illustration by Priscilla Yu

Started up by indie musician Richie Fudalewski (Diamond Dancer), Sizzle Teen Records evolved out of his dislike for the greedy nature of major record labels.

  “Being a touring musician that had been signed in the past to some pretty big indie labels, I learned a lot about what I disliked about labels,” Fudalewski said, outlining experiences with his old bands Jakartah and Yell at Birds. “After hearing these same types of stories from my friends in bands about record labels they were signed to, I realized that this wasn’t an isolated incident. This was a general problem that was ongoing. Labels becoming out of touch, desperate and greedy.”

  Before Fudalewski moved to the West Coast in 2006, he spent time working at Sonic Unyon Records as an assistant marketing manager. It was here that he saw how significant it was to build a fan base by promoting their bands throughout high schools and colleges, and how much this market helped the bands.

  Major labels tend to neglect bands unless they are meeting their sales quota, and Sizzle Teen wants to give local bands the attention and promotion they deserve.

  Another focus of the new label is to keep up with the ever-evolving record industry and to put out LPs and digital releases — Sizzle Teen will not be putting out any CDs, considering sales are declining as time goes on.

  So far only two bands are currently signed to the label, Previous Tenants (ex d.b.s., Operation Makeout, the Doers) and Fudalewski’s own Diamond Dancer, but Sizzle Teen aims to put out four brand new LP’s by the end of 2012.

  Fittingly, the Railway Club event will feature sets from Diamond Dancer and Previous Tenants, as well as Man Your Horse and We Are Gaze.

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Photo: Michelle Ford | Hair/Makeup: Jenna Kuchera
Styling: Mila Franovic | Clothes: F as in Frank

  “Cam set up my first show in Vancouver, which was really nice of him,” Boucher recalls of the de facto show promoter, who also crafts glitchy atmospherics under the banner Babe Rainbow. On the line from her parents’ place in town, Boucher reflects on how far she’s come. “I think it was last Christmas—sometime back in the day before I was a real musician, or something.”

  Since then, the “realness” of Boucher’s career has undeniably rocketed skyward. For starters, she recently signed with the esteemed English imprint 4AD. Though she’ll stay on Montreal’s Arbutus Records within Canada, the international distribution deal places her in the past and present ranks of St. Vincent and the Cocteau Twins. Boucher’s also coming off a well-received tour with Lykke Li, and her upcoming record, Visions, is enjoying critical adoration from all corners of the indie music blogosphere. And with good reason. The album’s airtight production allows Boucher’s signature falsetto to soar over each curious arrangement of vintage hip-hop loops, dancing Casio synths, occasional Nintendo chimes, and ever-breathy harmonies. As her third solo release, Visions marks a graduation from bedroom composing into the world of avant-pop tastemaking. It’s realer than real, you might say.

  Since her return to Lotusland in November, Grimes has immersed herself in the sushi and musical scenery she left behind in 2006. Reached a few days before playing a collaborative DJ set with Reed at the Waldorf, Boucher reflected on the hippy vibes, potential alien correspondence and chemically-induced all-nighters she’s experienced on the West Coast.

  “We did a bunch of Dexedrine and drank a bunch of gin and made the sleaziest pop song of all time,” Boucher recalls of a very recent collaboration with Blood Diamonds’ Mike Tucker. The resulting track, “Phone Sex,” will be released later this year.

  “It’s like a K-pop version of ‘We Found Love’ by Rihanna,” Grimes says, adding that the all-night creative burst escalated into absurdity pretty quickly: “It’s kinda psychedelic and has really weird lyrics that maybe imply an incestuous relationship, or something.”

  It’s with this tongue-in-cheek deadpan that Boucher seems to chide all of her accomplishments and tastes. Whether we’re discussing a teenage obsession with Tool or her skyscraping vocal range, Boucher bookends her replies in self-deprecating humour.

  “I think people think I’m much more serious than I am,” she muses. “Most of the music I’ve ever made, I’ve been so baked when I made it. Like, really stoned.”

  Perhaps for similar self-preserving reasons, Boucher doesn’t get too personal in her song lyrics. While a spare few phrases can be deciphered, most Grimes songs are comprised of wordless flowing vocal hooks.

  “I just don’t listen to lyrics much myself,” she explains.

  Instead, Boucher finds herself emulating TLC and Mariah Carey-style R&B singing techniques (“Maybe that’s totally taboo or not cool, but the idea of combining R&B and goth is like everything I could ever want,” the vocalist gushes), but without the straightforward romantic plotlines. “I don’t want to evoke anything super specific,” she says. “If I’m writing about something sensitive to myself, I don’t want it to be cheesy, or something. I feel like being abstract is a little more tasteful and less embarrassing.”

Photo: Michelle Ford | Hair/Makeup: Jenna Kuchera
Styling: Mila Franovic | Clothes: F as in Frank

  Without earthly lyrics to pin down, Grimes tunes are repeatedly branded “ethereal” and “spacey”—the latter being a descriptor Boucher both enjoys and embraces. “I’m really into sci-fi; I’m really into space,” the musician exults. “I believe in aliens.”

  One might even guess her otherworldly style of art-pop is an attempt to connect with other planets. “Circumambient” begins with spacey digital transmission, and album closer “know the way” offers another round of buoyant, celestial echoes.

  “I would send this record to aliens,” she says. “But I don’t know if I was trying to speak to aliens on this record.”

  Conversely, Boucher says Vancouver has also brought out her grounded, nature-loving side. “It’s a little weird but kind of refreshing,” she says of the familiar landscape. “I think I’ve become more of a hippy since I’ve returned. I’m appreciating nature I think for the first time.”

  In her formative years, Boucher says she wasn’t too concerned with Vancouver’s natural assets. “I feel like I never looked at the mountains and felt like ‘those are really beautiful’ or anything. As a kid, I was just like ‘oh, I hate my parents’ or something.”

  If you missed Grimes’ DJ set at the Waldorf in January, fret not. Before she embarks on a solid year of touring, Grimes will headline the Fortune Sound Club later this month. But when asked if the West Coast will be her creative destination once the promotion cycle for Visions winds down, Boucher was quick to suggest otherwise.

  “I think I want to move to Berlin or Shanghai,” she says, describing the former as “the Montreal of Europe.” The German capital has swiftly become a mecca for creative Canadian ex-pats looking to escape the real estate market: “Super cheap equals a lot of art,” Boucher says, “because people can actually do shit and not work all the time.”

  Though 2012 looks to be booked solid, it’s only a matter of time before we see Grimes’ next vision. Or something.

Grimes kicks off a world tour at Fortune Sound Club on February 18.

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Tim Fernandes   |   photo by Josefa Cameron

  Yet for Fernandes, mixing and performing in front of a crowd was not something new. His first live gig was actually at last years competition, and since then he’s been performing at numerous campus events. With a year of experience behind him, he was eager to get a second chance and win a paid gig with the AMS.

  That said, Fernandes describes a mishap that successfully erased any sense of ease a veteran may have had. He was DJing earlier in the night on campus where the following DJ forgot his equipment, and he needed to use Fernandes’ gear. “I had to run with only my laptop and headphones to the Pit and frantically figure out a way to perform my set,” he told Discorder. “Luckily, a couple of the guys were kind enough to let me use their S4. I spent about 10 minutes figuring out how it worked before stepping up and performing my set.”

  Besides having an ability to act quickly, Fernandes has a bass driven style and frequently mixes artists like Brenmar and Starkley in his sets, though he likes “to see where the mix takes [him].” “I love DJing because it’s a combination of technical and artistic skill,” he said. For Fernandes, its all about finding that balance and “jumping behind the decks” to have a good time.

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illustration by Sarah Reid

Discorder: First off, let me congratulate you on an absolutely stunning/terrifying album cover [ed. The cover in question is a stone-faced portrait of a seemingly hairless Sphynx cat]. I have to ask: what’s the story there?

Ida Nilsen: [Laughs] That was kind of accidental, actually… I was doing Google image searches for the word “nuclear” and that cat came up! I thought it was awesome, and it fit somehow.

D: Are you the terrifying hairless cat, then? Is that how it “fits?”

IN: No, although I do feel there’s something about the expression on the cat’s face with the furrowed brow that I can certainly relate to. One or two people have told me that it kind of looks like me in a strange way.

D: It’s been about five years since your last record. Why did you decide to do something new now?

IN: I started [Nuclearize Me] two years ago. I recorded all of the bed tracks two years ago, and I didn’t do anything with it. There were a lot of changes in my life, and I wasn’t feeling particularly… I don’t know. After living in Toronto for a little while, I felt a little bit turned off by how everyone here is doing something constantly, and it really kind of made me want to do nothing [laughs]. It was quite difficult to get back into it. I got a grant from the Ontario Arts Council, and I felt like I should get my act together and finish it. Setting a deadline certainly helps!

D: Where did the songs on the new record come from? They seem sort of – confessional is probably the wrong word – but it seems as if you’re putting a lot of “yourself” in your lyrics.

IN: Moving, relationships ending, relationships starting… nothing really specific. I actually felt like I’m being a little more hidden than I have been in the past… Just starting with an idea, but letting things become fictional when they need to suit the song.

D: As a songwriter, do you ever give thought to exactly how much of yourself you want to put out there? Is there a line where something you write or sing becomes too personal?

IN: I actually find that when I’m writing something that is really straight from my head… then it really needs to change. Like, I’m being too self-indulgent and it’s not really good enough. I think that for this record, more than I have in the past, I was just trying to write good pop songs, and have them be less to do with “me” in a certain way. I realize that it might not come off like that, but if you listen to some of my earlier stuff it’s way worse. [Laughs]

D: That’s really interesting. I mean, your new record almost puts me in mind of something like Blue by Joni Mitchell, where it’s very much just like, “Here’s where I’m at right now.” Just my ears, I suppose.

IN: I definitely see how you can hear it that way. I like to make people feel personally involved, if that makes sense. But that being said, I did try to make it a little more universal, rather than it being all about me.

D: What do you miss about living in Vancouver, and how does Toronto compare as a city/music scene?

IN: I miss a certain spirit about making music in Vancouver that doesn’t seem to be [in Toronto]. I feel like most people I knew [in Vancouver] weren’t trying to be famous, or really successful… those weren’t really the motivating factors for people trying to make music. It feels like a bit of a generalization—it might have just been the environment that I was in—but Torontonians are really excessive self-promoters, I find. Everyone’s doing things constantly and there seems to be a lot of ego involved in it. It feels a bit different.
  I miss living close to my family… I have a lot of good friends in Vancouver who I miss a lot. I miss my favourite sandwich! There’s a deli around Commercial Drive and 3rd that does really awesome grilled sandwiches.
I haven’t been able to find a place that does one quite like that [in Toronto]. They mostly sell jars of things imported from Italy, and there’s a huge cheese counter, but at the back they do grilled sandwiches that are really delicious. I can’t even remember what it’s called! Crazy, I used to go there constantly.

Great Aunt Ida  is playing in Vancouver on December 29 at the Waldorf Hotel. For more information, see http://greatauntida.ca.

Zachary Stockill  is a freelance journalist and graduate student at UBC. Follow him on twitter @zfstockill, or visit his website at http://zfstockill.com.

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photos by Daniel Thomas Williams

  He guides me on a Cribs-like tour of the space, ending in its basement where spare rooms filled with musical instruments hint at his prodigious production. Portia is the first full-length album to emerge from the basement.

  It’s a seamless album, a consistent palette providing discrete stitching. A Washed Out-like electronic haze is background to Bridgefoot’s imaginative drum loops, both ultimately settling below manufactured melodies sung or stolen.

  Bridgefoot excels in manipulating evocative vocal samples into his songs, and it is difficult to put a finger on where one line ends and another begins, or even to parse out what each might be saying. The Agassiz native doesn’t disagree.

  “The songs that I write, especially lyrical songs, are intimately connected with the realities of my own life,” he says. “So sometimes I will hide the vocals in the mix so that only I know what I am saying. That way when I play a song live or listen to it with friends, everyone else will familiarize themselves with the melody perhaps—or the mystery, all the while I am being reminding of some truth or reality that I have been opened to.”

  Conversely, Bridgefoot is an honest and forthright conversationalist, just as quick to offer an opinion as he is to ask for one. While we philosophize on the nature of creation and consumption in a local restaurant, Bridgefoot offers up a poor man’s “Death of the Author,” echoing Roland Barthes by stating, “I have realized that once a piece of music is heard by another … it is no longer mine … that song is someone else’s to emote to.”

  Unfortunately, the words fall on deaf ears as I begin to inquire about Portia’s origins, process and purposes.

  “I’ve always injected myself into the songs I write, or else they seem empty to me, and without meaning,” he offers as a consolation to my questioning. “I think that’s why Portia is so close to me: It’s very specific and full of meaning but it’s really careless and fun as well.”

  Portia finds its most lighthearted step on “Belong,” a song introduced with an indistinguishable mash of happy singing voices. Midway the clouds part and Bridgefoot hits a stride, with a clipped choir and an arpeggiating piano settling into a joyful, laid-back groove.

  The album moves along at a brisk pace, with most of its nine tracks pushed forward by pulsating kick drums. While released just this past September, Portia was followed up immediately by “Light Handed,” a single that shimmers and explodes in typical Bridgefoot style. It’s a hint that he may be just as prolific as some of his former associates on the Cultus Vibes record label (Teen Daze, HAHA). I wouldn’t mind if he was.

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  Left Spine Down have been slogging it out the last few years, building their fan base in both the industrial and punk worlds via their 2008 debut LP Fighting For Voltage, some remixes, and tours with the likes of SNFU, the Revolting Cocks and the Jim Rose Circus.

  Next up is this month’s West Coast jaunt with ohGr (a.k.a. Skinny Puppy’s Nivek Ogre), which will find the local cyberpunks promoting their recently released sophomore album, Caution. Discorder caught up with frontman Kaine Delay and guitarist Matt Girvan over e-mail to chat about the trip, and they can’t wait to share the stage with one of their idols.

  “It is both an excitement and an honour. We opened for ohGr a couple of years back and remained in touch,” Delay wrote. “We’ve been trying to make this tour a reality for quite some time.” Girvan added: “It’s another awesome step for us.”

  As per their previous trips, the guys are anticipating some weird and wild times, like when the band became part of Jim Rose’s sideshow in 2009, acting as human dartboards. Delay explained that it “went downhill from there.” Speaking of circuses, one of the highlights of a trip with 16volt and Chemlab had them kicking an inebriated Andy Dick off the tour bus in Hollywood. The video has made the rounds on YouTube.

  Throughout it all, Left Spine Down were writing and reworking Caution, which Delay describes as “an album about deception and dominance, corruption and confrontation, malice and murder.” Helping the evolution along was producer Dave “Rave” Ogilvie. “Dave was really hands-on. He also brought in a team of great engineers to contribute,” the singer explained.

  “X-Ray,” the first single from Caution, is a modern rock anthem blending catchy synths with industrial aggression. Delay describes the accompanying video, directed by Troy Sobotka, as “an interesting tale of a female spectre-type figure who is determined to seduce and destroy us, while we as a band are completely unaware (or ambivalent) of her presence until it’s too late. Pretty romantic, if you think about it.”

  Though they’re currently on the road, the band also has grand plans to tour the rest of North America next year, with Delay adding: “We also have a second helping for the West Coast in the works right now.”

Left Spine Down plays at the Rickshaw Theatre on December 4.

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Dixie's Death Pool   |   photo by Victoria Johnson

Lee Hutzulak: I think the oldest thing on it is the title track, which we recorded in 2004 starting with a broken piano.

D: And that was the basis for the track?

LH: I dug it out in 2010, scraped off a whole bunch of awful stuff and went back to the root of that song and got really excited about it again.

D: There are a lot of musicians’ names attached to The Man With Flowering Hands. Do you see your role within the group as a composer?

LH: A lot of it is improvised—composing in the act of overdubbing, I guess.

Todd Hutzulak: Whenever I get together with Lee, maybe there will be music already, or maybe I’ll just play and meld, twist, shape it into whatever it’s going to end up as.

LH: I don’t know if it really feels like a collage. I’ve tried to blur the edges as much as
possible.

D: Are you comfortable playing this album in a live environment?

LH: There’s a few songs on the new album that I could play live—it would sound quite different, but the root of the song being played on an acoustic guitar is the same.

D: Do most of the songs follow that structure?

LH: The track “A Return To Science Fiction” was improvised on the spot, with all the instruments, and then we came up with other sounds to layer on top. I would liken it to Talk Talk trying to play [their 1991 album] Laughing Stock; it’s not an album that’s meant to be performed. The recording is the work of art, and the live show would be something different altogether.

D: Can you talk about the recording techniques you used on this album?

LH: I’ve used a lot of hand-built, homemade instruments to make [the sounds on the record]. The main one, I guess, is the “Epic Frying Pan,” which is a cast-iron frying pan with desk-lamp springs strung over it—it’s like a spring reverb that you can throw around. I played with rubbing a guitar pickup over the springs or attaching it to the underside. In “Paper That Folds Itself” there’s some field recording, so that opens up the limits of the sound palette quite a bit, because certain acoustics and ambiance you can’t achieve inside.

D: Can you elaborate on the field recordings?

LH: The ones that hit me the most are the trains down on Alexander Street—listening to the trains hitch up together, it’s just huge. We had a family reunion on Salt Spring Island recently and I wasn’t sure what I’d get—the first time I went there in 2007, I got this morning chorus of birds in the woods as they were waking up, but this time I got some sounds of a dock and a rowboat knocking against it. You can hear that on “Paper That Folds Itself” too. Being out there on the water jumping up and down on this dock, that kind of physical energy, I hope, made its way into the song.

D: You recently got back from Japan. Had you recorded anything there?

LH: Crickets! You don’t hear crickets in Vancouver. I was up at three in the morning [recording them]… from different perspectives, there was a lot less activity. I noticed [after listening to the recording] that there was a newspaper being delivered by moped—when you’re recording something that quiet you [can] hear a car miles away.

D: The title of your album, The Man With Flowering Hands, comes from a drawing you completed in 2009.

LH: There’s not necessarily any correlation. I’m attaching a title to a visual image, but it’s also making a mental note of it to somehow work its way into the music. It’s there as lyric fodder at some point, to become a line in a song. I tried to write a song about the man with flowering hands, but it hasn’t gone anywhere yet.

(We wrapped our interview here, but Discorder still had a few more q’s for Hutzulak, which he responded to over e-mail).

D: You mentioned that your mandate was to create music that you wanted to listen to, and that you’d created some music in the past that you wouldn’t listen to again. How has this documentation made you change as an artist?

LH: For the better part of the last decade I was pretty much improvising exclusively, and recording a ton. A lot of it for me was about developing language and technique. It almost didn’t make sense to me to play without recording. It was incredibly refreshing and freeing from the world of song, an extended sojourn in the sonic wilderness. While improvisation will always be an important part of my work musically, it is only a piece of the picture. My greatest love as an artist is the studio album, and crafting what I call pop songs. Pop songs and breathing spaces for them to live in. Improvisation and experiment is big part of what makes pop music magic though. I believe the most successful pop songs (to my ears) are the result of this type of innovation. Sometimes the experiments in improv were more than anything else about exploring the edges — getting out of the comfort zone, experiencing your personal ugly. Listening to your personal ugly can lose its luster — maybe it’s not really meant to be listened to over and over again, unlike pop music.

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World Club | photo by Daniel Thomas Williams

  A while later, in walks a striking blonde accompanied by who I’m guessing are her three fellow bandmates. The blonde introduces herself as Janine Prevost, shakes my hand and invites me to take a seat at a glass table top framing an old map of the Georgia Strait. In a few minutes we’re joined by Tyler Dunn, Josh Harskamp, and Randy Szmek, who set their drinks down and take off their heavy coats. Together the four make up the uniquely experimental soundscape that is World Club.

  Outside the autumn air is cool and calm, but inside the pub is warm and noisy with the banter of the Tuesday night crowd. The casually dressed foursome formally introduce themselves, spelling out their last names, which until then had been a mystery to me. They’re the type of artists who value privacy, more interested in being recognized by their sound than by the details of their personal lives. Together they’ve played all over Vancouver’s indie scene. From their basement beginnings to opening for Japandroids and touring across the United States, they’ve garnered a reputation without much self-promotion and without any official management.

  Tuning out the sound of top 40 coming through the bar’s speakers and the loud chatter coming from adjacent tables, we settle into a discussion of Live-able Via-bility, the group’s most recent and most involved project to date. The idea for the collection came into fruition last February, just three weeks before recording at the Factory Studios in Vancouver with friend and audio engineer Hayz Fisher. In one session, the quartet recorded a continuous set, approximately 38 minutes long, then spent the following three months adding layers of samples and vocals over the master.

  “It turned into way more of an intense project than we had originally decided it would be,” Szmek tells me, “We were calling it a mixtape at first.”

  Harskamp adds, “by the time we were done, it felt more substantial than that, but it’s still not the World Club album. It’s not our first album, that’s coming, we’re working on that now.”

  The waitress with the burgundy bob interrupts, sliding a plate of food across the table to Dunn who carries on describing how they turned the 38-minute continuous recording into discrete tracks between bites of his reuben and fries: “You can listen to it all the way through and the songs transition into each other because we rehearsed it that way.” He emphasizes that the songs all started as their own entities, but they then sought ways to make transitions between the numbers. Recording in this way took track sequencing out of the equation, making the most out of their studio time and what resources they had available.

  Live-able Via-bility is more than the result of a recording opportunity. As its title suggests, it’s a kind of philosophy that demands you make use of what’s in your environment if you’re going to accomplish something. The group’s approach to collaboration is influenced by this mentality. No one member of the band is responsible for playing a single instrument, a formula Dunn calls an outdated business model. Instead, the group pools their creative resources in order to produce sounds that are representative of their particular time and place. They’re not interested in repeating existing and readily available sounds. When describing World Club’s music, all the familiar genres fall short; it’s better described as a process they’ve referred to as “sound design.”

  Dunn says the songs on Live-able Via-bility reflect the sort of uneasiness of “being in your mid-20s and not knowing what to do with your life,” while Szmek offers that “it’s about being economic within the chaos and moving forward.” Movement and transition are appropriate words to describe both the band’s forward thinking approach to music-making and the project’s overall sonic quality.

  Each track flows easily into the next in a mix of up-tempo drum beats, psychotropic vocals and prismatic synth interludes. Epic opener “Manmade Lake” is a strong intro to the kaleidoscopic recordings. Prevost’s dreamy vocals and the ethereal, clock-chiming synths on “Tide in and go Fading” are a stark contrast to the more lyrically provocative “Tents/Tense,” with its allusions to recent political turmoil in the U.S. The track then trails into the siren sounds and primal drum line of “Vaguenomics.” The next three songs shift downward, spiral-like, into choral vocal arrangements. The skittered “World Swallower” ties a frenetic, polychromatic bow on the whole thing.

  Dunn uses the analogy of moving through different rooms in a house to describe the way they envision the listener shifting through Live-able  Via-bility. There’s an edginess to the group and a savvy confidence to what they’re doing, whether they’re conscious of it or not.

  The pub is getting a bit louder. Prevost slides the audio recorder closer to Dunn who’s now telling me about his vision for what they do next: “we want it to be almost kind of pretty, something that’s not monochromatic at all.”

  The four debate whether the new album has actually begun, but it’s really only a matter of time, Szmek assures. “We’re being as creative as possible,” he pauses, “and I think we have started it, but it’s more in an unconscious state at the moment. What it’s going to exist as … well, we’re usually very wrong because it sort of takes on its own shape.”

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Pat Jordache   |   photo by Dan Rocque

  If there is an upper echelon of the Canadian indie elite, Pat Jordache are among the royal few. The Montreal rockers will be opening for tUnE-yArDs Friday November 18th 2011 at the Biltmore Cabaret, and bandleader Jordache squeezed in a quick e-mail interview with Discorder Magazine about life on tour, what to tune into on the radio, and what defines the sounds of Vancouver’s scene.

D: You’ve been on tour with Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs for a while now, and are prepping for a European tour this winter. What is your fondest memory of the tour so far?

Pat Jordache: There are too many. I guess this whole tour has been really amazing just to see how well tUnE-yArDs is doing. I feel like I’ve been watching these shows for years from the time that they were happening in friends’ lofts in Montreal to only a handful of people. From that early time, it was really clear that Merrill had a very special ability to connect with people, to give them something really important through her music. What is amazing is how that gift still functions on such a large scale. It is sweet watching these total strangers in the front row with tears in their eyes feeling that same connection that I first felt.

D: Releasing Future Songs via Bandcamp and cassette is now a sort of legendary move. Will you go this route again for the next release?

PJ: Nah, I never like to double back over my tracks. Maybe I’d self-release something as a more casual mixtape affair, but i don’t know… it feels like it would be an excuse to relax the standards on myself. I mean releasing on Bandcamp wasn’t some f.u. to the man (not that they don’t deserve one); it was more just working with the means available. Now I’ve got really good people who I like and trust that believe in what I do and would put it out [Constellation Records], so there seems to be no sense in refusing that helping hand. There is d.i.y. and then there is taking on shit that you just do not need to, which tires you out and distracts from the true thing you are trying to accomplish. I am getting better at distinguishing those things.

D: Your line-up of instruments is very unusual, both live and recorded. How does the choice of instruments define or limit the sound?

PJ: For a while the live band I worked with was just me playing bass with a loop pedal and two drummers. Though there was only so many things to be done in that format, I enjoyed that limitation in the same way I enjoyed the fidelity limits of what my recording setup provided. Even if you are working in a shoebox, there is something satisfying about working in that shoebox if you know its every nook and cranny of potential rather than a vast ocean of possibility which is intimidating and disorienting in its size. But my skills are growing, and my band has as well. I am more confident about occupying larger spaces now. I don’t mind having a couple of guitar players along, and if a second drummer needs to sit out a tour, I am fine with being a more traditional four-piece. I think the merit and interest of this music lies in something a little deeper than the novelty of unique instrumentation. We’re moving on to new things now; the rolling stone gathers no moss. It’s scary and challenging to abandon comfortable old formats, but that’s always been the nature of what I do.

D: What are you listening to lately?

PJ: A lot of This American Life. I drive an average of six hours a day right now, so podcasts are a godsend. Growing up, my mom worked for CBC, so public radio holds a special place in my heart. The stories on [This American Life] are pretty inspiring. There was one yesterday about a Chicago inner-city school that had implemented reading and writing program curricula that made it’s students some of the best in the city. There was another about the city’s first black mayor, Harold Washington and the courage of his historic campaign: calling out the old-guard racism of that city’s municipal projects with remarkable candour. I keep on getting choked up listening to these things, going up the interstate. They remind me that change is possible, within all of our grasp.

D: Where do you find inspiration to make music?

PJ: Usually in travel. When I first get on the road and when I first get home, I’ll always write some song that feels really easy to get out that dwarfs the quality of material that I’ll make only a few weeks later once I’m back in a place of comfort. So I guess change inspires me. Other changes, like relationships ending, will shake me up enough to make something fall over the side. Though discomforting, I guess it has it’s upshots.

D: East vs. West – People often speak of a “Montreal Sound” and that Pat Jordache is not contained by it. Do you listen to any bands that you’d typify as having a “Vancouver Sound?”

PJ: Yeah, I’ve heard that. And I’ve heard other people say the opposite too. Either way is fine with me, I guess. I don’t spend a lot of time trying to sound like my town (obvs… does anyone do this?). Vancouver sound: I’ve noticed this thing where every band I hear from west of Saskatchewan is into jangly single coils and spring verb. The content will vary, but these are the tried and true delivery mechanism. My fave from the bunch is Makeout Videotape (who recently defected to our side, so I don’t know if you want me to namedrop him here…). The other band from the ‘couv I saw a little while back and really liked in the live show was No Gold. I thought they worked really well in a sparse instrumentation, made something that was pretty concise and effective with only three people. Last thing is that SLOWRIFFS record that my band mate Rory was playing for me. The ideas are really simple and concise but effective. I respect that kind of concentration, I feel like the music I make reaches in so many directions all the time. Different strokes I suppose….

Pat Jordache and tUnE-yArDs play the Biltmore Cabaret November 18.

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illustration by Tyler Crich

  Driving down bumpy, country rock-washed back roads, forward leaning but willing to wind up on a Whiskeytown detour to fill up their tank, is Victoria’s Hawk and Steel. The outfit’s roots rock sound, particularly on laid back tracks like “Carol” or “No Country Blues,” is full of heartache. Between their folk-flavoured four-song EP, Drawing, a recent split seven-inch with the Wicks, and fresh from a spate of shows, including a high-profile gig at Rifflandia, it’s a wonder lead vocalist/guitarist Peter Gardner has any shakes to spare. But when speakling to Discorder, he’s personable and impassioned to dish out about his urgent and autumnal alt-country outfit.

Discorder: Let’s get the obligatory question regarding your band’s name out of the way. “Hawk and Steel” — what’s that all about?

Peter Gardner: I wish there was a cool story to tell about that, but there isn’t. I thought the words sound nice together. I like that it has a cool double meaning; the idea of stealing something to hock it. Everyone liked it so it stuck.

D: You’ve been in a number of different bands over the years (Vegan Holocaust, Forestry). What keeps you going?

PG: That feeling when a stranger comes up to you and tells you how much they like your music is something special. I mean, it’s great when your mom likes your band, but when someone who doesn’t give a shit about you likes your band, you’re doing something right.

D: Things are moving excitedly fast for you guys, it seems. You’ve been playing a lot of shows and I’m curious, when you’re on tour—on the road—how do you pass the time? Do you do much reading?

PG: Unfortunately when I’m on the road I can’t read. Two words in a moving car and I’m puking like a kid full of hot dogs on a tilt-a-whirl. So usually I just watch outside the windows hoping to spot an animal.

D: [laughing] What’s your favourite animal?

PG: Bison. They’re big and ugly, and yet lovable. I relate to that.

D: Who are some of the musicians that have had an influence on your sound or your musical approach?

PG: Well, anyone that knows me knows I’d take a bullet for Ryan Adams, and similar acts like Wilco or Gillian Welch take up a lot of space in my music collection. But there’s a lot of other stuff I love to listen to that isn’t exactly in the vein of music I play. One of my all-time favourite records is Laughing Stock by Talk Talk. It’s rather strange, kind of experimental pop-jazz. How do I even explain it? It’s just a beautiful record. The drums were recorded with one mic, down a hall 30 feet away, and they sound incredible! That’s one album I still listen to when I’m in a bind for inspiration.

D: Noted. With so much on the go, let’s look ahead. What does the future hold for you?

PG: Well, for a while I was doing the two band thing [the other band, now defunct, was Forestry], but I’m really just trying to focus on Hawk and Steel. I feel the songs we’re working on are the best I’ve ever written. I guess that’s what everyone always says about their new material, but I’ve never felt as proud of my work as I do right now.

D: Not to detract from your work or the pleasing pastoral sounds off the EP, but I’m curious, what’s the beard/no beard ratio in the band? Do you guys spend a lot of time sculpting your facial hair?

PG: [laughing] Four out of five with facial hair! Matt Schmitz (bass guitar) has, like, an Abe Lincoln thing going on, so he may spend some time on sculpting, but I’m of the old Beatles adage, “Let It Be” when it comes to facial hair.

D: Do you consider your journey thus far a successful one?

PG: So far so good. We’ve only been playing a little while and already we’ve played Rifflandia to an over full venue and am really proud of the music we’ve recorded and released. Things are looking up.

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