David Numwami was on the verge of becoming a food delivery driver when he received a call to go on tour, performing alongside Charlotte Gainsbourg. Ever since, the rising Belgian artist has found himself on an upward trajectory, working and playing with other influential French music figures, including Sébastien Tellierand Air’s Nicolas Godin.
Numwami’s warm, inviting take on pop music is informed by artists as diverse as Ariana Grande and the legendary Japanese artist Cornelius. After launching a solo career as frontman of the group Le Colisée, he dropped a string of solo singles in 2020. Now, he is celebrating the release of his debut EP, Numwami World. Across seven songs, the Rwanda-born, Brussels-based artist gives listeners an intimate, charming sonic experience in both English and French.
RANGE spoke to Numwami about his new single, “Milky Way,” and how the pandemic helped him overcome his reluctance to release his music—something he considers akin to going to the bathroom.
Congratulations on your new album. How are you feeling about the reception it’s gotten so far?
I’m super happy. It’s always weird for me to see other people reacting to what I do. I’m really not used to it. I feel like I’m the type of person that if I start to look at my Instagram comments, I’d just do it all day. I never check. For example, the reason I’m here [in this building] is because I came to collect some posters that we made. My face is on them. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen my face on a poster. It’s like I’m not able to realize it’s real. It’s the same when I release a song, like “Milky Way.” I see that people are reacting, and from what my manager says, most of them like it. But for me, I don’t understand it. If I release something, it stops having a connection to me. It’s just a song in the world. Once it’s out, it’s not mine anymore.
You’ve previously admitted to being afraid to release any music of your own. What do you think was the turning point for you that led to you deciding to release new music?
It was the pandemic. I felt like (releasing music) was just a way to survive. I was like, “I should start a career, because I can’t really just count on others to call me all the time and play guitar, bass, or keyboards for them.” One day I woke up, and I was in a studio shooting a video. I was like, “Alright, this is it, no turning back.” The need that I’ve always had was to record music. I can’t help myself. For example, “Milky Way” and all the old songs I’m releasing now, I recorded them mostly while I was touring with Charlotte Gainsbourg. Even if I was super tired after the show, I had to go in my room and record music. I feel like it’s a need, like an animal or something… It’s like going to the toilet. To me, there’s a lot in common between going to the toilet and making a song. You gotta let that out!
“Milky Way” is about your partner of 10 years. It’s not always easy to write an amazing love song that captures that feeling of being in love.
It’s almost a little bit about [that feeling]. On “Milky Way,” what I’m trying to say is, “what were the odds?” It’s a song where I’m thinking about the fact that we met, and that’s crazy! And I don’t know how to express how crazy it is. What you said about it not being easy to write a love song about that feeling is a bit meta, in a way. On “Milky Way,” I’m just struggling with it. How is it possible that we met? In a whole universe, we’re living at the same moment, in the same town? How crazy is that? At the end of the song, I’m like, “the answer’s gotta be somewhere in the Milky Way.” Like, how the fuck is it possible that two people fall in love? They have to be in the same place. So many parameters have to be combined for two people to meet and match.
What else can we expect from you for the rest of 2021, assuming we’re about to get fully back to normal?
A lot of hugs, man. As soon as I’m vaccinated. For the rest of it, I’m starting to tour again. I’m going to tour and do quite a lot of dates. What else? I don’t know yet. It’s open. But a lot of hugging and fist-bumping.
Richard Reed Parry told us about his other band’s new album.
Though he may be known for being part of Arcade Fire since 2003, Richard Reed Parry has been making music with Bell Orchestre for even longer. Today, the instrumental six-piece released their fourth album, House Music.
Completed pre-pandemic, the group’s first LP since 2009’s As Seen Through Windows is the byproduct of mostly one single improvised session that was recorded live before being edited, modified and divided into 10 separate movements. Essentially, the album is one long piece of music with elements of classical, electronic and experimental jazz sprinkled throughout.
House Music was initially meant for a 2020 release, but was delayed due to the uncertainty of the pandemic’s future during its onset. Although it’s their first full-length in 12 years, Bell Orchestre never took an official break. Instead, the band — comprised of Parry, Sarah Neufeld (also of Arcade Fire), Pietro Amato (of the Luyas and Torngat), Kaveh Nabatian (also a film director), Mike Feuerstack (aka Snailhouse), and Stefan Schneider (also of the Luyas) — continued making music together amid other life commitments, while convening five years ago for a handful of sessions to improvise and record music over the course of a year.https://www.youtube.com/embed/NE42rmI8k_k?feature=oembed
The album was recorded on separate floors of Neufeld’s home in Vermont. With each of the six members split in groups of two, the group would spend a week to 10 days at a time recording. Initially, they’d be playing for an hour and a half without breaks, though this became looser as time went on — for example, some members might be making music, while others are busy going for walks or having lunch.
“There starts to be this social ecosystem where not everyone is on the exact same schedule all the time, and that’s fine,” Parry says, speaking via Zoom. “You find great musical ideas when working in pairs. It’s where the magic happens, and where the juice comes from.”
After Parry brought a single harmonic loop as a starting point, this loop became the album’s centrepiece. For 90 minutes, the band played to that same, single-tempo loop — one that the multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer describes as “open, but focused, and really gentle” — and found themselves making plenty of music off of a single idea, even though the loop itself comes in and out of the record.
“It was really useful creatively, because it means you can run with things as far as you want, and the whole thing will still have a centre to it, even if you don’t hear that centre,” he adds.
Despite its title looking ostensibly like a pandemic reference (with Parry adding that it took on a “whole new resonance” in the context of quarantine), House Music was named for being recorded literally inside Neufeld’s house in rural Vermont. The title also doubles as an allusion to the influence of the house music genre on the making of the record, since it is one single 45-minute piece played at the same tempo throughout.
“DJs beat-match things so that there can be this endless stream of music at the same tempo,” he says. “That’s a standard way for house music to be listened to. The fact that we had done that — albeit accidentally, at first — and decided, ‘Okay, this is what we’re doing: we’re releasing this record that’s all at the same BPM the whole time,’ felt like a cool inter-genre relationship.”https://www.youtube.com/embed/C1c_WIbi_fw?feature=oembed
The group’s first album on Erased Tapes is also one with musical touchpoints that didn’t shy away from heavy improvisation: Talk Talk, Ennio Morricone, the Orb’s Live 93, and Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew — particularly since the latter album’s creative approach was similar to that of House Music.
“There are these compositional ideas [on Bitches Brew] that were really distinct, but used in a very loose, explorative fashion. You hear that exploration and that group hive-mind going to work on these simple but really interesting, ideas,” he says. “You hear that happening live in real time. They’re just improvising like crazy.”
Although the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has taken a toll on everyone in some form, Parry has been grateful to have a long stretch of time away from the touring grind — and one involving arenas and headlining festivals, at that.
“I’m very lucky in that I make my living in fits and starts, anyway,” he says. “I’ll make a couple of records and go on tour full-time for a year, finish that, and then not work for another year or two, because I’ll have just lived away from home from full-on touring.”
Even if it would seem like quarantine isn’t exactly conducive to finding musical inspiration, Parry says lockdown has been treating him well, adding that it’s been a “creatively fertile” period for him. While not going cross-country skiing in his spare time, Parry has been busy writing and recording new music for many of his musical projects — including Arcade Fire, who he linked up with for a month to work on the follow-up to 2017’s Everything Now. https://www.youtube.com/embed/ezkiWIazMdE?feature=oembed
“We’re going to do that again for a month soon, in the spring or maybe the summer, depending on how stuff goes,” he says. “We can’t just be together hanging out all the time. We all live in different cities, so that’s been severely limited.”
In the meantime, Parry is readying the release of House Music. Under normal circumstances, he says the album would’ve already come out, and Bell Orchestre would’ve already toured and played shows with orchestras. Post-vaccination, they intend on performing House Music in its entirety with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra this fall, should concerts be able to safely resume by then.
Disappointing as it was to miss out on certain opportunities, Parry appreciates how his life as an artist has allowed him to see quarantine as an opportunity to create music while being more or less left alone by the world.
“It’s no big deal for me to only live in my studio for a long time and work on the stuff that I like to work on,” he says. “You have this creative wellspring that is actually inside of you, that’s like, ‘I want to just be left alone to create stuff, write music, record and do these things. And loving to do them.’”
For more about Bell Orchestre and House Music, please visit the band’s website.
Spotify, with its 320 million subscribers and CEO worth $5.3-billion, pays artists $0.0038 per stream, and payola is said to be routine.
Spotify’s history of under-compensating its artistsiswell-documented. Now, musicians are seizing the pandemic as an opportunity to fight back.
The Justice at Spotify campaign by the organization UMAW (Union of Musicians and Allied Workers) has brought further attention to the streaming juggernaut’s subpar royalty payouts, demanding that the per-stream rate be bumped up to a minimum of one cent.
Although Spotify operates on revenue shares for each stream rather than a fixed rate, its current payout rate is around $0.0038 per stream — just below four-tenths of a cent. However, this exact number varies depending on several variables, such as whether or not the listener is a paid subscriber, or which country the song is played in. A cent per stream would nearly triple the current payout rate.
UMAW is a coalition of American musicians and other types of music workers, such as roadies and producers. The organization formed earlier this year in response to the financial hit musicians have taken — and increased reliance on streams for income in lieu of touring—during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The campaign is advocating for a bigger share of streaming funds to go toward the artist, and for a much more equal streaming landscape for musicians, rights holders, and record labels alike.
Meanwhile, the Swedish company continues to gain monetary value, their revenue and Spotify CEO Daniel Ek currently has a net worth of $5.3-billion USD (nearly $6.8-billion CAD). Ek came under fire earlier this year for suggesting artists unhappy with their compensation aren’t making music frequently enough. Spotify have also sparked recent backlash for offering artists and record labels more potential streams by influencing the recommendations of users in exchange for a “promotional recording royalty rate” — a practice critics consider as being payola.
As of Dec. 28, the petition has been signed by more than 26,500 artists. These include Guy Picciotto (Fugazi), Empress Of, Amber Coffman (ex-Dirty Projectors), Jay Som, WHY? and Ted Leo. Spotify have yet to respond to the campaign.
Although the movement initially aimed to put pressure on Congress to help musicians and freelancers receive increased financial support during the pandemic, it has since snowballed into focusing on three primary goals: Pay Us, Be Transparent and Stop Fighting Artists.
More specifically, they are asking Spotify to compensate artists via a user-centric payment model, reveal and end payola methods, end backroom deals with labels and make those contracts public, have all parties (eg. musicians, engineers, labourers) be credited for their work on recordings, and end lawsuits against artists.
UMAW also claims that musicians have been “underpaid, misled, and otherwise exploited” by Spotify and their current business model, have seen no increases to the payout rate, and that “only musicians already on top with extensive resources can succeed on the platform.” Clearly, this flies in the face of the company’s mission of “giving a million creative artists the opportunity to live off their art and billions of fans the opportunity to enjoy and be inspired by it.”
The controversy over lacklustre compensation is especially pertinent when the pandemic has ground live music to a halt, and artists miss out on money they’d otherwise get from touring. Such a sentiment was well summed up recently (in a deleted tweet) by Stars’ Amy Millan:
“Don’t you think it’s a bit bananas that STARS had 10 MILLION Spotify streams this year but we saw nothing for it and still needed CERB because our only source of income which is touring was taken away? That’s some intense capitalist theft right there. Ooooof.“
—Amy Millan (@amymillan)
With Montreal being a popular spot for musicians to live and focus on their art, how would earning a cent per stream affect local artists still trying to establish themselves? For Montreal musician Paul Kasner — who records, writes, produces and performs as Venus Furs — it’s a step in the right direction, but still not enough to make a significant impact for him.
Paul Kasner (aka Venus Furs)
“It would be huge for artists who are getting huge volumes of streams,” he says. “For a lot of smaller artists like myself, three times of hardly anything is still hardly anything. It’s almost more symbolically nice for someone at my level.”
Kasner, who released his self-titled debut album back in July, praises Spotify for their algorithm and engineers, and thinks they can find a way to build a model where the artist receives a heftier cut.
“They’re already saying [to artists], ‘You’re going to be paid this much money per stream,’” he says. “I’m sure they can find some sort of way to go, ‘You had this many out of this many streams, so it’s this percentage of this amount of money that came in.’ That would seem like a much more reasonable model — and even at that, it would have to be something that makes sense as a reasonable split.”
Spotify is the world’s biggest music streaming service. The platform currently boasts 320 million subscribers, 144 million of whom pay monthly for Spotify Premium. This is more than double the subscriber base of competitor Apple Music, who have only about 72 million.
Although raising the payout rate per stream to one cent would certainly be a fairer deal, making it a reality is a bit more complicated than that. That said, there’s certainly no reason to think Spotify can’t refrain from suing their artists or be more transparent about their financial activity, and they most definitely have room to raise their payout per stream by at least a smaller amount when services like Apple Music offer artists a rate around $0.00675.
However, Spotify reported a net profit of only $1.8-billion USD out of the $7.3-billion USD they made in revenue this past year, the remainder of which went to either record labels or artists. If the payout rate were to be raised to one cent, this could set the company back billions of dollars per year in extra costs, perhaps enough for the company to fold and/or file for bankruptcy. Not only is the company losing money, they’ve also admitted that payout rates being lowered is “critical to Spotify’s future.”
One significant way for an artist to rack up streams is to be featured on playlists. But this can be difficult to accomplish without being connected to the right people, not to mention playlisting tools like Digster, Filtr and Topsify being owned by major labels. Montreal producer Ethan Barer — who makes beats under the moniker of Tibe and initially established himself on Soundcloud — says it’s important to be acquainted with someone curating playlists, something his peers wasted little time doing.
“When these independent artists were [first] making the switch from Soundcloud to Spotify, people were rushing to make friends with all these curators,” he says. “People that I knew were really on that in trying to secure their future. Maybe it was a good idea because they’re doing well now. But part of me didn’t want to just disingenuously befriend someone in an opportunistic way to later be put on a playlist.”
Ethan Barer (aka Tibe)
Luckily for Ethan, five of his songs on the platform have reached stream counts in the six figures; the highest being his 2017 track “Hey,” with more than 475,000 streams to date. How did he get there? By unexpectedly getting playlisted, despite having zero connections to playlist curators or Spotify employees. Though it would never be enough for him to survive on, he still receives bimonthly royalty cheques for the track, which continues to get plays on the platform.
“At some point, I remember having maybe 200 monthly listeners,” he says. “One day I checked my stats and it was at 14,000 monthly listeners. I was like, ‘Okay, something’s different here.’ So I checked, and I was on the playlist.”
Despite the politics involved in getting on playlists, Spotify remains an excellent platform for Montreal-based artists as far as getting exposure beyond their scene. For example, Venus Furs has gained listeners in Moscow, Russia, while Tibe has received numerous Spotify plays in Brazil. This is in stark contrast to the pre-streaming musical landscape, which required artists jumping through hoops to find booking agents and publicists to help launch their careers in foreign markets.
“I’ve gone to [the page of] a Montreal artist, and just for fun, clicked on About, and see the first market being Paris,” says Geneviève Côté, chief Quebec affairs and visual arts officer at SOCAN. “For an artist that hadn’t been in Paris at all — had not tried to develop the French market, was not on that path just yet… They made it to a playlist, and not even a playlist by Spotify France. It was a Starbucks-type playlist on Spotify, but from a business that was really well-followed by Parisians.”
However, Côté says the downside of this is that most people are no longer buying CDs, and that Quebec’s music industry cannot enjoy the same windfall it would’ve received if they still were. Moreover, if all parties involved were Quebec-based, the profits from a CD sale would stay within Quebec. This is no longer a regular source of income in the streaming era.
“Only a small part of that comes trickling down — whether through [music licensing company] Re:Sound, through us, or through other rights organizations,” she adds.“[Streams] do come from all over the world, but not in the equivalent of a $16.99 sale at Archambault or Sam the Record Man.”
So what other options do musicians have for making money off their art during a global pandemic? There are services like Bandcamp and Patreon, where fans can directly support artists financially. There’s also Twitch, the video streaming platform where artists can host live streams of performances and monetize them, either through direct tips from fans, or through providing a link to their merch store.
Live-streamed concerts have become popular during this pandemic, and Bandcamp has even gone so far as to launch their own service for live-streaming performances where 80 to 85% of ticket sales go to the artist. Alternatively, artists can receive grant money, as well as financial support from SOCAN for live-streamed shows. SOCAN also has an emergency fund for those in dire need of money. In the meantime, Côté suggests that artists hang in there for the remainder of the crisis, as vaccines are on their way.
“It would be a shame if everyone who worked in the music gig industry went to something else,” she adds. “Not just musicians, but waiters at the bars of your local venue, technicians, tour managers, managers, bookers. There are a bunch of people who earn their living through live music, and that’s the part [of the industry] hurting the most.”
While the impact of a one cent per stream payout on Spotify might pay more dividends for the Stars and Arcade Fires of Montreal’s music sphere, it isn’t likely to be a significant source of income for lesser-known local artists. That said, artists should — and are — seeing this movement as an opportunity for cultivating change to the streaming ecosystem.
“I hope this doesn’t just stop there, and we go, ‘Okay, we accomplished that,’” Kasner says.“We’re in a position where we’re not really able to negotiate or bargain, which is why this movement is happening.” ■
Three years after their acclaimed debut, Light Upon the Lake, the Chicago-based Whitney return with Forever Turned Around, a sophomore effort that expands on their signature duality of bluesy, cozy indie folk.
Acoustic guitars, trumpets, pianos and subtle electric guitars are central to the mix, paired with wistful, melancholic lyrics often discussing themes of lost love.
Evoking traces of Bon Iver, soul, Americana, and fellow Chi-Town dad rockers, Wilco, Whitney show once again how adept they are at tugging at heartstrings both lyrically and musically, even if the results as a whole sound almost identical to their debut.
Regardless, Forever Turned Around has some truly gorgeous moments. Warm, enfolding lead single “Giving Up,” as well as “Valleys (My Love),” the breezy “Friend of Mine,” and its sweeping closing title track are clear standouts, while drummer/vocalist Julien Ehrlich’s delicate falsetto remains the group’s calling card.
Though the album itself may not be a gigantic leap forward musically for Whitney, their collection of tender folk songs will fit the mood nicely as summer turns to autumn.
2019 has already been a banner year for Nilüfer Yanya. Not only has the 23-year-old English songstress already released her debut album, Miss Universe, to critical acclaim following several buzzed-about EPs, she’s also been booked at festivals like Glastonbury, Latitude and Primavera Sound, toured with Sharon Van Etten earlier in the year, and made her U.S. late night television debut on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in July — with even more shows planned for the rest of the year. Here’s our chat with Nilüfer soon after she’d completed her set at the 2019 Osheaga Music and Arts Festival in Montreal earlier this month.
Northern Transmissions: You just played at Osheaga. How’s your experience at the festival and in Montreal been for you so far?
Nilüfer Yanya: Well, I’ve only been in both for five hours, so I haven’t really experienced anything except for the golf carts!
NT: But you had a good time playing, though?
NY: Yeah, I think it was a good show! But I’m quite tired, so I’m probably a bit shaky. But the crowd was really nice.
NT: You played Glastonbury back in June, right?
NY: That was really good, yeah.
NT: What were your biggest takeaways from that whole experience?
NY: It’s too big of a festival, and it’s very badly managed! (laughs) But it was nice. We played on a Sunday, like today. It was chill.
NT: What’s been your most memorable festival experience to date?
NY: Maybe Primavera [Sound, in] Barcelona. That was really cool. There weren’t a lot of people at the start, and then literally as we were playing, there were swarms and swarms of people arriving. I couldn’t really hear anything in my in-ears — we had a really bad connection. But it was fun. I was like, “I don’t know what this sounds like,” but the crowd was really nice.
NT: You’ve said that it’s more interesting to just write a song and see what happens than go into it with some sort of plan beforehand for what it should sound like. With that, what’s an example of a song that came together in the most serendipitous way for you?
NY: “Heavyweight Champion of the Year”. I started it, and I was like, “Err, this isn’t very good.” But I kept going. Even when I finished it, I was like, “I don’t know if I like it.” Then, I kept rearranging it, and I just figured it out.
NT: Your album Miss Universe is your debut, though you’d released three EPs beforehand. Considering this was your first full-length, what mindset did you go into the process with when it started, and how did you end up feeling when it was ready to go?
NY: To be honest, I didn’t feel very present when I was making it. It was kind of the first year I was doing a lot of shows and touring, so I was trying to balance the two. It was really hard, and I don’t really recommend it. It didn’t feel like I was able to give my best to either. That’s why I feel glad that I’d already released music — I’d set my own mini-foundation of what my music sounds like, in a way. I guess with the album, I was trying to not worry about that so much, and just try and write my songs.
NT: Your album features interludes where you voice a Siri-type character for a company called “WWAY Health”, which sort of serves as a focus for the album itself. How did that concept come about?
NY: I had the title, “Worry About Your Health”. I had that slogan in my head when I was making the record. I wanted to call my album that, but… it’s a bit too complex, I think! (laughs) It might confuse people, I don’t know. I decided not to go with it, but I still wanted to include it somehow.
NT: Your album jumps between styles, from alt-rock to jazz to soul and other places in between. What were some of this album’s biggest reference points, whether musical or non-musical?
NY: I had this whole ‘90s vibe in my head for a lot of the songs. I don’t know exactly what it is… but I had that ‘90s pop/alt-rock [influence] in there, and maybe something a bit more current. I don’t really know exactly. Some of the songs were a bit older: one of them I wrote when I was 15, and a couple of them I’d started writing a year or two before.
NT: You’ve said that you’re not a “natural performer.” How do you feel like this has shaped the way you create music and perform live?
NY: I don’t know. I think the two feed into each other… but I don’t really know how. I don’t really like thinking about it too much, so I try not to think about it. I find that when I’m performing, it definitely helps when I have quite a rhythmical part [to play], and I think a lot of the main riffs of the songs are based upon something quite rhythmical and strong. I think I need something like that to make it feel like the song’s moving. When I’m writing in my head, I’m imagining the band already there, or something already there, behind it.
NT: How do you feel your comfort with performing has grown over time, especially with your debut out now and you being booked at major festivals?
NY: It’s a weird thing. It really depends on my mood. Today, I didn’t feel too worried, because I was just really tired, and you almost don’t care. You’re just like, “I’ve done this so many times.” When I was onstage, I could feel my body was very nervous — I wasn’t really comfortable. It’s a mixed feeling. Sometimes I really enjoy it, sometimes I’m like, “this is horrible, and I don’t want to perform ever again!” (laughs)
NT: You worked on this album with Dave Okumu, who was also your former guitar teacher. What was the dynamic like working with him in the context of creating music rather than learning from him?
NY: We did one song together, and it came out really well. But the dynamic didn’t really change that much. When he was teaching me at school, he was only there for a year or two. I didn’t really know who he was, but… he was such a wise guy, and he was so cool. Whenever he was talking about something, I’d be like, “Okay, focus. Try and pay attention.” But I couldn’t really, so I don’t know how much I learned! But it’s just so nice to be around people who are really good at what they do. They have that down, and they’re not worrying about if what they’re doing is good. They’re just doing it.
NT: You recently played on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. What was the experience like of playing late night American TV for the first time?
NY: It was actually pretty chill! My tour manager needed to get there at 8 a.m., or something ridiculous, to load in the stuff. We got there, we had to line check and record it, and that was it. Luckily, we didn’t have to do it for a live show. It was a lot more chill. I think if there was an audience there, we could only do it once. We got to do it three times.
NT: What’s on the agenda for you for the rest of 2019?
NY: I’m going to Miami tomorrow to play a show, and doing a festival afterwards on a cruise in Barcelona. We’ve got festivals in the summer still. I’m doing a west coast tour — we did east coast and midwest, and now we’re doing west coast in September and October. I have to go on a European tour in November — we’ve got a London headline show, which will be pretty scary. Then, I might go to Australia.
NT: Australia?
NY: Yeah, maybe. Southeast Asia, maybe.
NT: Do you know where in Southeast Asia?
NY: I don’t know. I’m hoping Japan. None of this is confirmed, but I’m telling you anyway. (laughs)
Sunday, August 4, 2019 Parc Jean-Drapeau, Montreal, QC
Osheaga saved the best for last. While the Chemical Brothers put up one of the festival’s best headliner sets in the festival’s recent history, it was poised for an even grander finish in the form of Childish Gambino. With other acts like Kaytranada, Boy Pablo and Tierra Whack rounding out the impressive roster of talent on the final day, Osheaga’s final bow of 2019 closed things out with a confident roar.
NILÜFER YANYA | Photo: P Beaudry
NILÜFER YANYA
Between her recent appearance on Colbert and her critically-acclaimed debut, Miss Universe, it’s a shame that Nilüfer Yanya was relegated to an early afternoon set on the main stages while people were still flowing into the park.
Yanya’s skill at jumping between jazz, soul, grunge and indie rock without it feeling jarring was on display on Sunday afternoon. Although Franklin Electric’s soundcheck on the adjacent River Stage threatened to drown her out, she played a solid, well-rounded set for those fortunate enough to make into the park early.
Sigrid| Photo: P Beaudry
SIGRID
This Norwegian pop songstress has been riding high off her debut LP, Sucker Punch, released earlier this year, and a visibly excited crowd showed up to watch her mid-afternoon set. Blending trademark Scandinavian pop music, Sigrid isn’t your typical pop star, but her songs are catchy and easy to sing along to. Jumping from 80s inspired cuts like “Mine Right Now” and “Never Mine,” to eerily Adele-ish piano ballads like “Dynamite” and synth-pop slappers like “Strangers,” the 22-year-old brought dance moves, confidence and a bubbly attitude to an already warm and sunny afternoon.
Mac DeMarco | Photo: P Beaudry
MAC DEMARCO
Mac DeMarco recorded his 2012 breakthrough album, 2, while living in Montreal and he’s still treated as a local hero of sorts. His local fan base was swelling in the large, packed-like-sardines crowd. Immediately following Normani (of Fifth Harmony fame)’s absolutely nuts set on the Mountain Stage, DeMarco re-staked his claim as indie rock’s resident class clown in front of a fresh-faced audience with multiple mosh pits breaking out in the crowd. With an old school EarthBound video game playing as his backdrop, DeMarco and his bandmates ran through unique arrangements of songs from throughout his career, giving him a chance to showcase his consistent songwriting capabilities alongside his infamous gap-toothed grin.
Tame Impala | Photo: P Beaudry
TAME IMPALA
Sunday was the day most people bought one-day passes to Osheaga this year, and it’s in large part because of Tame Impala. Despite giving fans no new music aside from previously-released singles “Patience” and “Borderline,” the Austrailian psychedelic pop masterminds put on a colourful, kaleidoscopic show full of fan favourites that spanned most phases of their career.
The general area around the stage was packed from top to bottom, but no matter where you were standing the group put on a great show, reminding the crowd of band leader Kevin Parker’s already brilliant songbook, providing optimism for whatever is next.
An epic showman and performer, Donald Glover is one of the most multi talented people in pop culture, and his Childish Gambino set closed the festival in incredibly satisfying fashion.
Glover took the tens of thousands in attendance to church and doubled down on his desire for a communal experience by asking everyone to put their phones away — even though he did wind up taking selfies with a couple fans regardless.
Opening with newer songs, “Atavista” and “Algorythm,” Gambino and his incredibly contagious charisma carried the set on its back, while continuing with songs from Because the Internet and 2016’s psychedelic funk-driven Awaken, My Love! before launching into an emotional performance of “Feels Like Summer” and later making the crowd go batshit insane with “This is America.”
Glover had fireworks, Marvin Gaye wails and pure spectacle on his side, making his show well worth the hour-long wait it would take many festivalgoers to get back to the metro at the end of the evening.
Saturday, August 3, 2019
Parc Jean-Drapeau, Montreal, QC
Montreal’s Osheaga Music and Arts Festival is Canada’s answer to Lollapalooza. Both festivals happen on the same weekend and book many of the same artists. It’s a fantastic three-day experience full of great music, atmosphere, amenities — and Torontonians. You literally couldn’t go anywhere without seeing at least five Toronto Raptors jerseys.
Now that the capacity has been expanded to hold 65,000 people per day — the festival was held on a temporary site for two years prior — it’s not only a more wide open atmosphere, but the event itself is as exciting as it’s ever been, and that’s all thanks to the music.
MorMor | Photo: Pierre-Bourgault
MORMOR
Toronto artist MorMor attracted Internet recognition with his song “Heaven’s Only Wishful” after being discovered by an associate of fellow Toronto export Daniel Caesar, and he showed off his impressive musical chops early Saturday. His moody, somewhat psychedelic style of indie rock and R&B was a nice touch to the afternoon, and a big crowd turned out to hear him play. Although he jumps back and forth between styles, channelling Prince on “Whatever Comes to Mind” and even a little bit of Arcade Fire on “Outside,” his style is versatile and blends together nicely.
Young Thug | Photo: Tim Snow
YOUNG THUG
Young Thug is as out there as popular hip-hop stars get, but he’s also one of the genre’s most confident and charismatic performers. Combining extreme swagger with solid stage presence and his trademark chaotic flow, Thugger drew a huge crowd out for his mid-afternoon set, playing a wide range of tracks from his prolific musical output, from “On the Run” to “Digits” to “The London,” as well as features like his excellent verse on 2018 headliner Travis Scott’s “Pick Up the Phone.” This is one set fans are surely glad didn’t get saved to the end during the Chemical Brothers — more on them later.
Janelle Monáe | Photo: P Beaudry
JANELLE MONÁE
Janelle Monáe was the best pure performer, so far, and might prove to be the best throughout the entire weekend. The R&B chanteuse is multifaceted, confident and musically gifted in equal measure, with a live band, backup dancers, multiple costume changes, and even a throne to go with it. Performing a variety of fresh, vibrant tunes from her decade-spanning career, wearing outfits seemingly inspired by toy soldiers, Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation era, and even vagina-shaped pants during “Pynk,” Monáe staked a solid claim for why she should eventually headline the festival herself. One of this year’s best sets.
RÜFÜS DU SOL | Photo: Tim Snow
RÜFÜS DU SOL
This Aussie alternative dance trio was back at the Green Stage, their multidimensional, pristine spin on deep house music translates effortlessly to a live setting — and without a need for DJ decks. Between frontman Tyrone Lindqvist’s smoky, arresting voice and the group’s heavy use of hi-hats and synths, they played a strong, mesmerizing set for several thousand attendees who made it over and bounced up and down throughout, along with an equally captivating use of lighting. This especially came through on songs like “You Were Right”, “Underwater,” “Treat You Better,” and set closer “No Place.” Electronic acts should try full live setups more often.
The Chemical Brothers | Photo: Pat Beaudry
THE CHEMICAL BROTHERS
This booking may have seemed like a gamble considering Osheaga’s largely millennial demographic, but it turned out to be a home run. The electronica/big beat legends came through for their first Montreal show since 2003, and it was utterly perfect for a festival setting. Combining exquisitely-mixed tracks from throughout their extensive career (including “Star Guitar,” “Hey Boy Hey Girl” and closing with “Block Rockin’ Beats”) with colourful and eerie backdrops, along with heavy use of white light, the entire set was entrancing, euphoric, freaky, and incredibly fun — sometimes all at once. It even tops any of Travis Scott, Arctic Monkeys or Florence + the Machine’s headlining sets from last year’s edition. Donald Glover, you’re gonna need luck topping this one.
Thom Yorke is one of music’s most meticulously-crafted fine wines. Regardless of project he’s attached to – Radiohead, Atoms for Peace, solo or otherwise – Yorke is an ever-present figure in modern music, and his ability to create and test his own musical limits seems to only get better and deeper with time. With his previous two proper solo albums, 2006’s The Eraser and 2014’s Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes, Yorke proved he could step out on his own from one of the world’s biggest bands and carve a distinct identity as a solo artist without simultaneously risking alienating listeners. On his third solo album ANIMA, he underlines once again how much of a knack he still has for making mysterious, experimental-sounding music memorable and groovy without really compromising, and it’s a big component to why he’s maintained his longevity as impressively as he has.
Written after a bout Yorke had with anxiety and writer’s block, ANIMA is a sonic journey with multiple twists and turns, though without ever truly losing its focus. Things begin with “Traffic”, an immediate standout that starts rather modestly and eerily before synths and other effects enter the mix. Though Yorke and producer Nigel Godrich both create a paranoid vibe to much of his material (and Yorke’s come a long way in that regard since “I’m a creep, I’m a weirdo, what the hell am I doing here?”), it’s often pleasant-sounding nonetheless, and “Traffic” is no exception. “Last I Heard (…He Was Circling the Drain)” continues very much on that wavelength, though it’s a much more ambient tune in comparison to “Traffic”’s more house and UK garage-inspired feel. It’s an ambitious project in some ways – Paul Thomas Anderson even developed a short film for the album to be seen on Netflix and in certain IMAX theatres. It’s by no means overly extravagant, however: the album’s only nine songs and just under 48 minutes in length, and with a fairly focused musical narrative, as tracks frequently bleed into one another.
The heavy emphasis on loops and ever-changing introductions of parts isn’t a surprising one – the album was inspired in part by Yorke seeing Flying Lotus live and observing how he’d improvise during his set. Traces of FlyLo’s idiosyncratic production style can be heard throughout various points in the album, as can Brian Eno, Four Tet, and Boards of Canada – in fact, the latter’s style in particular can easily be heard during the analogue synth intro of “Dawn Chorus”; a hypnotic number with monotone vocals, warm synth effects, and lyrical themes of regret over a failed romance. The track concludes Anderson’s Netflix film, and acts as the album’s ballad of sorts.
Despite the album’s cohesive feel, Yorke’s never quite satisfied to rest on his laurels stylistically: “I am a Very Rude Person” is a very bare-bones track sonically with little more than a bass line and a drum loop guiding things along before shifting its focus to vocal harmonies, while “Not the News” evoking an eerie feel both through its vocal purring and its themes of paranoia (case in point: it literally opens with him singing, “Who are these people?”). On “The Axe”, Yorke waxes lyrical about his frustration with technology (“Goddamn machinery, why won’t you speak to me?/One day I am gonna take an axe to it”) while skittering drums and nonstop, one-note synth patterns form the song’s bedrock. “Impossible Knots” sees Radiohead drummer Phil Selway link up with his bandmate by contributing sped-up drumming to the track, and fittingly enough, it’s probably the song that feels most like a Radiohead outtake. However, it’s the largely instrumental closing number “Runwayaway” that feels like the most appropriate note for the project to end on, with somewhat muted guitar licks driving much of the song while also being defined by effects clearly indebted to those of past collaborator, Four Tet. The almost computerized-sounding delivery of the line, “This is when you know who your real friends are,” is as appropriate a moment as they come in an album defined by themes of anxiety, dystopia, and being in a frazzled, chaotic state of mind.
By letting the project flow nicely and with a dreamlike tone to it (Yorke has a fascination with dreams, after all) while also providing enough intrigue musically and lyrically to keep the listener engaged, Yorke’s third album is an intriguing next step in his glittering music career, and one with fantastic end results given the album’s infancy as being largely unfinished tracks by Yorke that were then chopped up and spliced together by Godrich to have new vocal parts from Yorke sung over them. With ANIMA, Yorke takes his already well-built solo repertoire and adds a dash of colour, detail and mystery.
“They’ll buy you drinks, you’ll meet girls, they’ll try to fly you places for free, offer you drugs… I know. It sounds great. But they are not your friends.”
You may remember these as words of advice given by Lester Bangs to young, aspiring rock critic William Miller in Almost Famous ascaution not to get too close to rock stars, and it stands in 2019 as a very literal (perhaps excessively so) description of the modern dynamic between music journalists and artists – especially in our social media-driven landscape, where the gap between the two is much closer than in decades past.
The list of artists firing back at critics online is an extensive one within this decade alone – Ariana Grande, Nicki Minaj, of Montreal’s Kevin Barnes, CHVRCHES, Ice-T, and the Naked and Famous are but a few examples. In particular, Barnes wrote a hilariously scathing annotated rebuttal on his former Tumblr account to Pitchfork’s review of of Montreal’s 2010 album False Priest, even though its score was a decent 6.7/10.
However, a since-deleted tweet in late April from fast-rising rapper/singer Lizzo set off a whole new debate as to the very purpose of music criticism.
Lizzo’s tweet in question was in response to Pitchfork’s review of her major label debut album, Cuz I Love You, in which writer Rawiya Kameir described the album as being “burdened with overwrought production, awkward turns of phrase, and ham-handed rapping,” and that the music “can feel like a means to a greater end.”
Though it’s fairly easy to see why Lizzo would be upset by parts of the review – comparisons made by the writer between her and Meghan Trainor, Natasha Bedingfield and the Black Eyed Peas are reductive for an artist of her talent level, regardless of context – the review’s score was ultimately a 6.5/10; a slightly underwhelming critique in a sea of otherwise extremely positive ones for her LP.
A rapper, singer, and flautist, Lizzo is an undeniable talent that has already played Coachella, performed on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and worked with the late Prince in 2014, and it’s entirely possible she was disappointed the review came from a publication known for helping some newer artists’ steadily burgeoning careers sink or swim based partially on their review scores – or perhaps she mainly took issue with the tone of the review itself. However, to suggest that music journalists should be slumming it out in the streets on the sheer basis of them analyzing music in written words without creating or making music themselves is a narrow-minded – and at best, outdated – argument. That said, it also begs the question: “What is the role of the music journalist in 2019?”
Toronto Star music critic Ben Rayner admits he’s experienced his share of direct responses from both artists (Cher, Eddie Van Halen, Backstreet Boys’ Kevin Richardson) and fans (Guns ’N’ Roses, Yanni, Neil Young) over reviews he’s written. Though he tries to “put [himself] in the head” of music fans as well as through being someone who plays music and understands music theory, he doesn’t care about the music critic vs. actual musician argument.
“I would’ve loved to be a musician for a living, but my love of music led in me in this direction. I still like playing music, but it was never going to be a career,” he says. “I have friends who have never touched a drum kit or a guitar in their lives, but they’re just so deep into [it] – it’s a whole other level of nerdy. People who don’t even want to go to shows, right? They just want to stay [home] with their records. Everybody’s got their own approach to it. As long as you’re honest about it, it doesn’t really matter.”
Rock publications, or at least the ones many of us grew up with, are gradually dying out: once-iconic magazines like NME and SPIN have ceased publishing their print editions and pivoted mainly to online content, while Pitchfork’s own print edition, The Pitchfork Review, folded in 2016. In particular, NME’s average weekly circulation during the second half of 2014 was only about 14,000 before being made into a free magazine the following year. While Rolling Stone remains by far the most heavily circulated music magazine in the United States as of 2017 (at just under 1.5 million), the next-highest music publication on the list is Music Alive! – an educational music magazine for schoolchildren – with a circulation of only 500,000, while longtime emo/pop punk magazine Alternative Press ranks third with just under 300,000.
Even for well-known critics who do happen to be practitioners of the very art forms they’re critiquing, they don’t necessarily find much success in their moonlighting. Though Roger Ebert dabbled in screenwriting, Lester Bangs himself was an occasional musician, and popular modern-day YouTube music critic Anthony Fantano – known for his YouTube channel theneedledrop – plays bass and produces instrumental hip hop as his moustachioed alter ego Cal Chuchesta, all three remain far more known for analyzing their respective art forms as opposed to actively making art themselves.
Not only are the critics who also happen to dabble in their chosen art form better known for critiquing the art than contributing to it, being a musician arguably isn’t a prerequisite the way having a critical and analytical mindset when it comes to music is. Take, for example, Montreal-based freelance music journalist Erik Leijon, who admits he “can’t carry a tune,” and got much of his music education from listening to music around the house growing up, as well as watching MuchMusic and its recently-deceased French-language sister station MusiquePlus – crediting the latter’s show “Le cimetière des CD” as being where he learned a lot about review writing. As far as artists responding to critics is concerned, he welcomes the dialogue resulting from music reviews, and invites criticism for his own work.
“I’m not somebody who holds the position of ‘critic’ as some sanctified, deified thing,” says the Montreal Gazette and Cult MTL writer. “If you’re going to criticize an artist, you’ve got to be willing to take it back. I think the worst thing either side could do is invalidate the other’s opinion, or say ‘You can’t say this,’ or ‘You can’t say that.’”
While writing about music may not often be a particularly lucrative endeavour, some music critics have found success doing album reviews, video essays, and other music-related video content on YouTube – channels like ARTV, Dead End Hip Hop, Polyphonic and Middle 8 being among the more prominent examples. However, the most famous one is arguably Fantano, who has close to 2 million subscribers on theneedledrop, and with viewers having spent an impressive average of four minutes per video with his content as of 2016. Though there are exceptions to the rule, blogs and websites don’t seem to command the same sort of attention from music fans they used to, at least not compared to audiovisual formats. In other words, it’s entirely possible music critics and publications may have to increasingly shift their focus toward video content to publish their reviews.
Vancouver-based musician Jody Glenham has been on both sides of the coin: not only does she have a career as a musician in addition to working three jobs, she has contributed album reviews to Western Canadian monthly publication BeatRoute. In her view, while being able to create music is an asset for review-writing, it’s not a requirement compared to “good taste and a valid opinion.” However, Glenham also isn’t sure there are many who still enjoy discovering artists through publications and word-of-mouth.
“People are busy in their everyday lives,” she says. “For example, Pitchfork in its heyday was how everyone found out about their new music. Now, there’s Spotify and Apple Music curating playlists – it’s kind of like there have been more gatekeepers of how people are finding out about new bands and new artists. [But] I think music journalism is still an important aspect of it.”
Furthermore, with Spotify and Apple Music seemingly dominating modern music consumption from the consumer’s perspective (100 million and 50 million paid subscribers worldwide, respectively), there is no longer much of a desire to essentially be force fed new music via radio or MTV (or MuchMusic, for all you Canucks out there). A whole, wide open world of music is available at our fingertips, and music journalists can provide well thought-out essays on music to help make sifting through the literal and figurative noise easier for readers – though the listener’s opinion of the music itself is ultimately up to them, as music is a highly subjective and visceral art form.
Though there’s been some great online music journalism published in recent years, it nonetheless appears to have lost some of its influence since the aughts – the aforementioned Pitchfork has been credited for helping to break artists like Arcade Fire, Bon Iver, Broken Social Scene and Sufjan Stevens, while blogs like Brooklyn Vegan, The Hype Machine, and Gorilla vs. Bear were also acting as popular sources for music discovery during that decade. However, YouTube and streaming services – particularly Spotify playlists – continue to dominate the landscape for music consumption and discovery – and in Leijon’s opinion, it takes away from the music writer’s work being seen by potential readers.
“If you trust a writer, you’re not even going to the website anymore. You’re just following them on social media, and they’re giving it all away for free. You’re not even clicking on the website anymore, which is that writer’s meal ticket,” he says. “I don’t blame anybody for doing that – there’s so much out there. It’s so easy to go on your Twitter, or Facebook feed, and watch all the opinions roll in. That’s all our brains have time to absorb, so that’s a perfect place to do it. Music websites and blogs are competing with that.”
Despite the gloomy-looking present and future of online music journalism, there’s reason to believe it still has its place in today’s musical climate, even if the way we engage with it has evolved just as the technological landscape has. In Rayner’s case, he began life at the Star while there were critics onboard for books, dance, jazz music and classical music, whereas nowadays there remains only him and a movie critic at the newspaper. Regardless, he still sees value in music journalism itself.
“Back in the day, you had a regular voice, the same person you could engage with every day, and there were only so many,” he says. “It’s someone you could use as a pivot for your own opinions. Like ‘This guy never likes horror movies, I like horror movies. I know I’m gonna like the new Pet Sematary.’ That’s the value in the multiplicity of voices.”
After nearly 15 years, four albums and a long-sealed reputation as indie darlings, most bands might not necessarily feel the need to challenge themselves, but Local Natives aren’t most bands.
The L.A. five-piece’s fourth album Violet Street is a cohesive and jaunty addition to their catalogue, making for a sound Pitchfork described as being “more personal and timeless” than its predecessor, 2016’s comparatively modern-sounding Sunlit Youth. The LP explores themes of anxiety with regards to life and love (vocalist/guitarist Taylor Rice got married a year ago), and has been rolled out with lead single “When Am I Gonna Lose You?”, which features a music video starring actress Kate Mara.
Even for a career that has seen them consistently release solid albums for the past decade, the band remain keen to push personal boundaries both musically and in terms of their creative approach, working entirely with renowned producer Shawn Everett (Alabama Shakes, Vampire Weekend, Weezer, the War on Drugs) on the new album, whom they’d previously only spent a couple weeks working with while making their previous LP. Hot on the heels of their North American tour in promotion of the record, Rice spoke to Northern Transmissions on the phone ahead of the band’s first of two nights in Seattle, and discussed the making of the album, working with Everett, and several of the late night adventures they had in the process.
Northern Transmissions: What do you make of how people are receiving the new album so far in general, not just based on the first show of the tour last night in Vancouver?
Taylor Rice: I think it is still unfolding. I think this is an album that I’ve just been totally excited to share with our fans and with people. We really had the best time making it with Shawn Everett, who’s the producer. I think there’s so much in this album – [it’s] the first time that we have a shorter album. We worked really hard to edit ourselves and cut things down, and I think it is the first time we’ve been able to do that, and have this really cohesive thing. I’ve just been so excited for people to hear it. It is too early even for me to be able to know [how people are receiving it], but you start to see people say “Oh, I love ‘Someday Now,’” in the middle of the record. It’s kind of chill and it’s got this Marvin Gaye vibe. A lot of people are talking about that one. “Shy” is one of my favourite songs. It has this super insane freakout in the song, and I’m so excited to play that live. People are also talking about that song. It’s just fun. I know these songs so well, and you get to watch as people discover them, which is fun to watch.
NT: What’s the biggest way in which you guys challenged yourselves while making this record, in comparison to your 2016 album Sunlit Youth?
TR: The biggest way we challenged ourselves was to really trust in each other and being a band in the studio. What I mean by that is that every previous Local Natives album has been very meticulously crafted. It’s something that we would do over the course of a year. We would really meticulously craft the songs, and then go into the studio and make them. With this album, we wanted to try something different, and it was to say, “This is our fourth record as a band. We’ve been playing together for over 10 years – some of us for 16 years – and we know each other so well. Let’s capture the spirit of what it’s like for us to play off of each other live, in that very genuine, band-in-a-room, five-musicians-feeling-each-other way.” That was really scary. Normally you go into a studio, and for us, we want to know what we’re doing. This was a bit of a leap for us to do that, and it was just the most amazing experience. I really have to give credit to our producer Shawn Everett, who made every single day this insane rollercoaster of an adventure of “Okay, we have an idea for a song – how are we going to get there?” It would take so many twists and turns that we didn’t see. We had to have a lot of faith in that process to make this record.
NT: You worked with Shawn Everett for a couple weeks for your previous album. This time, he was behind the production, mixing and engineering of this album. What was the dynamic like now that you had a lot more time to spend working with him?
TR: We just went all in. We just pushed all our chips in on Shawn. I’m so glad we did, it was really amazing. I really feel like he’s a genius. The dynamic was just so great. Shawn has a way of approaching music, of the whole production. There are no problems in the studio, there are only a thousand answers. A lot of times when you’re working on a song, it does feel like a puzzle. “What do we do with this? How do we finish it? What’s the arc of this song? What’s the identity of it?” The process was really cool. We would use things like a painting. It would be like, “Here’s this photograph of this abandoned mall that has vines and trees growing in it – that’s the touchpoint for this song.” Or there would be a [Federico] Fellini film on silent in the background. Just using really different things to help guide the process that would just open you up and be really outside the box. I could talk forever about all the things we did with Shawn… Maybe I’ll just mention one, which, to me, embodied the most what it was like to work with him. He has this microphone that’s shaped like a human head, that’s ultra high-fidelity. It has these two microphones in its ears. It’s so that you can record whatever noise you want, and then you hear it as if you were actually hearing it in a room. He puts this microphone up in the room, and we were all just making this swirling noise until we all were like, “Okay, we’re going to run around it, and scream and bang on drums to make this crazy cacophony sound.” It was 1 a.m., we’re delirious, and we kind of got carried away. We were just going crazy, and then ended up all laughing hysterically in this pile on the floor. We went in and turned that noise into the first background chord that’s on “Vogue,” the first song on the album. It’s the most beautiful sound on the record – this floating, really pretty chord. It was so unexpected. We turned the most cacophonous moment in the studio together into this very gorgeous, beautiful opening for the album. We kept having that type of experience, where unexpected things like that would happen and flip a song on its head.
NT: You’ve said that you’ve “never had so much fun” making a record as you did with Shawn, and that some days were a “wild, unexpected adventure” until 3 am. Was that one of those adventures?
TR: Totally, yes. He’s also a bit of a madman. He really works so much – [his] schedule is pretty crazy. We would go until 3 a.m. all the time, and that was one [story.] There are all kinds of experiments: there’s his tape machine, and we were looping this tape through the middle of the room. We were performing the song on this mixing board – all these things that are kind of impossible to explain. We would barely know how it was working, and then it would all click. It would be like, “Oh, this is how [Talking Heads] made ‘Once in a Lifetime.’” We’re using this production technique, but then doing this very modern thing on top of it. It was so fun. It was hard, too, but it really was such a creative, really fun space. It reminded me of our first record, Gorilla Manor; this time where we all were living in this house together, and we were writing together, making music, and everybody was on top of each other. It was a really effusive, created, bottled energy. It felt like that, in a way.
NT: What’s an example of other 3 a.m. adventures you had with him?
TR: He has this huge warehouse, and we were all set up in the room. We could just play off each other and improvise. We had this song, and we were like, “Okay, we’re just going to jam it.” There’s this app called Radiooooo; this app has a map of the world, and you choose a decade. You click on a country and a decade, so you can go, “Brazil, 1970s,” and it’ll play music that was on the radio in the ‘70s in Brazil. It could be Czech Republic or Russia in the ‘80s – literally any country, any decade – and it [shows you] all this really dope music. We had our song and we chose with Shawn five decades and countries at random. We would listen to whatever song it was for 30 seconds, and then play our song in that style. It would be like, “‘80s, Turkey,” and it would be some weird vibe, like “Okay, cool, everybody play our song in that vibe.” We would jam on that for five minutes and then we’d keep repeating. We’d be like, “Okay, Sweden, 1960s,” and then “Okay, whoa, let’s jam in this vibe.” We had all of this jamming on this song, but in these really crazy styles. We just went in and helped create this song out of it. That was definitely an idea I’d never thought of before, of a way to put a song together.
NT: You’ve said that you guys found inspiration in movies and visual art (ie. paintings) to inform the record’s sound, and you even edited a song to match a film. What films/filmmakers or paintings/painters in particular acted as influences for the album?
TR: There really were a lot – I should probably just write a comprehensive list. We were in there for months and months. I mentioned the photograph of this dead mall, and that was for “Tap Dancer”. That was really a beacon for that song. We kept turning back to this one photograph that we had as the touchstone for it. But often, we’d just be working on a song and we’d choose a movie for that day. Sometimes it wasn’t like, “This song has to be Citizen Kane.” It was like, “Okay, today Citizen Kane is on. Maybe it seeps in subconsciously, or if we hit a point in the day where we’re stuck a little bit, we just let Citizen Kane tell us where to go.” Shawn also had this IFC [Films service where] you could also pick a country and decade for films. It was so cool – all these films and epic filmmakers from the ‘60s and ‘70s. We’d watch weird shit like El Topo or Citizen Kane or There Will Be Blood… There were a couple that made their way into the landscape of the album.
NT: You made the record at an L.A. warehouse, and the big city vibe of Los Angeles is another thing that seems to be a major influence on this record – you even named the song “Megaton Mile” about an L.A. car wash. What is it about L.A. that breeds inspiration for you, versus if you made an album somewhere in the boonies?
TR: For Sunlit Youth, we made that record all over the world. We went to Thailand, Nicaragua – we’d do all these trips outside of the city. It felt really important to be in L.A. properly to make this record. I think it was important in a lot of ways. This dark, ‘70s Fleetwood Mac vibe, that was something we kept thinking about, and wanted to be a guiding light for the record. For us, this city has been home for so long, and it’s a creative hub. The music that we were making, and where we wanted to come from, felt correct to be in Los Angeles. We didn’t want to go into the wilderness or get away, we wanted to be in the city itself. I think throughout all the songs, and even the lyrics, L.A. is definitely a character that informs the album.
NT: You’ve described this album as being the most exciting record you’ve ever made, and that it reminds you of what it was like to make music when you guys first got together. What is it about the album’s sound – or any other aspect of it – that reminds you the most of the beginning of Local Natives?
TR: I would say that has more to do with the creative energy, and the feeling that anything was possible in playing off of each other. I think it was the level of trust that we had together to dive in to something and rely on each other, and lean on each other. We’ve been playing music together a really long time. Especially with Shawn as the producer for this record, and just allowing any idea that we had. He had so many incredible ideas of things I never could have thought of. But if I have an idea, he’s so capable at so quickly making it happen. He was so fun to work with as an engineer. We’d just be like, “Okay, we want to set up two drum kits, and we want the rest of us to be jamming to them in this particular manner.” It felt really free in terms of how we were collaborating with each other.
Dave MacIntyre 