'Cause there's mistakes that are happening in there. Little, like "Whoops, I kinda screwed up", but I love that stuff. If you're working alone, you have time to go, "I screwed up there" and then go back and make it perfect. But I like having little errors and discrepancies. I love that stuff.

SS: So, does having you and Olga, your relationship, is that another part of this kind of--I don't know if "lack of ego" is the right term, just because I don't know how you guys work--but I do get the sense that because it's already not really one person's protect as much as it's two, that you guys already have "letting go" as a part of your vocabulary.

JL: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

SS: Is that accurate? Is it easier to say, "Well, I may have written the song but I'm gonna sit this one out...

JL: Yeah.

SS: ...let you guys go for it."

JL: Yeah, I don't know... it's always been for me what's best for the song. I even take that philosophy into recording bands. Just be comfortable, do what's best for the song. Because when it comes down to it, it's all about the song. That's what the people enjoy. The song is the person. If I'm not on it, I don't care.

SS: Would Dark Horse have been possible if you guys didn't own Breakglass?

JL: I don't think so. We took a long time to make it. It actually didn't take that long to track and mix, but because, y'know since the studio is working and we gotta work to make a living, we could only get in on the days off. So we'd have a day here, one or two days here, but we'd have these long stretches of time to actually listen to and figure out what to add and sculpt it. I think that maybe helped the process a bit because we were able to really scrutinize it and spend some time with it. And not, like we never really went back and redid things, because I knew that we didn't have a lot of time to do that, and because I wanted to keep it a little renegade and a little haphazard. Keep some of the mistakes and even have some of the sounds of the microphones and recording of things. Y'know, just like tape hiss, y'know, I wanted to just leave all that in, make it feel like it was almost spontaneous in that sense. And it adds a little excitement to the record.

Plus, a lot of times when I writing, I'll wanna sit alone in the studio for three or four hours just trying something, and erasing it later, y'know? But working in the past with engineers, I want to hear something right away, and so when I'm alone I can whip something up and play a guitar line really quickly and see if it's actually going to work. And if I like it, I'll keep it, and if not, I'll get rid of it. But in a studio, when you're watching someone go a set it up and come back and check the mic and EQ it a little, and it's like, "You know what, I may not even like this guitar bit!" So, we just wasted an hour and a half/two hours of my time (both laugh) setting up this guitar thing that I'm not even gonna use. I'm wasting my own time when I can do it a lot quicker (myself), just test it out and then if I like it, then I can usually hear it.

SS: Do you feel like, as a studio owner, that the recording studio is alive and well? For a while, there was this idea that the more people that knew how to make records at home, that the use for actually going to a recording studio and paying for it would subside a bit.

JL: Yeah.

SS: How does it feel? Have people rediscovered what a recording studio has to offer?

JL: I think people are actually starting to rediscover what we were talking about earlier, y'know, the old days. It's really hard to make a record sound like it did a long time ago, and I think that kids are starting to realize that they can't make that happen in their bedroom on a ProTools rig.

SS: Mm-hmm.

JL: So, we've sort of specialized in bringing back the old things. Y'know, we're building echo chambers, we've got a really large live room. We've got a 16-track, 2-inch Studer machine from 1970, the old Neve console, a bunch of old microphones. I think that when kids come into the studio and they'll record bass, guitar and drums and then maybe they'll take it home--I think that's a really cool way to do it. I recorded at home for a long time just because I didn't want to be in a studio with some guy who didn't understand what I was doing.

SS: Yep.

JL: I was quite content recording on a 4-track cassette.

SS: Yep.

JL: And I actually think it's really cool that people are able to see through what they're hearing in their heads. They're actually able to make a record at home and not spend any money on it. That's absolutely amazing to be able to do that. But I think there's always going to be people who want a big drum sound that they can't get in their house, or we also have a lot of old amps and things to choose from that people may not have access to. Plus it's fun. We try to make people have a good time when they're recording.

SS: Well, I don't think you really understand the advantage of a studio until you check it out.

JL: It's true. See the one thing that I would like to try to have someone, to go back and have somebody wait on me! So, maybe I do wanna say, "Go set up my guitar amp. I'm just gonna sit here and eat potato chips." You know, there is something really cool about having someone help to develop your sound, y'know?

SS: (laughs) Yeah.

JL: So, maybe Tony Visconti (legendary producer of David Bowie, T. Rex and Morrissey among others) or something! (laughs)

SS: Well, you made the kind of record where maybe it would be a possibility next time around!

JL: Yeah, yeah! (laughs) Yeah, c'mon, Tony! (laughs)

SS: Well, speaking of recognition, I wanted to talk a bit about the Polaris Prize. I'm curious about--I mean, obviously it has opened doors.

JL: Right.

SS: But I wanted to get what your impression is of that, and everything else that has happened this year, because (the Polaris) is just one of the things. Right when this year started, I remember hearing everyone talking about your new record, and having seen you play and owning Volume 1, I have to say I was a little surprised by the nature of the...

JL: The hype.

SS: ...yeah, the hype, there's no other word for it. Because I knew you as an instrumental-with-a-little-bit-of-vocal kind of band.

JL: Yeah, yeah (laughs)

SS: And that didn't sort of jive with what everyone was talking about.

JL: Yeah.

SS: Then I heard (Dark Horse) and it made sense, but I wanted to know how you feel about--it's not over yet--but what your impressions are on the year. What matches up and what doesn't?

JL: Yeah, well the whole thing is kind of shocking. When we finished the record, we were like, "Who the hell is gonna put this out?" (both laugh) Right?

SS: Yeah.

JL: We were pretty proud of it, but we still thought it was kind of a strange record. It may not be the strangest thing ever of course, but we couldn't think of anyone, and we're not really up on current labels. We just sent a few (copies) out, we didn't know what the hell was going to happen. The only thing we wanted from it was to put it out on a label, because we did Volume 1 ourselves, and that's a nightmare running a label...

SS: Uh uh.

JL: ...especially when you're pushing your own album because nobody believes you when you say, (adopts dopey tone) "You know this record's really good, you should distribute it, y'know." They're like, "Yeah, sure. It's your own record, of course you would say that." So, the only expectation, the only goal we had for this record was that it would just get released and be available for people to buy. And then, Jagjaguwar got interested and they're amazing people, and then Outside got interested and they're amazing people, and we were like, "this is perfect."

So when our record finally came out, the labels and us, we were just like, "OK, we'll make a few thousand copies and that'll be great!" Y'know, it'll be available. And then the reviews started coming in and after that, it's all gravy at that point. It was pretty shocking. We had absolutely no thoughts that it would be anything. And it's still not a huge record, but it's way, way exceeded our expectations of what we thought it would do.

SS: And does it translate to crowds?

JL: I hope so.

SS: Do you find that people do know what's going on as opposed to just being curious? Because sometimes the first you come around (on tour after the hype) there are lots of people who are curious about, but then...

JL: Yeah, when...

SS: ...when you come back again, you actually see the people who really...

JL: Yeah.

SS: ...had the record in their hearts.

JL: Yeah, the coolest thing about it is, a lot of our fans are a lot older people. I've seen a lot of people coming around in their 40s and sometimes even 50s. Some fans come to us and they look like my father.

SS: Yeah!

JL: And that's really, I'm honoured by that just because, they don't have to go out anymore. They've seen some pretty great bands.

SS: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

JL: They're vinyl collectors most likely, y'know? That to me is like, I really feel like we've accomplished something, when we're bringing out, like, those guys are the real audiophiles. They're not going to come out just for any group. So, that's pretty awesome when those guys come out to check out the show.

Welsh songwriter Gruff Rhys has something of a Cheshire cat quality about him. It's not just the wide, generous grin—which he brandishes eagerly and often—but rather it's the way he manages to be two things at once. Like a Lewis Carroll creation who just missed the Wonderland cut, he's simultaneously an outlandish caricature and real flesh and blood. So much of the reputation of both himself and his group, Super Furry Animals, is based on contradictory mixes: rock culture/rave culture, saturated noise/restrained calm, atonal dissonance/harmonic marriage, cold electronics/warm acoustics, giddy humour/political commentary.

It's this last juxtaposition that perhaps underscores what's so special about his band; they're one of the few acts to nail the kind of social satire mixed with a highly marketable image (at least in the UK) that is normally the domain of cartoons like the Simpsons. Whether it's been showing up at the Glastonbury festival in a tank(!), releasing their albums in 5.1 surround sound with DVD films for each song, or singing songs on stage through a giant Power Rangers helmet, no idea is too surreal or excessive for the band. And yet, despite these excesses, their heartfelt songs are able to address issues of not only love and loss, but colonial imperialism, global warming, war, and politics in ways that avoid the heavy-handed, preachy tone for which so many of us have long lost a taste.

In person, Rhys happily continues the contradiction. His speech can be slow to the point of paralysis, but just when you wonder if you've lost him, his comments reveal themselves to be quite economical and insightful. His social graces echo that of a Victorian gentleman. He stands when people arrive and leave, looks you in the eye, inquires as to how you are, gives you his full respect and attention. But, as he pauses in the midst of answer, there's that mischievous grin again...

More than anything Rhys is a very educated, highly talented musician who knows that all of the issues about which he sings mean everything and nothing all at once. We discussed politics in their songs; his new solo disc, Candylion; working on SFA's latest, Hey Venus!, with Toronto producer Dave Newfeld; and the group's "horrid" new musical experiment.

Soundscapes: I've noticed that Super Furry Animals don't really have political songs, as much as politics and social commentary are naturally part of the tunes. I want to know if that's somewhat accurate, and how you feel about addressing politics within the songs?

Gruff Rhys: Yeah, we didn't form the group because of politics. Y'know? Our instincts are musical, and our reason for being together is our love of records and to play music. I think that we grew up in a period of political activism and a lot of our friends' families have been politically active. So, it's part of our upbringing. But we come from a generation from after punk rock...

SS: Yeah.

GR: ...which was full of political sloganeering. So we're kind of turned off rhetoric and sloganeering. So we decide, um, it's rare that we're inspired by an event to write a song in a kinda protest singer way.

SS: Right.

GR: There's lyrics and they're very, y'know, it's inevitable that it will be part of our lyrics in the end in some way.

SS: Well, there's a sense that that kind of sloganeering, people are sort of dead to it now. It doesn't resonate in the same way, it's not the same "call to arms". There's a sense that it should be casual dialogue amongst people (when discussing politics now). That puts people at ease.

GR: Yeah, and I suppose there's less, people are less ideological than they used to be. And don't necessarily follow one doctrine. So in that sense, maybe in the 1980s, you had bands that rigorously followed Marxist doctrines...

SS: Mm-hmm.

GR: ...something which would be really difficult to apply today.

SS: Do you think it's good that it's become a little more personal? That it's not so easy to just be left or right anymore?

GR: Yeah, and also people are naturally so hypocritical, that it's often difficult for a rock band to have any kind of credibility if they start making political statements. It's just sometimes so obviously contradictory to what they do.

SS: Mm-hmm. Well, I thought about that a little when I was listening to "Neo Consumer" (a tune about mass consumer confusion off Hey Venus!), just because at home I have a Phantom Power mug and a Rings Around The World uh, little dish...

GR: Yeah, yeah, exactly yeah! (smiling)

SS: (laughs) ...I mean, I understand what you're getting at (in the song), but I also understand that it seems to be a part of the band that you're kind of, well, there's no way to separate yourself from this kind of vortex. You can observe it, but you're still...

GR: ...in it, yeah yeah. I mean, it's observations from within it.

SS: I was reading in a interview that when you were working on Hey Venus!, that a lot of it came from wanting to make some songs that were a little more upbeat to play live. Was it frustrating at all that a record like Love Kraft didn't come across the way you'd like live? Because I felt like that record was a little misunderstood.

GR: Uh, I mean, we're not really worried about... (pauses) I mean, we're pretty happy with (Love Kraft), but it's quite a symphonic record, y'know? And the only frustration was that it was just difficult to play. (laughs)

SS: Yeah.

GR: And any frustrations are purely with ourselves. You know, it's a very long, beautiful record, but it requires a lot of patience to listen to and to play.

SS: Well, certainly on a song like "Zoom!" the crescendos in there, with all the choirs and strings, would be extremely difficult to pull off live with just five people.

GR: Yeah.

SS: So, is there that too? Not just the energy level, but with Hey Venus! you really get the sense of the five of you playing in a room together.

GR: Yeah, obviously on the arrangements it's pretty, umm, it's a very simple record. I suppose the emphasis was more on songs than the arrangement. I think we've made records that are more adventurous sonically, but I think we always react to the last record that we did.

SS: I often felt, especially when watching you guys play live, that for a long time you were trying to merge dance culture with rock culture. Is that still a big part of what you're doing or has that evolved live?

GR: Yeah, I don't know. Our decision making is pretty chaotic and anything goes and everybody pushes and pulls the band in different directions. On this record, nobody brought samplers into the studio, so there's far less electronics than on a lot of our records. I think, and in a way it's difficult for anyone to speak on behalf of the band (laughs), but I think what we were trying to do is, we're making...(pauses) Well, you see, a lot of electronic music is quite a solitary pursuit. You sit at your computer or sampler and sometimes it's more of an individual kind of thing. Whereas with this record, we were trying to play as a band: a five people at once kind of record.

SS: Yeah.

GR: But, but, sometimes we...(looks up smiling) ...I think. (laughs)

SS: I certainly remember seeing you guys play for Rings, when you released the DVD (with a video for each song), and you guys were starting to play with a lot of videos and sequencers.

GR: Yeah.

SS: The first time I saw you guys on that tour, I felt like the energy level was a little lacking because the rhythm section felt like it was learning how to play with a click track for pretty much the whole night.

GR: Right, yeah, yeah.

SS: And then later, on the second leg of Rings and for Phantom, it felt like you had it nailed. What you're saying about electronic music being an individual pursuit, there's that sense of rigidity. It's difficult to be loose.

GR: Yeah.

SS: You've already got a script.

GR: Yeah, absolutely. That can be very frustrating, and in a way, the purer and more electronic it is, the better it sounds. I mean, when we take it to extremes, it's usually more convincing then. We often use a lot of click tracks and it's very difficult to get right. We're still trying to learn that, and I think energetic music, if it sounds energetic then you can get away with it. But with a record like Love Kraft, there's a lot of click tracks in order to orchestrate the show live, and it's very slow music. (laughs)

SS: Yeah.

GR: Whereas on this tour we've got rid of all the video and we've still got a computer on stage which we're using on some songs, but it seems a bit more energetic.

SS: There's a sense to me that on Hey Venus! the layers are still there, it's just a little more purely integrated. It's almost as though now that you're learned another language, the band is a little more multilingual. I don't know if you know what I mean, but instead of just speaking rock, or speaking electronic, now that you know how to speak both of them, there's not the same need to speak one of them exclusively at certain times.

GR: OK, yeah, yeah.

SS: Because parts of Hey Venus! remind me of Fuzzy Logic.

GR: Yeah, yeah.

SS: But then there are bits where the orchestration reminds me of stuff on Phantom Power or even Love Kraft. Like "Carbon Dating" sounds like a Love Kraft song to me, or even "Battersea Odyssey".

GR: Yeah, yeah.

SS: But then, I know I just picked the two songs you didn't write.

GR: No, no. (both laugh)

SS: But it feels like you have more of a command of musical languages now. Does it feel that way to you?

GR: Yeah, I think it's real interesting if you listen to "Carbon Dating", which is a song by Cian (Ciaran, keyboardist and electronic whiz), most of his, because he's developed a lot as a writer and his background is electronic, and he put out a record as Acid Casuals (Omni) a couple years ago, and that record is almost like a greatest hits of the past ten years of his stuff. 'Cause he was making all this music, and he put out some 12"s which we're like minimal techno, kind of newer dance floor things, but he was making all this other stuff and he's very much a perfectionist, so he wasn't releasing it even, but he was giving it to friends.

SS: Yeah.

GR: And some of it would end as Furry songs. We'd all jam, like on "Slow Life" (from Phantom Power). We'd kind of sing on top of it and try to bring it in the group. But, with the Acid Casuals album, by the end he's singing a song. I think the last song on the record is lyrics, and you can see how he's changed his position. So, when he brings things to the band now, he's often reluctant to play them from the computer, but he'll try and get us to play his tunes live.

SS: Right, like he doesn't want to dictate the format to you. He'd rather it came out, give you all the chance to imprint yourself a little bit more on the song from the start.

GR: Yeah, well, I think, although nobody's particularly pushy in the band--it's not a part of our culture--I think he's just really keen that way. For us to take his ideas and play them rather than just keeping an electronic demo and then stick it into the record. Thought we'd rehearse his ideas. Y'know, the stuff he writes is very beautiful, melodic. Hopefully, this makes it quite original. Hopefully, we start to belong to our own sound. Our ultimate goal would be to lose a lot of our influences and make something original. I think we're still quite far away though. (laughs) But that's what we're trying to do.

SS: Well, the influences tend to be evolving constantly at least.

GR: Yeah.

SS: It certainly always comes out sounding like you guys. And that is one other thing too. Now that you guys have been a band as long as you have, your mark on the landscape is little bit different now. You're not a band that has just begun.

GR: Oh no, yeah, yeah.

SS: You have a real history, a huge amount of time and lots of side projects. And some influence, too. What was that collection you did, Under the Influence (a UK compilation series)?

GR: Oh yeah.

SS: And Guto (Pryce, bassist) just did the Trojan Furry Selector (reggae) compilation.

GR: Oh, yeah, yeah.

SS: And there was a quote of yours on the front of the Selda record (cult Turkish psych singer), at least over here. You know the one I'm talking about from Finders Keepers?

GR: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SS: So, I mean, it's different now. You've reached the point where you guys are recognized as having varied tastes. That there's something that can be learned from where your ears lead.

GR: Yeah, I mean, we formed because we didn't come out of a... I don't know, we've all got quite varied tastes, but I think that's what we were interested in when we all came together. Try to see what we could do. (laughs)

SS: Well, there's a sense of a common language that gets brought out—and I don't mean in the 'music is a universal language sense'—but the fact that when you integrate psychedelia, Beach Boys pop stuff, electronic music, dub or whatever, I find that you guys are able to draw a lot of the same things from them. The qualities that address the dreamier part of the mind, or the more euphoric part of the mind. It seems like you're drawn to the same things about them: their sense of exploration and of melody, regardless of the style of music.

GR: Yeah, I think we've got a sweet tooth, you know, melodically. And sometimes we shy from using it, and sometimes we gorge too much on it. (smiles) Sometimes we just embrace it. And y'know, we formed during the sort of electronic boom in Britain. We used to go to a lot of raves and stay up all night and come home the next day and listen to Surf's Up on ecstasy. (laughs)

SS: Yeah, yeah.

GR: So, that's basically the kind of soundtrack when we formed.

SS: In a lot ways, that's how it sounds to me!

GR: Sort of. (laughs) Yeah!

SS: Particularly Rings, there is that real collision of kind of a 60s pop culture meeting this electronic boom culture and that notion of gorging and excess, there are elements of that. But also something like your first solo record (the all-Welsh Yr Atal Genhedlaeth), which seems like a real purifying moment. Everything is very minimal, the way it's written. There's a lot of repetition of phrases. Even without knowing the language, it seems like some songs only had a couple of lines to them.

GR: Yeah.

SS: What was your aim with that first album?

GR: Well, the first record, was, um, our friend Gorwel Owen has a studio in his house, and that's where we've done, where we recorded a lot of our earlier music. Albums like Radiator and most of Mwng. So, we've been going there to record really for the past twenty years. So he's a real close friend, so I went to his house. I often go there to do demos as well. Just go there for a day so I can reel off fifteen songs every couple of years.

SS: Right, yeah.

GR: So, I'd been going there. I went there for a couple of days and made some kind of demos and I liked the sort of feel of them. So I ended up going back for another few days and did some more. And then, I took another couple of days and mixed them. So, when I made that record, for the first couple of days I did them, I wasn't really aware that I was making a record as such. I just having a laugh and just messing around and having a good time. Just creating. And y'know, Furry records had become, especially at that time just after Rings Around The World and Phantom Power, where the albums had become huge undertakings. Because they both came out on DVD and we mixed them in 5.1 surround sound...

SS: Yeah.

GR: ...as well as stereo, so the record took twice as much time to mix.

SS: They were like big movies.

GR: And we had to try and collect films for each song...

SS: Yeah.

GR: ...so that was quite an undertaking, just keeping all that together. And then, there's a remix for every song as well on both those records.

SS: Yeah, yeah! (laughs)

GR: You know, it was just kind of mind-boggling. But, y'know, fantastic thing to try out. So, making a record in seven days flat is just great, y'know? (laughs)

SS: Yeah, yeah. So how did that lead to Candylion? This seems to be less of a surprise solo record.

GR: Yeah, yeah.

SS: Things are much more richly worked out.

GR: Yeah, I thought I'd make an acoustic record. So the initial idea is that. I had a self-conscious decision to make a record. So, I had all these songs on acoustic guitars and they sort of coincided with, after Love Kraft, we (SFA) were kind of thinking of making a loud record. So, I had a lot of quiet songs, so I thought maybe I'd go to Gorwel's house and record them quickly. I took two weeks to make it. I wanted it to have a sense of spontaneity, but I didn't keep the mistakes. If there was a mistake, I'd try and do it again.

SS: Mm-hmm.

GR: On the first record, I just left it how it was and kept all the imperfections.

SS: Right, right.

GR: So, it was more refined. But I got excited and threw in drums, got a double bass player down. So, it wasn't as, I thought it was going to be more minimal, more based around a single guitar, but, maybe another time. (laughs)

SS: Well, some of my favourite moments come from how the percussion works, especially on "Lonesome Words", so I wouldn't say it's a mistake. (laughs)

GR: Yeah. (smiles)

SS: What led to you guys working with (Broken Social Scene producer) David Newfeld? I mean, we're pretty familiar with him here...

GR: Yeah, yeah.

SS: ...but it was pretty excited to see what would come of you guys working with him. So what led to that?

GR: Well, we were looking for a kind of, coach-style figure stroke referee.

SS: (laughs)

GR: Because we wanted to make quite a live record and we didn't wanna repeat the past two records either. So, we were looking for someone new to work with. So we were racking our brains trying to think of whose records we actually liked the sound of. And our recording sessions are usually very creative but they're like quite fracturous as well. They're very tense. So you're looking for an outsider that could be objective and help out.

SS: Mm-hmm.

GR: And I was having a conversation with our friend, and listening to his records. I think we were listening to a Broken Social Scene record and we all kind of, "Oh fuck, y'know, it must be nuts making those records because there's so many of them. Wow, maybe this is the one!" (both laugh)

SS: If he can rein in 13 people, then he can probably rein in five.

GR: So, I mean, obviously, I only knew his records, I didn't know anything about him. So, it was real interesting making that kind of, we wanted to make a pop record as well. We wanted to make a rowdy pop record. And he revealed to us early on that he had a background as a wedding DJ...

SS: Yes!

GR: ...and that he'd done 500 weddings at least? Or something, it's a big statistic.

SS: Yeah, I've been to one of them. He's done a lot.

GR: So, he's perfect! He's got such a knowledge of pop and what makes people react. What gets the whole family to the dance floor. And so, he, I think we were with him for maybe three weeks? And most of the time he just stood there by the desk. We had a bit of an adventure, because went to France, and we haven't spent that much time in France. We found a studio that was one big room where we could all sit in and I don't think that he'd (Newfeld) been to France either and we had the studio guys who were forcing wine and cheese on us all the time. It was a bit of an adventure. And then, he wouldn't accept a take until he was physically moved by it, in a wedding kind of way.

SS: (laughs) Yeah.

GR: You know?

SS: Yeah.

GR: It was great, you know. He could reel off all the songs that he was reminded of, if you were doing a song like "Run-Away".

SS: Well, for sure, there's a load of pop references all over Venus. It's funny too because, Dave seems to have a really distinct sound (as a producer), but sometimes I think that's only because so much of what people know of him is Broken Social Scene where you do have a ton of instruments coming at you at once.

GR: Yeah, yeah.

SS: I was talking to Kevin (Drew, BSS) a little while ago about speaking to you, and he asked about Hey Venus!, "Does it sound like a Newf record?" And I said that it didn't sound like a Newf record BSS has done, but it sounds like a record Newf would be a part of because there is so much classic pop reference it in. It's that other part of his language.

GR: Yeah.

SS: It seemed like a good fit.

GR: And it's something that he completely grasps, y'know, and understands. He really pushed some songs. Because you listen to the demos, and there were songs that we were gonna leave off, like "Suckers" for example.

SS: Mm-hmm.

GR: Which is quite a kind of obvious song, melodically. You know, it's like, that was his favourite. So, he had the power in kind of shaping the record, in terms of what songs we ended up recording. We had so many of them that, I mean, we recorded maybe twenty songs.

SS: Yeah, really?

GR: We demoed much more. So he listened to demos of kinda live versions of the record.

SS: It's almost funny to hear you say that, just because it is such a short record. It's interesting to know that it came from such a large pool.

GR: Yeah, we were quite brutal, and the record could have been very different as well. Some of the songs we left off were really heavy and raw, you know? So initially, at the time of recording, we thought we were making a heavy record. What we ended up with is more consistent with our back catalogue.

SS: Mm-hmm.

GR: But we almost made a really radical record, (both laugh) but we didn't manage it.

SS: But is it not true that you also have been working on more than just, you were working on a couple records?

GR: Yeah, we've been working on a, we're working with a conductor. (laughs) We've been making an instrumental record, with a guy called Charles Hazelwood as a kind of coach figure. He comes from an academic musical background, which is kind of the opposite of our musical background. It's been real interesting, and we've been working with a notater as well, who can actually orchestrate our ideas.

SS: Right, he helps, writes them out?

GR: Yeah, and the conductor has been giving us advice on what orchestras can do and what they can't do, which we usually ignore. (smiles)

SS: Do you mean in general, or just for this project? (laughs)

GR: Well, no, y'know, he's been encouraging us to try things that maybe, y'know, saying, "Well, that's not orthodox, but you should try it anyway. See what happens." Because, we don't want to make a kind of 'rock band meets an orchestra' record, which is a horrid thing. So we've been jamming with the kind of core members of this orchestra. So we've got about, I think we've got about twenty hours of music so far recorded.

SS: And is the idea for this to be an album at some point?

GR: Yeah, it's probably going to take years, because we've got hours and hours already, some of which sounds pretty good, but not very focused, and then we'll probably listen back to them, arrange the whole thing, and then maybe record it live with an orchestra.

SS: Right, and this would be the five of you playing along.

GR: Yeah, I mean, maybe not strictly an orchestra, but a lot of orchestral musicians and a conductor. (pauses and laughs) It's sounds awful, but...

SS: No, (laughs) I mean, it sounds totally plausible to me. I wouldn't bet against you guys doing anything at this point.

GR: The stuff that we've recorded so far sounds like goblin records, it's almost like an Italian horror soundtrack.

SS: Right. Yeah, like some Argento movie or something.

GR: Yeah.

SS: Yeah.

GR: But I think it sometimes sounds awful, y'know?

SS: (laughs)

GR: But, when it's good, it sounds like a horror soundtrack.

SS: Well, you've got twenty hours to pull from. Can't be all bad.

GR: Yeah... (drifting, smiling) There's still songs left over from Hey Venus!, which we'll either make that into a record or do it all again, not sure. We're starting to tour, so we'll all be together for six months. We'll formulate a plan. Or, probably do something completely different. (smiling)

One of the drawbacks of being in the midst of an exceptionally strong year for music is that, by say, I don't know, September, people get rather tired/wary of phrases like "album of the year", "their best record yet" or "a career-defining work". At the risk of boring you all, however, I would have to say that Glory Hope Mountain by Ottawa's The Acorn is a career-defining work that is easily the band's best record yet, and quite possible an album of the year.

Before I lose your trust completely, allow me to justify my words. The Acorn began as the solo project of songwriter Rolf Klausener. Using plaintive harmonies atop of acoustic indie-folk mixed with electronics, the music was quite pretty but also pretty naive. The act slowly grew into a band and released some strong recordings, including Blankets, which became CBC's Bandwidth album of the year for 2005 (there's that phrase again!)

It was around two years ago though, that Klausener made a decision that has moved his music from collegiate, navel-gazing contemplation to the kind of studied, highly poetic work that may put him in elite company in this country alongside writers like The Weakerthans' John K. Samson (whose excellent new album Reunion Tour also came out this Tuesday. See what I mean? An embarrassment of riches...). That decision was to write an album about the journey that led his mother, Gloria Esperanza Montoya, from Honduras to Canada.

What makes this more than just an extravagant Mother's Day card--aside from the interesting tale that is the subject matter--is Klausener's dedication to the project. Conducting hours of interviews with his mother, friends and relatives, plus generous research into the traditional Garifuna music of Honduras, he and his quietly talented band spent years crafting a document rich in details both musical and lyrical. The end result is something very special: specific to the struggles of his mother, yet easily universal enough for anyone to interpret; woven with rhythmic reference to Garifuna music without ever overwhelming with cheap cultural appropriation.

Like any defining experience, Klausener himself seems changed by the events and eager for the world to hear this album. We spoke on the seemingly endless efforts to bring Glory Hope Mountain to life; avoiding the pitfalls in translating such a personal and, at times, harrowing tale to music; and the discoveries, good and bad, he made about himself in the process.

Soundscapes: During what most bands would call "time off to record", you guys have released a great EP (Tin Fist this past March), toured on-and-off, and had a steadily-building internet buzz about you.  It seems a lot of people have happened upon you in this time, to the point where I think you're going to have a lot of ears with this record.

Rolf Klausener: Well, I hope so, I certainly hope you're right. That would be great. I mean we're really happy with the record. Like, we're really, really, really happy with it, we're really proud of it. And in one shape or another we've been working on it for over two years, so it's kind of like, you hope with every recording that you do that more people are going to hear it. We have been touring and getting out there. We toured for Tin Fist, not extensively, but we did go across Canada a couple of times and it wasn't really necessarily any kind of trying to do something as a prelude to the record, but it was definitely part of the process. Whenever we have time to tour, we tour. But with this record, yeah, I really hope a lot of people do hear it. That was part of the reason that we did go hunting for another label, more specifically, people who worked full time at doing music. Basically because we were working with people who don't do it full time and we were starting to feel a lack there, and it was really important to us that as many people as we could get to hear the record did. We had to find people who were working full time, which was a bit of a struggle in itself...

SS: Yeah.

RK: ...but I don't know. I think I know what you're saying. I do get a sense when I read little blog entries and stuff, or if hear the song on CBC, so far all I hear are positive things from people who have heard it who I don't know. So that's really exciting, but you gotta take that stuff with a grain of salt. (laughs) That's just a few people out there who do meticulously weave through the music that's out there.

SS: So what did compel you to work on this story?

RK: Well, it's mostly there's a tradition on my dad's side of sort of documenting family life, and we have a family tree that goes back to the 15th century. So, my dad always imparted the importance of documenting family life. My father passed away when I was 15, and so when it came to my mom, I felt more and more that I really need to know about her life and document it. And I always wanted to write sort of a little biography of my mom to keep in our family records. And I thought about it more and more and thought, "Well, I'm not really that great a writer, maybe I'll put some music to it and make an album of it." And so I very nonchalantly tossed the idea out to the band and they were kinda like, "Yeah, sure, cool." And then, it wasn't something that we sat and discussed. It was an idea and I tossed it out, there was definitely some kind of, they probably thought, "Hmmm, kind of a weird idea..." But in the end, I started writing the grants and we thought about it more, and once I started interviewing my mom and learning the stories and telling the boys in the band the stories, then definitely I think everyone got a lot more interested. And so did I to be honest! (laughs) I didn't really know that it would work, but basically, in short, if you don't know anything about your family then certainly there's a desire at some point in your life to know about your history.

SS: Yeah.

RK: And that's what it was. An exercise in documentation and doing it the only way that I know how.

SS: When you speak of interviewing your mom, were there other people that you interviewed while putting this together? I assume that this was before you worried about any music. Was this the initial step you took?

RK: Yeah, for sure. We did a grant proposal and I started interviewing my mom in January of 2006, and did that for two months, every week, until I collected about eight hours of tape, and that was definitely the first step. At that point it was just kind of, let's see what kind of stories are there and if it was actually worth doing. I mean, I knew kind of surfacey stuff, but I didn't know any of the details of her life. So we started there, and then once I started getting the stories, I had to sit with them for a long time before I could actually get any ideas of where to go beyond that. I only started thinking about the music element months after I'd spoken to my mom. She didn't really grow up with native Honduran music around her at all. She grew up with Hendrix and Zeppelin and that kind of thing. It was more of musical curiosity, well, "What music did come from my mom's background?" So at that point I started talking to some ethnomusicologists and some people at Carleton University. But it didn't go really far beyond that. I talked a little with a record label in Belize, in Honduras, umm, but really the idea was to, I mean, the music research was totally secondary. The idea was to get stories and write songs based on the stories.

SS: Yep.

RK: The music element was very secondary, it kinda came in while I was working on it, "Ooh, might need to do some research on that." And then one day at Bluesfest last summer, I saw a Honduran artist from this record label in Belize and I watched him play and I was like, "Oh my God, those are those drums I've heard about, those heart drums." And so I started doing more research and cross referencing with stuff that I found at the Smithsonian Institute...

SS: Right.

RK: ...and kind of put all those things together. And I mean, the musical process, the incorporating elements of Honduran music was really, really, we took it very, very, (pauses) we were really careful not to try to emulate stuff too directly, because that would be pretty contrived and, y'know, we're not here to make a Garifuna record. We don't know the traditions, we're not claiming to want to appropriate them. It was more like, let's find a new palette to paint with, y'know?

SS: Right. So you mentioned that your mother didn't grow up with this music around her, with native Honduran music.

RK: Mmm-hmm.

SS: When you were researching this music and incorporating these elements into the songs you were writing, did you find that the music itself shed any light on the project? Did it open up things in her story to you?

RK: Oh yeah, it was really interesting. In some ways it was really metaphorical, but some of the biggest things were in researching the actual system of references in the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. I did a lot of research in that, and there were some other books that I yanked out, and so a lot of the culture and mythologies that surround the music, kind of morphed into my mom's story. My mom gave me a set of stories and there were lots of definite pictures and images in those stories, but when I started researching the culture, I started finding interesting ties to things that my mom said. I mean, my mom talked about 'blood', as in people's blood, the blood of your family, and there were definitely references to the body and blood within some of the texts. As well as the firefly metaphor that weaves its way through a lot of the songs in the album. That was taken directly from a Mosquito Indian tradition, where when a person dies, the shaman will perform this three-day long ritual. And at the end of it, they'll use a firefly to represent the soul of the departed and bury a firefly. And so, that metaphor tied in really well, I started thinking about when my mom's mom died during childbirth.

SS: Right.

RK: I thought well, "Maybe they performed some sort of funeral rite for my mom's mother", and when I read about that, I sort of thought, "Wow, that ties those ideas together." So, there was a lot of that and, there was this really nice marriage between things that my mom told me, images she gave me directly, elements of culture and tradition that I read about, and, ultimately toward the end of the writing process, I started seeing elements that related directly to myself and my whole family and my father and stuff.

So, it was kind of a weird process. There was a lot of geographical references that just popped as I was writing and coincidences where there was this wonderful serendipity. My mom grew up in this area where there was a mountain and a river and she ran away from it, and she ended up in Montreal, surrounded by a mountain and river...

SS: Yeah.

RK: ...and I grew up here in Ottawa surrounded by the Gatineau hills and the river, and there were all these wonderful ties that were just coincidental, but really beautiful. And it just made the idea of the journey of my mom going from one place to another, and ending up in an environment that was really similar to where she grew up, it was just really fun. There were so many moments like that. 

SS: It's been mentioned that this record is partly true, partly fairytale. Did you conscious have to work to strike a balance between the literal and fictional aspect of this story? Times that you looked at it and thought, "This is a little too out there," or "This is a little too exactly what happened"?

RK: (laughs) Do you write songs by any chance?

SS: Yeah. (laughs)

RK: Just kidding, that definitely sounds like a songwriter's question there. Of course, yeah, for sure. Some of the stories were incredibly, incredibly personal, particularly "Oh Napoleon". That was story where I think if had gone even a little bit more literal in the imagery, I think it would've been really upsetting to my mother, or kind of offensive, and really gratuitous and unnecessary. But generally, she trusted me to tell the stories as I saw them. And definitely, towards the end I think I spent--I mean it's kinda pathetic but--I spent about a month writing the lyrics to "Hold Your Breath" and, by a month, I mean literally sitting outside my house, I'd just got fired from my job, so I was sitting there (laughs) outside my house six or seven hours a day working on..., I remember this one week, the end of the week came along and the engineer was coming over to record and he was like, "Are you ready to record the vocal?" And I was like, (excitedly) "I did two lines this week!" And it was like, "Oh God, Jesus..." (laughs) But that was the biggest challenge for sure, how do you take some of those highly personal stories and make not too literal, like "Hey! Here I am, I'm born, and I'm going through some tough times, and now I'm gonna move to Montreal."

SS: Yep.

RK: And not make it boring or too literal. That was definitely the biggest challenge. And also to make the songs interesting melodically and lyrically, make the lyrics dance enough that I would find them interesting ten years down the road. That was also a very conscious decision. I was reading a lot of books at the time, and I was reading a lot of good lyrics, a lot of bad lyrics, and kind of taking mental notes as to what I liked and what I didn't like.

SS: Right.

RK: Metaphors that I didn't want to touch, y'know?

SS: Well, it's always gonna be harder too, when you're not just writing a song that's answering to a particular moment of inspiration, but you've got an entire project in mind. You have parameters within which to work.

RK: Yeah. And that said though, there was a couple of songs, well, a handful of songs, where I really, really, really, slaved over the lyrics, but then a song like "Glory", I came home from a practice with this other band I play in in Ottawa and I just came home and I was kinda drunk, and I just opened my notebook and I just wrote out the lyrics to "Glory" and there was no music, I just wrote out the lyrics and they haven't changed.

SS: Yeah.

RK: That's exactly what I wrote that one night in like three minutes. And I'm sure you know that joy of just spitting out something that you really like and are proud of in a few seconds.

SS: Yeah, it's enough to make you seriously second guess it later on! (both laugh) But, yeah, exactly. So, when you're in the process of analyzing one's own family, particularly when you're documenting events that you weren't there for, I mean, even though you interviewed your mother, you realize something about yourself when you see how you decided to fill in some of the blanks, or how you tell the story.

RK: Oh, for sure.

SS: What did you come out with about yourself in process of working on this record?

RK: Ummm, well, I kind of affirmed, reaffirmed, that I'm a huge asshole. Uh, that was definitely in there, I was like, "Oh yeah! It's true! I'm just like my dad, such a prick!" (both laugh) So, that kind of came out. Um, and I think "Low Gravity" is the song that kind of talks about that the most directly. You know, actually, to be honest, that was pretty much one of the main songs where I really saw a lot of myself in the song. But I realized I was just as stubborn as my mom, and I'm also, one of the things my mom has going for her is just her passion, and I kind of always have lived in the shadow of my dad's life, because he was this crazy U.N. emissary, and he traveled the world, and spoke fifteen languages, and growing up I was always like, "Goddamnit, I'm never going to do anything like that in my life."

SS: Right.

RK: And then, really focusing on my mom's life, I got to see what was really good about her, and subsequently kind of realized that the things that I was always disappointed in (about) myself, there was another side--my mom's side--and it dealt with passion and, not to be too cheesy, but perseverance and survival. Survival, especially.

SS: Right, right.

RK: I realized, y'know, I'm not really, I don't know what kind of life I'll ever achieve or what I'll achieve in life, or what I'll aspire to, but, it kind of reaffirmed the fact that passion and survival go a long way. The desire to survive is a really strong energy, and I guess writing about that for a year, you kind of start to think, "Well maybe there's some of that in me as well." But the biggest thing was realizing, reaffirming that I was a huge asshole.

SS: Well, it's a happy conclusion to build from.

RK: (laughs)

SS: It's an important realization, (laughs) and it's all context too.

RK: Right. You move beyond it, of course. Realize you're asshole-ness. (laughs)

SS: So, was there a big, weepy public apology to your bandmates and friends for all the things you had done?

RK: No, it wasn't necessarily to them at all, it was a pretty personal thing going on.

SS: Yeah.

RK: I guess, y'know... (pauses) This whole process also kind of reaffirmed my ability to make really good decisions, but after an incredibly long period of terrible indecision.

SS: (laughs)

RK: So, that was maybe less 'asshole', and more just 'unable to make decisions'. That was a big frustration for a lot of points in the recording process. Sitting on a song I had a feeling that I might not like, and realizing a month down the road, being like, "OK, we need to completely re-record the song." So I was constantly apologizing to the band. (laughs)

SS: Speaking of which, especially with a project of this nature, how much control did you exercise in the studio?

RK: Oh...

SS: Was it easy to trust the rest of the band with this idea, or was it something where you kinda felt like you had to hold on to the reins?

RK: You know, we (the band) talked about this last night, and they definitely expressed a sense that there were times when I had a certain idea in my mind and really wanted to make sure that it got committed to tape. Whether it was good or not, there were definitely times that I was really passionate about ideas, and directions that I saw for songs. The thing about this band is once it stopped being a solo project, you know, like with any band, they bring there own personality and colour to the band. And we all listened to a lot of the stuff that I researched and, you know, we discussed a lot of the research that I did together and we all took different things from it. I think that everybody applied their talents and their little superpowers in reference to the stuff that we researched and depending on what we were doing in a certain song, those guys could do their own thing. But the big thing was that a lot of the times we just didn't know where a song was going.

SS: Hmm.

RK: I mean, I was hoping to have everything written by January when we started recording, but that wasn't the case at all. We only had three songs ready to go...

SS: Right.

RK: ...and the rest were written over the course of the seven months while we were recording. And it was a really painful process and it was really stressful. And we're in two different cities, members from Montreal would come in kind of blind and not really know necessarily what they were doing that day. Like, "OK, I know we're doing a drum bed, but what do you want? I don't know what I'm going to try, give me some direction."

SS: Right.

RK: So, there were days where it was wonderful, where all this magic would happen in the studio and all these unexpected things, but there were other days where it was just painful. We'd sit and try a drum bed for five hours and have nothing at the end of it. The nice thing was that everyone was really conscious of the fact that they really had to let their egos drop, and provide what was needed for the song. And it was weird because we really didn't know what the song needed and a lot of the times, we didn't know what the song was until we started recording it. And it was only when we were halfway through the recording process where we would be like, "Ahh, OK, this is what it needs, let's do that." or, "This is where the song needs to go, it needs more energy."

So, in regards to how personal I felt, I really do test the band a lot and I don't, y'know, 99% of the time I really try not to tell them what to do, because, in the end I'll ask them to do something and they'll do something different anyways. (both laugh) Bunch of stubborn brats. But, y'know, they are really good at what they do, and I'm not there to tell them to be something that they're not. Even if we did try something, and that's one thing that we kind of got much better at on this record, is that we all did have to work outside of our comfort zone. So, everyone was constantly saying to each other, "Well, try this. Try it. We'll just try it." And so we were constantly trying things, and I think it that respect we were able to let all of our guards down and let our egos kindly walk out the door and just do what every song needed.

"I have been doing a lot of interviews lately, but that's OK," says Okkervil River's Will Sheff matter-of-factly, and it's understandable why. This past August saw the release of their fourth full length album, The Stage Names, and in a year of exceptional albums, it's arguably one of the best. At the risk of diminishing the capable and sympathetic way with which the group handle the album's nine tunes, most of the credit for this success belongs to songwriter and frontman Sheff. This is especially true when you hear the eloquent full demo recordings of Stage Names included with the album's limited first run.

When Okkervil released 2005's breakthrough Black Sheep Boy, many critics likened the band breathlessly to long-revered and missed cult heroes Neutral Milk Hotel. The similarities are kind of uncanny: both are large bands full of multi-instrumentalist members; their music merges folk and rock with a healthy barroom gypsy swagger; and each group has an undisputed leader in possession of a riveting, very human voice--whether as a full-throated yelp or a broken, cracking whisper.

And yet, where NMH's Jeff Mangum was enigmatic and dressed in vivid LSD-metaphors, Sheff is far more tactile and familiar. He yearns for "real blood...real knives", "the earthiest smell", while he watches a "bad movie", and litters his songs with known locations like "Washington Avenue" and "Camden Town".

At the same time, his songs are no less open to our own experiences and imagination; they are both movie cameras and mirrors, crisply projecting a tale as they reflect our own story. Also, unlike the defunct NMH, Okkervil River appear primed to stick around. Nine years in, the band is only getting more recognized, adding a killer Conan O'Brien appearance and the public praises of none other than Lou Reed to its latest banner moments.

Ahead of a sold out Toronto appearance, we spoke with Sheff from the road. What began as a discussion of his songwriting, became a candidly uncertain look into the state of the world, the role of entertainers to inform, and the future of touring bands like his own.

Soundscapes: When listening to the demo disc, the thing that really stuck out for me was how fully formed the songs were. I was expecting to hear lyrics in transition and whatnot, but everything seems to be there. When you're writing, do you write a lot of songs, or are you the kind of person who writes only about ten songs a year but perfects every essence of them?

Will Sheff: When I'm writing I do tend to write a lot of songs, and I guess I usually end up in the writing process taking them pretty close to a state of completion before I bring them into the band. Now of course, when we get there and we sit down and we start playing them, we figure out what's working and what isn't working. And we might totally give something a different arrangement or a different sound than it had before. But usually most of the lyrics and the sort of overall structure of the song is more or less there.

SS: So given the way that the overall themes move through this record and interact with each other, how much of the idea for Stage Names was together before you started writing?

WS: Umm, the idea wasn't there at all before I started the record. It wasn't that I had an idea and then wrote a record to go around it. It was more that I had, as I was writing the songs, it became clear that it was pointing in a certain direction. And then it was just kind of a matter of shaping them all that way, in the most elegant way that I could, so that they felt like they all worked together in the end.

SS: Do you feel that this writing was more of a subconscious act in a way?

WS: I do kind of think that it's a more subconscious mind process. I think of my conscious mind in writing as a kind of filter.

SS: Right.

WS: Y'know, like, I'm kind of using my conscious mind to filter out bad ideas and make phrases a little bit better than they could be if I didn't think about them as much. I'm kind of using it to shape things, but umm, the subconscious mind is providing a lot of what's really going into it. Or another way that you could think of it is, y'know, if you've ever seen footage of somebody when they're working on an assembly line, and there's all these things coming down the assembly line and they're looking at them, and really their whole job is to take something that looks weird, and pick it up and throw it aside, or maybe reshape something and change it. The person on the assembly line is kinda how I think of my conscious thought process when I'm writing. But I think that a lot of it is kinda, I wouldn't say subconscious, because it's not like I'm not aware of what I'm doing, but it's all kind of intuitive as opposed to a very organized thought process.

SS: A lot of what you talk about in Stage Names is directly tied to life on the road and being a fan of musicians, and celebrity in general, and this record is getting called an 'autobiographical' work a lot. I wonder how really accurate a statement that is.

WS: It's not that autobiographical. It's sort of is and it sort of isn't, y'know? I'm using things that have happened to me as a way to understand some of the things that I'm writing about on the record. It's not that I have an urgent sense that I want people to understand who I am and where I'm coming from. It's not like that at all. There's a lot of things that I tried to write on the record that may sound very authentically real, like they really happened, but that you would be surprised to know that they didn't. And there's other things on the record that might be more vague and hazy, but actually refer to something very specific that happened to me. So I do think of it like you take these things and you use them, they go into the finished product, but I was not at all, at any point, thinking that what I was doing was setting up to write an autobiographical record. I think there is, obviously, there are moments that are personal, but I don't try to draw attention to which those are, and I don't think of them as having to do with whether or not the record has merit.

SS: When you step back from a record, there's a moment before it's released where it's allowed to be what it is to you, and not necessarily anyone else. But then after that, you go up on stage and you perform it night after night and you get people commenting on the work and so on. How does this record seem to you now that you've dealt with some much feedback about it?

WS: Well, y'know when I'm really working on it, on the songs, before we've even recorded them, that's when I'm in the most hugging and loving them whole phase. That's when it feels extremely personal and private and special to me. But once we start working on the songs in the rehearsal, you starting thinking whether or not it works, and by the time you're finishing the record, you're obsessed with whether or not it's working to the point where you've lost a little bit of perspective on what's actually happening. So, by that point, it doesn't feel like, the way that you describe, y'know feeling like it's just yours, maybe that feeling is there, but it's a little bit confused by the fact that you have no perspective on it and you don't know what people are going to think. And you know, when I'm writing an album, I'm not concerned what people think. And when I'm recording it, I'm very concerned with what I think, whether I think it's good. But once it's done, there's no more, y'know, it's not helpful for me to think in terms of either of those things. So, then I start wondering what people are going to think, and it's really interesting because I don't understand what makes people think the things they think anyway. Y'know there's a certain amount of baited breath before the record comes out, when you're thinking you cannot read the people. People are not going to understand it.

SS: Yeah, right.

WS: But now that it's out, I do in some ways feel like it's no longer mine. So, in some ways, it doesn't have that personal connection to me anymore. I feel like it's gone out there and it's doing its thing. I love those songs and I feel a lot of affection towards the songs, but it's different than, y'know, it's more like when you're a parent and you're sitting at home with your beautiful child and you're thinking about how amazing it is that they're blah blah blah blah, but when you're older and they're out in the world and married and have kids and trying to get job and do things for themselves. I mean, it's that whole thing, you're looking out there saying this thing now exists independently of me. And it is true, it sounds sort of corny, but it is true. Playing on a stereo where you're not present, it's living a life outside of you, so you feel a little bit less of that achingly personal connection to it.

SS: Speaking of that 'baited breath', the steady momentum of Black Sheep Boy over a couple of years represented a real culmination of a lot of efforts. It reached the point where working on The Stage Names, there was certainly the suggestion of a lot of potential for your new record. I know it's a cliche, but did you feel the weight of expectation working on this album? It feels like one where there would be legitimate cause for those feelings.

WS: I felt that weight of expectation, but it's kind of a degrading position to put yourself in...

SS: Yeah.

WS: ...to give in to feeling the weight of other's people's expectations for you, when you never started writing because of people's expectations anyway. I think I'm in a position where I've been doing this for nine years, so I didn't feel like a band that puts out one record and gets unbelievably huge and everybody wants them to top it on the next record and they don't even know what it was that they did that made people like it in the first place.

SS: Right.

WS: It was more like, at this point I've been doing it for long enough that I was able, I think luckily, to tune out thoughts about other people's expectations and focus on my expectations. And my expectations are the only thing that I know anything about, y'know? I don't understand in a very sophisticated way what people's expectations are. But I do understand what I want. What I'm trying to do. I can get my hands on it a little bit more easily.

SS: Yeah, yeah. How did your relationship with William Schaff begin? (This distinct artist has also done covers for Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Magnolia Electric Co.) His artwork seems pretty integral to how your albums come across.

WS: Well, he was a friend of a drummer, the guy who played drums with us a year or so, maybe a little bit longer? That's a guy named Mark Pedini who started a lot of designing for us. And basically I met him through Mark. It was one of those early days of internet promoting your band things. His band, The Eyesores, had actually just contacted us through a message board, saying, "Can you help us set up a gig in Texas?"

SS: Right.

WS: And so that was how I met Will, and that was a while back. I immediately, when I had the idea for him to do artwork for our first record, it very immediately, intuitively seemed right to me and it just all worked out really well ever since.

SS: How do you pitch the records to him? Do you just give him a copy and let him go? Do you sit and talk a lot about it?

WS: No, we talk about it a lot far before the first note has even been recorded. And for the past two records, Black Sheep Boy and Stage Names, I've gone to visit him at his house in Providence, Rhode Island and I've stood there and played these songs for him. Y'know, all the songs in person and we talk about them a lot and there's a lot of arguing and laughing and drinking and discussing what's up. And he tends to put in his own interpretation about what the record's about.

SS: Is he more than just an artist then, is he a sounding board for the music as well?

WS: Not the musical ideas. He doesn't say, "I think you could do this differently," or anything like that. But we do argue a lot about what a song is about (laughs). I really enjoy that. And with Black Sheep Boy in a lot of ways the reason that I made a record called Black Sheep Boy was because I was thinking, "Aww, man, Will could do some really great artwork for that."

SS: Right.

WS: (laughs) So, I always like the idea of feeling like the artwork is integral, has a total close relationship, to the music and the lyrics and they all combine together. Especially in the age of where everything is downloaded in a little crappy, low-resolution version of the internet anyway.

SS: Yeah.

WS: It seems really more important to do a whole.

SS: Yeah, if people are actually going to put the money down for you.

WS: Yeah.

SS: Definitely. So, this may fall under the stuff you were saying earlier about having no idea where people get their ideas, but... Some of the final statements in the song "Plus Ones"--the lines about "let's take the world's stupidest stand and actually mean it"--those lines really have a desperation that points to the need for meaning and purpose in life. It reminded me of the present political climate in not just the States but Canada too, just North America in general, where you have this situation that is so ripe for change, but you have these entire generations who feel that it's either completely out of their reach or entirely not their business. I wondering how much you talk with fans about politics, about these subjects, and what kind of impressions you get.

WS: Oooo. Um, I don't talk to fans very much about that stuff I guess, but I'm alarmed. I wouldn't say that those last lines were necessarily written, were motivated by that kind of thing...

SS: Right, sure.

WS: ...but I see what you're talking about. It's a very, very frightening time. It seems as if within our, my lifetime, the world is gonna be a very different place. And that's very terrifying. And what's especially terrifying about it is that people don't seem to be altering their behaviour that much in light of this.

SS: Mm-hmm.

WS: I feel like a lot of people are, I don't know if 'apathetic' is the word. It's just that they're so bombarded with things that are going on, that they don't have the focus to take on the entity of problems, you know what I mean? And it's interesting because the sixties generation for example, there was so much of a sense of activism, and that feeling is not really around now, and I'm starting to worry that we're going to have to get some kind of absolute vision of Hell on Earth before people are going to go, "Oh, OK. Maybe we have to change our behaviour in terms of our relationship with other people, and our relationship with the planet." And it's terrifying, especially for somebody where, I feel guilty when it comes to environmental stuff. I put out--I may not be as guilty as some--but I put out a lot of petroleum in the service of my so-called art, y'know?

SS: Yeah.

WS: And you start to think, "Well am I, personally, having a good or a bad effect on the world?"

SS: I was going to ask, how do you feel about the occupation of 'musician'? I feel that's one that's going to have to undergo a lot of change, even in the way that an indie musician pursues what they do.

WS: It's gonna have to go through a lot of change. I feel like, in some ways I wish I had thought about this more before we put out our record, because I wish I had been more prepared to think about things. I don't know, it's funny. It's like, when Al Gore was putting on all those concerts all over the world, you're thinking about all these people traveling to see these shows...

SS: (laughs) Yeah.

WS: ...and all these people flying on planes to see them, all this crap. It almost definitely had a negative environmental impact. It's all in the name of raising awareness, and you're sort of like, "Does awareness offset carbon emissions?" I don't really understand quite how that works. How many tons of awareness do you have to create? Y'know, it's sort of like this thing with me being a musician. I kind of think that in a lot of ways--it's sort of sanctimonious, but I'll say it--my job is to sensitize people. And that's not to say that my job is to make them believe in a political system or accept a certain system of beliefs, because that is absolutely not my job. I think my job is to punch holes hopefully in certain things that people think are true and real. So I think that the ultimate goal is to try and sensitize people in some kind of way.

So you think, maybe that's good, maybe that's an abstract goal, but when you actually look at what you're doing--driving all the fuck over the world, and taking planes everywhere and putting out these hunks of plastic--you sort of like, "Wow, I'm just a low-level, poor man's version of any other major polluter." It's a frightening time to be alive. I don't really have a good answer for that question.

SS: Well, it is a interesting time. You talk about how in the sixties there was that sense of activism, and I remember a comment about Neil Young's Living With War record (2006) when it came out, something to the effect of, 'It's a really bizarre time when the most politically aware and angry record is being released by this 60-year old musician. Why aren't younger musicians carrying the torch?' I'm not saying this to put you in a corner, but do you ever wonder why it's not in vogue to be more direct about this? Or why the message has to come from these higher-tier celebrities, that it's not very grassroots?

WS: I think that in some way there's a sanctimony that a lot of the children of the 60s had that leaves a really bad taste in the mouths of people in my generation. It just seemed a very much holier-than-thou, hectoring instead of doing anything, lecturing and often there's a feeling of hypocrisy to it. And it's just not very fun to have people lecturing you. So I think people feel an aversion to that kind of thing, I feel an aversion to that kind of thing. I don't like being lectured and I don't like people telling me what they think that I should be doing. So I think that there's a kind of distaste for that kind of thing that a lot of people of my generation maybe have. But what I think is frightening about it that if you're not really active and sophisticated about how you're thinking about these things, there's a tendency to not be able to distinguish between when it's necessary to do things and take action. People kind of need just a no-nonsense, like I never felt like it was important to tell people what to do in a song or get up on a high horse and be like...

SS: Yeah, yeah.

WS: ...this is what you need to be doing. But I always felt like the better thing to do was to just not involve yourself in that way, and then just on your own take action. But it's just very hard because people aren't organized and everyone is very much more splintered. When I think about people, I kind of picture them all, everybody just on their own sitting... y'know people don't really talk to each other very much if they don't know each other and everybody has their circumscribed group and it's in a lot of ways more isolated than ever. And I think that entertainment, which is the big thing with our record, I think that entertainment, and the way that entertainment works these days, encourages that even more.

SS: Right.

WS: Where there's a kind of umm, you do feel a part of community when somebody sends you a really cool or funny or shocking or interesting clip off of YouTube. You see that and you feel like it's a nice feeling to know that other people are watching this, that there's this communal value of entertainment with something like that. But on the other hand, everything just gets increasingly broken into bite-sized chunks, and when you're watching TV shows that advertise within the TV show and, I don't know, it's