What I Learned from Pop Montreal Bios

I think I just finished writing this year’s round of bios for the Pop Montreal programme. I always go into it with an open mind, and while this year I felt like I wasn’t seeing or hearing anything “new,” I realised that musically, we’re (the greater we, as in all of music) in a serious transition phase. The bands that I did like were ones that had good songs, but that also touched a chord, evoked something emotional, a memory, an intangible feeling. In essence, music and musicians that were inspired by something greater; not just the creation of music to satisfy some egotistical bullshit.

Of course, this is not 2004, and when writing a bio the goal is to represent the band or musician in an intriguing way. Not to be clever and smarmy – because we all know I am chock full of that – but to make people want to see the shows.

Sadly, for fellow haters, I won’t be taking this opportunity to trash the bands I thought sucked, or that were just good or even pleasantly great. This is about discovery and hope, about music that was new to me. So no offense to everyone else for my blog being so self-serving. I apologise for nothing.

I was going to print my bios, but then thought that would undercut the programme’s novelty. So instead I’ve made small comments, so you can just listen up, make your own assumptions, then read it for realz in print.

Villa Borghese (Montreal, QC) – There is something very session musician about this band, but I like the energy, the tipping of their caps to great music of the past like ELO and the new wave. There’s something very free and spirited in Villa Borghese that I find attractive.

Katie Stelmanis (Toronto, ON) – Speaking of free spirited, Katie’s music is just a giant fuck you to everything. I loved hearing her genre-mashing Kate Bush a la Trent Reznor vibes. I think part of the reason I liked this because there’s something in Katie that I see in myself…circa 15 years ago. If I actually went to shows I would go see this one.

Valleys (Montreal, QC) – I think I wrote their bio last year, too. I tried to avoid that completely but missed this one because they changed their name from something like We Are Valleys to just Valleys. Anyway, this is cool because it is really keeping the first-gen of the Montreal “scene” alive.

Josh Reichmann (Toronto, ON) – Whenever I have the knee-jerk reaction of being kind of repulsed by something, it usually means that it’s just far enough out there to feel unfamiliar. That’s what originality feels like, kids. Force yourself to get lost in Josh’s inspired, kitchen-sinky, spiritual journey.

Golden Isles (Montreal, QC) – And whilst on the subject of kids, here are some. While heavily Strokes-y, there’s nothing really wrong with that. The Strokes are so eight years ago that it’s still too soon – and, strangely, too late – to sound like them. So this is not “cool” or “indie” but simply totally fun. Burneth.

One thing I noticed was that most of the performers on the schedule this year are Canadian. There isn’t a lot of international stuff, and there is a huge amount of local bands. The best and brightest? Seriously, I wrote like 35 bios out of hundreds, so my list is just a strange and random sampling. Hardly a cultural statement.

Morally Reprehensible

The other day, after I dropped Neptune off at preschool, I decided to go grocery shopping. I learned that 9:30AM is a very strange time to go grocery shopping, and nobody really goes shopping that early in the morning. I don’t know if it was due to the lack of other shoppers and similar ambient distractions, but the top 40 music they were piping in really caught my attention. Specifically the morally reprehensible lyrics to Nickleback’s “Rock Star.” It goes a little something like this:

I’m through with standing in line
to the clubs I’ll never get in
It’s like the bottom of the ninth
and I’m never gonna win
This life hasn’t turned out
quite the way I want it to be

(tell me what you want)

I want a brand new house
on an episode of Cribs
And a bathroom I can play baseball in
And a king size tub big enough
for ten plus me

(yeah, so what you need)

I’ll need a, a credit card that’s got no limit
And a big black jet with a bedroom in it
Gonna join the mile high club
At thirty-seven thousand feet

(Been there done that)

I want a new tour bus full of old guitars
My own star on Hollywood Boulevard
Somewhere between cher and
James Dean is fine for me

(So how you gonna do it?)

I’m gonna trade this life for fortune and fame
I’d even cut my hair and change my name

[CHORUS]
‘Cause we all just wanna be big rockstars
Livin’ in hilltop houses driving fifteen cars
The girls come easy and the drugs come cheap
We’ll all stay skinny cause we just won’t eat
And we’ll hang out in the coolest bars
In the VIP with the movie stars
Every good gold digger’s
Gonna wind up there
Every Playboy bunny
with her bleach blonde hair
and well..
Hey hey I wanna be a rockstar
Hey hey I wanna be a rockstar

I wanna be great like Elvis without the tassels
Hire eight body guards that love to beat up assholes
Sign a couple autographs
So I can eat my meals for free

(I’ll have the quesadilla… ha ha)

I’m gonna dress my ass
with the latest fashion
Get a front door key to the Playboy mansion
Gonna date a centerfold that loves to
blow my money for me

(So how you gonna do it?)

I’m gonna trade this life
For fortune and fame
I’d even cut my hair
And change my name

(chorus)

I’m gonna sing those songs
that offend the censors
Gonna pop my pills
from a Pez dispenser
Get washed-up singers writing all my songs
Lip sync ‘em every night so I don’t get ‘em wrong

(chorus)

As I tried to find the Honeycomb cereal, I paused, listened carefully to a few verses and uttered “FUUUUUUUCK!” in total exasperation. The irony of my frustration was two-fold:

1) This song is idiotic. And I take personal offense to the stereotypical “Rock Star” lump being cast. Like only the douchebags that 1) like/identify with this song and 2) wrote it in the first place could possibly take this literally, or feel it contributes to our culture in any way.

2) This song came out in 2005. And it is so “timeless” that it continues to get played on the radio. That said, the next day I heard that “So What” song by Pink on the radio, and apparently 1 in 4 people’s dream job is being a rock star (confirmed by independent polls in The Gazette and BBC).

Anyway, it’s funny. Murray and I got into this heavy conversation a few days ago about music, and how music used to be a tradition, a reason for communion, whether to be spiritually or culturally enriched, to celebrate and belong. And one day, when they invented the record, I guess, and music could me easily commodified and sold, something disappeared. The art left and the business took over. Marketing replaced cultural identity. Now we have these very broad categories that require us to “buy into” them. I think the only vestigial element of spirituality in music remains at live shows: where people experience something together.

So my question, then, is when did it all go to shit? When was a song as comical as “Rock Star” meant to be taken seriously? Who decides? I guess we decide, you decide, the people decide.

But do they? Who decided to put that song on the radio, playing several Nickleback songs a day where as other bands – with potentially better songs – won’t ever be played. Aha! So we do not choose…marketing has determined the answer for us, has told us what to buy, what to identify with, who to be. Not free, but just subdued enough to keep society chugging along.

UPDATE: I can’t win this battle…the irony of music about music is bigger than I am.

Anthropology or “What you Readin’ For?”

In this week’s Economist I read a piece on the discovery of a cluster of 9th century, super organised (and now defunct) cities embedded deep in a part of the Amazon rainforest that was previously thought of as uninhabited by humans (read Amazon Garden City). I was especially intrigued by the fact that these “cities” had plazas: open places for gatherings, political or as a marketplace, a cemetery, a place for commmunity. Like the greek agora and other european models.

So the idea of assembly, the hard-wired human need to congregate and exchange ideas and wares, is so basic that the way these instinctive characteristics materialise themselves in modern times is indeed revealing.

I am constantly trying to understand human nature, to explain our existence in a meaningful, spiritual way (yet non-religious): to prove that there are greater forces at play, instinctual tendencies that inform us.

I immediately coupled this commuanal tendencay with another study: one that found our personalities can be described by the kind of music we listen to. Findings are as follows:

PEOPLE INTO MUSIC

Blues: High self-esteem, creative, outgoing, gentle and at ease.
Jazz: High self-esteem, creative, outgoing and at ease.
Classical: High self-esteem, creative, introvert and at ease.
Rap: High self-esteem, outgoing.
Opera: High self-esteem, creative, gentle.
Country & Western: Hardworking, outgoing.
Reggae: High self-esteem, creative, not hardworking, outgoing, gentle and at
ease.
Dance: Creative, outgoing, not gentle.
Indie: Low self-esteem, creative, not hard working, not gentle.
Bollywood: Creative, outgoing.
Rock/Heavy Metal: Low self-esteem, creative, not hard-working, not outgoing,
gentle, at ease.
Chart pop: High self-esteem, not creative, hardworking, outgoing, gentle,
not at ease.
Soul: High self-esteem, creative, outgoing, gentle, at ease.

I mean its kind of silly to suppose for a moment that music and personality are not connected: music and art are such a bottom-line part of culture, and the bits of culture we choose to like or identify with define who we are. So in some ways I find the “study” a little on the redundant side, but with a certain beat-you-over-the-head validity.

Can we take these two ingrained traits together, and further? If gathering together is a primal instinct, then how do the musical tastes defined as “introverted” differ from those that are “outgoing”? Culturally, identifying with music and congregating at a concert to share in an experience attests to this idea: that even a genre that boasts fans with low self-esteem, introversion and laziness still compells its audience towards community?

It explains a lot – physically and digitally – of the hipster indie rock culture: of the Stilleposts, Pitchforks, Brooklyn Vegans, SXSWs and CMJs, Pop Montreals and Pop Explosions, and the kinds of euphoric/frustrating experiences they beget.

Even xenophobic misanthropes can’t deny their need to be among other people, belonging to some kind of self-affirming culture.

That New, Mellow Sound

“The latest musical climate — perhaps a sonic reply to the sluggish, humid global warming trend — is rootsy, VU folk-pop à la Beach Boys.”

I wrote that nearly a month ago, after the hype surrounding the new Fleet Foxes and Beach House records. Hoping it was a phase and nothing to get overly excited about, I saved it to my drafts. But after reviewing this week’s Canadian college music chart, I discovered a band from Calgary called Women, and — alas! — the lo-fi, lazy movement continues with surprising strength…you know…because the music is so sluggish…where would they get the energy…oh, forget it.

Now, I understand the appeal: aren’t we tired of the bombastic, excitable baroque-pop that nearly makes us want to dance (but of course we would never really dance because we are too cool for dancing)? Could we perhaps non-dance to something other than that overwrought “meatslicer” beat? Wouldn’t we rather just take a huge break from this complicated “indie” thing? Well, I’d like to. I’ve renounced indie before…but I do not necessarily condone this new business that’s going on. My problem is that I’ve heard it all before. I’ve listened to Pet Sounds and that Velvet Underground box set with the banana on the cover and everything by David Bowie and the Beatles and, well, shouldn’t we be moving forward? I loved Dionne Warwick and Burt Bacharach, the “Wall of Sound” and the 60’s. But what about onwards and upwards? With our songwriting and our production? References to the past are lovely and intriguing, but a band’s entire thing being a reference to the past? Too quaint. Far too much so.

Well, I guess you could just shove this back into my face and tell me to go listen to Girl Talk and Crystal Castles. But I can’t listen to that stuff because it has its own problems.

I suppose I am continuously trying to cope with our saturated modern musical climate. You know, I was a huge Elvis Costello fan in uni, and as fromaggio as he can be at times (Shipbuilding Good Year For the Roses, anyone?…Wotty, you win.) you’d be hard up to find talent like his anymore. It’s few and far between, being a good songwriter and then presenter of those songs, both live and on record. I noticed that the Elvis Costello wiki classifies him in earnest as both punk rock and new wave. Nowadays if you’d see some new band classified the same way, their music would you’d probably make you want to: 1. vomit, then 2. commit suicide.

Maybe this new, mellow sound can be likened to the popularity of ambient music in the 90’s with musicians like The Orb and Aphex Twin: everybody needed a break from all that serious, alternative stuff. In conclusion, The Besnard Lakes is to Bloc Party as Global Communication was to Nirvana.

Don’t Steal This

In response to my blog post Playing the Record for People, CBC Radio 3 got in touch with me to talk about our approach to music listening. You can listen to the interview here, and comment, if you like, about the sad state of today’s deluded music industry.

Also, in the media, Mange ta ville on ARTv is showing a rerun of the episode “L’espace temps” that includes a performance we recorded for them. It’s showing tonight (May 21st) at 18h00 (which is in like ten minutes). Moderately interesting. Mildly entertaining.

Wine and Music Pairings

On another tack, I read this bit of news today: Music ‘can enhance wine taste.’ Apparently now music, too, can be paired with certain wines. Such as Hendrix with Cabernet Sauvignon, Tina Turner with a Chardonnay and Otis Redding with Merlot. Who’d a thunk it?

I wonder what The Dears would be paired with? I guess it would depend on the song, but I feel like we’d be a red, maybe a dark, Argentinian Malbec? Nothing too light, definitely something you’d consume after dinner.

Doris Lessing and the Nobel Prize

Usually after I post a particularly “down” blog entry, I get concerned emails from friends and family. It’s nice, knowing there are 1) people out there that care about me; and 2) people out there that actually read this blog. Thank yous all around.

After a moderately gloomy and relatively cynical music-industry-vs.-art conversation with Amanda in our kitchen, she emailed me some sobering words used by author Doris Lessing in her lecture for winning the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature:

We have a bequest of stories, tales from the old storytellers, some of whose names we know, but some not. The storytellers go back and back, to a clearing in the forest where a great fire burns, and the old shamans dance and sing, for our heritage of stories began in fire, magic, the spirit world. And that is where it is held, today.

The storyteller is deep inside everyone of us. The story-maker is always with us. Let us suppose our world is attacked by war, by the horrors that we all of us easily imagine. Let us suppose floods wash through our cities, the seas rise . . . but the storyteller will be there, for it is our imaginations which shape us, keep us, create us – for good and for ill. It is our stories that will recreate us, when we are torn, hurt, even destroyed. It is the storyteller, the dream-maker, the myth-maker, that is our phoenix, that represents us at our best, and at our most creative.

It’s a hopeful message, but it’s interesting how the media is only reporting on how winning the Nobel Prize has rendered Ms. Lessing incapable of writing. That the media frenzy surrounding the prize is exhausting and, well, they just won’t stop bothering her about it.

So I went and read her entire Nobel lecture, which can be found here. It is a long ride, with a great range of poignant emotion. In one section I found a comforting universality on the desecration of art through publicity, popularity and fame:

Let us now jump to an apparently very different scene. We are in London, one of the big cities. There is a new writer. We cynically enquire: “Is she good-looking?” If this is a man: “Charismatic? Handsome?” We joke, but it is not a joke.

This new find is acclaimed, possibly given a lot of money. The buzzing of hype begins in their poor ears. They are feted, lauded, whisked about the world. Us old ones, who have seen it all, are sorry for this neophyte, who has no idea of what is really happening. He, she, is flattered, pleased. But ask in a year’s time what he or she is thinking: “This is the worst thing that could have happened to me.”

Some much-publicised new writers haven’t written again, or haven’t written what they wanted to, meant to. And we, the old ones, want to whisper into those innocent ears: “Have you still got your space? Your soul, your own and necessary place where your own voices may speak to you, you alone, where you may dream. Oh, hold on to it, don’t let it go.”

It’s so hard for some to “hold on,” especially — if I may, apply this to music — with the way we consume music. Because it is an art that must be recreated live, performed and communicated with others, and how do you convince musicians that art is something that is true and pure if they don’t believe in art that way? When so often the worth in what you are doing can appear intangible if nobody is “talking” about it; if someone else isn’t telling you how amazing you are? Art is art, and regardless of the medium, if you like it then you have to hold on to it, tightly — either as consumer or creator — wheedling the life out of it just to bring some happiness and redemption into your own.

Playing the Record for People

On Tuesday, Murray and I embarked on an Ontarian adventure. We drove down to play the record for some people. This album is precious to us, and we would be totally devastated if our past year’s work was misused or stolen from us. So we never sent out any CDs to anyone, and in fact the only way anyone who didn’t play on the record can hear it is to come to one of our impromptu board room meetings for a listening session. We came to Toronto to play it for friends and also some industry types: at least, the ones who were open to the idea of a listening session. We would gather people together, put the CD on the stereo, then leave the room. After 58 minutes we’d come back, reclaim the CD and that’s it. That’s how we’re rolling: no burns, no iTunes imports, no files somewhere on a server. No ripping, burning, leaking or stealing allowed until we’re ready. Because we know it’s going to happen eventually — we’d just like to be involved when it goes down. Call us crazy, but these songs are the keystone, our main conduit keeping us connected with our fans, and we want to enjoy that communication, not live in fear of it.

So we’ve got a lot of convincing to do: our works’ cut out for us. Murray and I are kind of on a reconnaissance mission: collecting information, seeing who’s into our outsider ways, observing people’s reactions, their favourite tracks and single selections, what they did and didn’t expect. It’s been interesting, and the common thread (for me) is how good it sounds no matter where we play it. It carries itself with a creative consistency across several platforms: headphones, car stereos, amazing stereos, crappy stereos, computer speakers and other small systems. Even after hearing it dozens of times in its finished state, I still hear things I’ve not heard before.

Now we’re simmering, letting all the ideas come to us as sort of a natural reaction to how the music is being perceived. The music industry has forced our hand, compelled us to let go of old world methods and marketing templates for organic ways and the opening of an unconventional, artistic discourse. We want to put something out there for you to hear soon, too. Stay tuned for the news of listening sessions, because we might get crazy and invite you to the next one.

The Big Crunch

These past few weeks, Murray has been in the basement studio, poring over all the recorded tracks. He’s choosing which takes to use, re-amping things, experimenting with effects, comparing microphones, doing some editing, and on and on. He starts mixing tomorrow at the Hotel2Tango: Murray’s pretty comfortable there, and he’ll be manning the boards for over two weeks. It’s the longest The Dears have ever taken to mix a record, but I personally feel super confident in what’s going to come out of there.

The other day, Murray was working on getting the tracks ready for mixing, when he realised what he had to do: he just said f*ck it, and is going all the way. Now what, you may be asking, does that mean? It means no restraint. Not chaos, but a very careful, controlled density. I mean, this album is huge and full of crazy depth, and I’ve said it before but this is a real Dears album. I really doubt we will get played on the radio, or get a video into rotation, but we were never really good at those things anyhow, so why try to go there?

The strings came in today. We start mixing tomorrow, and today Murray is still tracking at Mountain City. In fact, we are tracking tomorrow morning, right up until we move into the Hotel. But I was at Mountain City when they showed up, just two players, viola and cello, and even as they started to rehearse the simple chords that were to replace the Mellotron, I knew this album was about to be elevated to new heights. This record is going to destroy you. I promise.

I have to go in tomorrow to do my last vocal tracks. I’ve kind of taken the lead on one track, and do some harmonies on others, and I’m always really self-conscious about my vocal tracks until I hear them in the mix. Listening back to a solo-ed vocal take is excruciating, so I try not to do that, but I did realise that I really love singing. It’s a lot of fun. Maybe I should start a vanity side-project? Naah. I’m not a song writer, so I would have to pull a Scarlett Johansson and just do covers, but I’ve always found those sorts of endeavours a bit masturbatory. I have thought of doing a not-lame album for kids that wouldn’t drive parents crazy…like re-worked lullabyes or something. I could do “Asleep” by The Smiths…though that would be kind of dark…maybe forget the whole idea.

At any rate, Neptune and I are going to be at a lot of the mixing sessions (mixing is more toddler-friendly than tracking), so I plan on posting more about how that’s going. Maybe I’ll add some multi-media as well so you can see the crazy lengths to which Murray’s hair has grown.

iPod Rediscovery

On one of my drives I put the iPod on shuffle, mostly out of an impatience to decide what to listen to. Usually I prefer to listen to whole albums top to bottom – you know, the way they were created – but while driving, scrolling through hundreds of bands with a click wheel is not very practical or safe for anyone involved. So shuffle it was, and I was surprisingly struck by “Snowsuit Sound” by Sloan. BTW if you have never heard of Sloan then you evidently: 1) are not Canadian, and; 2) do not know anyone from Canada. I used to be a major Sloan fan, back in the 90’s when I co-hosted an all CanCon indie rock show on CKUT (I was so green that I asked Matt Murphy how it felt to be Chris Murphy’s brother during a live-to-air interview…later my friend Amanda B. told me: “Um, everyone in Halifax has the last name Murphy,”…I was so embarassed…actually I’m still embarassed). So my iPod Rediscovery is that I am still a major Sloan fan (narrowed to the Twice Removed and One Chord To Another era…you know, Canada’s first insular indie rock heyday).

One time, we got an email from a girl who said she had “rediscovered” The Dears while listening to her iPod on shuffle. We were among the tens of thousands of songs stored among 60 gigs or however much space, and somehow, we had made it, literally, through the shuffle. And so she fell in love.

Is the iPod shuffle completely random? I have heard that it is not, that the iPod uses some kind of algorithm to calculate the songs it will play, using such stats as which songs you have previously listened to, which songs you skipped, etc. Personally, I loathe this idea of an untrue random. While listening to my recently loaded iPod on shuffle, I had to skip The Beatles about a dozen times. Yes, they made a lot of records and for some reason I have everything they’ve recorded on there, but that doesn’t mean I want to listen to them all the time. Why should quantity override quality, or variety? What ding dong programmed that feature into the algorithm? Seriously. I would like to know.

I’m positive it’s been hotly debated, and a simple Googling would probably reveal the answers. But that would be too easy.

Anyhow, Sloan dudes, we’re all grown up and have kids and shit, and even though Murray tackled Chris Murphy into a pile of garbage in Kingston, ON when we were on tour together, we still love you.