Bombino For President; A Curious Encounter With Arcade Fire

On November 26th I went and saw Bombino, a young guitarist from Niger. The circumstances and consequences of that evening were remarkable, so please permit a little more narrative indulgence than is usually meet and seemly for a music blog.

Let’s start with the hardcore stuff, though. Bombino is a survivor of some serious political turmoil in his homeland, having been forced to flee the country (apparently more than once) for his ethnic and even musical affiliations. Apparently the guitar was so associated with rebellion against the regime that it was banned. So what we’re really talking about then, is rock n’ roll.

And indeed this was my impression of the music. As I mentioned to a friend standing next to me at the show, “it’s like surf-rock but without the water. Just sand”. We have a lead electric guitar with a standard backing rhythm-section (bass, drums, second guitar), taking cues simultaneously from Hendrix and Phrygian-like folk modes. The feeling is analogous to an English-speaker hearing another Latinate tongue: there are familiar elements, but it is still enigmatic, exotic.

The political implications of Bombino’s music are obvious but far too complicated to delve into here. I’m not going to claim to have any experience in West African politics, but I do suggest you check out the film “Agadez, the Music and the Rebellion” for some mo’ learnin’s on the subject of Bombino as cultural figure.

Anyway, the man can play. With a grin that betrayed his youth, Bombino blazed across his fretboard and through his set, compelling almost everybody to get down with their bad selves on the dance floor. It’s hard for a band to guide me to transcend my anxious, awkward white-boy self, but hot damn if I wasn’t cuttin’ a rug.

“World” music as a genre is impenetrable, golem-like to me in its austere hugeness. Bombino helped me break things down a bit though that night, and I am grateful. Genre distinctions may be the province of nerdy bloggers, but when I experience the music organically it defies description, and again and again I am simply floored. This is an old platitude: the holiness of the “live-in-concert”. Yet, it remains untarnished by the cliché. It’s just true, and it was especially true on that chilly November evening.

Now, what framed the concert is kind of interesting as well. By a number of crazy circumstances, my friends and I were invited to the show by none other than Win Butler and Régine Chassagne, the husband-and-wife masterminds of a band Arcade Fire, which you may or may not have heard of. To be honest, I’ve never really had the chance to give Arcade Fire an involved listen: they took off so fast it seemed as though they didn’t really need my fandom, and the few tracks I heard didn’t grab me the way other Montreal bands from that same time did. It’s been kind of a popular game to shit all over AF after the whole Grammy thing, because they’re total sell-outs man, or whatever. I, however, was really impressed by Win and Régine as people though, for whatever that’s worth. They made an effort to be conversational with me beyond the call of usual social grace, touchingly doing their best to negotiate whatever awkwardness fame necessarily injects into such a situation. They were decidedly not holier-than-thou, and they even went out for tacos with us afterwards at Nouveau Palais, and drove me home that night. Of course, I cannot claim to “know their soul” after such a brief encounter, but suffice to say that they seem like good folk and probably didn’t steal dude’s basketball after all.

Smoke We Must

I have returned to Montreal just in time. This city, and Toronto, and Canada, and North America too has just waved goodbye to one of its best. Eric Chenaux, genius guitar player, has relocated to Paris.

This is sad news for everybody who ever had the pleasure of listening to Eric’s records, or taking in his live shows. Hopefully he will be back periodically to perform. In the meantime, let’s pay tribute.

Starting up in the punk band Phleg Camp, Eric has performed in many diverse and excellent projects around Toronto and Montreal. His solo material, however, is what I am most familiar with and what I have enjoyed during my tenure in this city.

I first heard Eric via an MP3 sent to me over MSN Messenger (God this makes me feel old). A friend of mine with distinguished tastes sent me “Worm & Gear” from Dull Lights, and I was immediately taken with its wonky British Isle folk sound. Kind of like if Fairport Convention had too much to drink one night. As any actor knows, however, feigning drunkenness is incredibly hard to do: Eric’s playing is deliberate, the result of many years of intense study, and most of all, experimentation. The man has built for himself a unique vocabulary on perhaps the most bland and overplayed instrument of all: the guitar. If you have trouble making out what he’s saying, it’s not because his speech is slurred. He’s just invented a new and beautiful language. Glossolalia at its finest.

We are, after all, talking about the guy who put a whammy bar on his old and very valuable guitar when no store in Toronto would do it for him, the same guy who’s still trying to figure out how to put one on his classical guitar. I can’t remember the last time I’ve heard the whammy bar used in a way that didn’t make me wanna “whammy” the wanker using it. Eric just defies expectations, I guess. He also uses a wah-wah pedal. What the fuck, right?

It’s not just the guitar playing, though. He’s also got a real gift for songcraft and singing. No doubt about it, he’s a crooner, evoking a marriage of free jazz and folksong in a dulcet tenor. This is hard to do. Eric does it. How?

I tried to find out myself, tried to get lessons with the man before he took off, but he was busy playing music with everybody because everybody wants to play with him. We’ve shot some emails back and forth and I am hopeful, but I think probably the best thing to do is just listen, listen, listen to the records. It’s so much more than a humble guitar nerd’s fantasy come true (although that too). It’s real music: distinct, articulate, and excellent.

Start with Warm Weather With Ryan Driver and work backwards. Or just buy it all. That too.

A Conversation With Jamie Thompson Part 2

Here is the second part of my interview with Jamie Thompson, musician extraordinaire. If you missed the first part, please just scroll down for the full story.

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JF: Let me admit it: I’m not that familiar with either of your work outside of this stuff so much…I remember actually, when I was sixteen, friends of mine were really into that Islands song “Rough Gem”. It was played at house parties and we’d dance to it all the time, which is really kind of funny actually. (laughs) But it seems to me that this particular project is more… I mean, the term I’m going to use is “World Music” but I think that’s sort of a stupid phrase, because it turns every culture in the world into a rack on a CD bin.

JT: It makes the entirety of the non-Western world’s musical output the equivalent of “Country”! (laughs)

JF: And that’s the problem I have with the term, but unfortunately it’s the one I’m going to use. It seems like there are a lot of non-Western influences in the project. Alden’s singing songs in French, in Spanish, and there are obviously a lot of different, more diverse musical influences coming into play here. Definitely in your percussion too, I’m hearing a lot of Brazilian textures and just tons of different sounds coming into the music.

JT: For me, if you take World Music to be just an open mind to music of all different traditions, then for me and I think for Alden, based on what we’ve always talked about, it’s a big motivator. When I sit down to listen to music, I may end up listening to a jazz record, or I might end up listening to an “indie-rock” record. But just as often I may end up listening to--- I like a lot of contemporary African music, a lot of traditional African music, music from Eastern Europe, from India, from South America, and Alden is the same. We actually traded back and forth different songs and albums that we were finding personally influential. And yeah, the structure of the songs works very much like that too because it’s less--- I mean if you listen to Clues, for example, you have a lot of changes, it’s very programmatic music, where it’s like “okay, here’s this part!” then, boom!, there’s a huge change to something else and a lot of modulation. Whereas The Hidden Words stuff is a lot more cyclical and harmonically simple which is a lot more similar to…whether you’re listening to music from the Southern Sahara, or Columbia, or the Outback of Australia, more traditional music tends to be less harmonically complex and more cyclical because it allows more group interaction. But when you get more complicated: Western music has tended towards this more harmonically complicated, for it’s own sake almost, approach to things, where you have to really know a lot more of what’s going on to follow it. So that’s a big musical influence, certainly, I think you can hear, for me, my whole drumming style is pretty much based on non-Western sources and has been for a long time and I think Alden’s in a very similar headspace too. What I want to do is to be able to craft a kind of music that has that same kind of quality to it, although it is inevitably Western music because we are products of that culture. I like to imagine people clapping along, and singing along, and repeated parts, and call-and-response. Things like that are elements that I love in any music, and I think it’s something I would like to see more of in Western music. And also, interesting rhythmic patterns can disappear once you get into that more abstracted harmonic language. It becomes more difficult to make things rhythmically interesting if you want to keep the pulse steady.

JF: And maybe even to get people into a spiritual state, it’s a little bit hard when you’re shifting from one musical idea to another with a sort of multiple personality disorder within your music. I feel like you can really develop the spiritual nature, the sacredness, and the sanctity of the words themselves within something’s that’s cyclical. You have time to develop the idea, to let it percolate, and to let it continue. It kind of reflects this Eastern idea of cyclical reality, in which everything is just moving around and around.

JT: And the idea that a concept is not more valid because it differs more than the thing that came before it, which is also a very modern Western philosophical idea. Through all the arts, you have, especially through the 20th century, this idea that what you’re doing is not really valid unless it’s a refutation of what came immediately before it. I think both of us have a feeling maybe that that’s not the only valid way to go about things, and, I mean this is getting a little abstracted here…

JF: No, this is perfect. This is what I like.

JT: But you know, it’s nice to have patterns that endure. It’s okay to write music that has only one chord progression going throughout the whole song, and maybe that’s something that we lost throughout the 20th century in Western culture, this idea that it’s okay: things don’t have to be absolutely new, things don’t have to be constantly refuting. I think John Cage said he’s trying to create a music where you don’t have to kill your father to be doing something legitimate. And I think if you listen to a lot of traditional Western music it’s a push toward that. It’s always trying to do something that negates or refutes, or is the opposite, or as far away from what came before it. It gets so that you think something’s more valid if it’s constantly changing and switching up. There’s also a sense of comfort that comes from the cyclical, and that’s okay too. A lot of more modern Western music has been about making people uncomfortable. I think the expression of angst, and the expression of awkwardness, and the expression of anger have become hallmarks of western music.

JF: That’s kind of a shame.

JT: Yeah it is! I got that idea from when I got into just intonation music, which uses a different scale system. A lot of the practitioners prefer it because there’s a calmness to just intonation intervals; they’re mathematically pure, so there’s no dissonance to them whatsoever; whereas with equal temperament everything’s a little bit off, so there’s always this underlying erratic tension to the chords. It comes from everything. If you listen to the popular music going back the last forty years, everything---it’s really harsh. It’s all very harsh thematically; it’s all very harsh sonically; it gets harsher and harsher. And you know, I think it’s okay to make things that are just pretty, and things that maybe are trying to portray calmness, to bring about a state of mind that’s not about agitation, that’s about the opposite: calm. I think that’s a pretty important thing to do which is not particularly addressed in western music, yet, in other parts of the world, it’s the norm.

JF: Do you think that this sort of cyclical style allows space for these words to breathe and really be expressed? With the name of the band being The Hidden Words, a lot of emphasis is on the texts. I think, from my experience of playing with you guys and being a part of this, the audience can really focus on what’s being presented, lyrically and musically; if you have an idea that develops slowly, and you know… these are not epic poems that we’re hearing. They are very short and very succinct little texts and nuggets of wisdom that Baha’u’llah revealed, and I find it’s very complementary. I don’t know if you have anything to add to that.

JT: I agree. I think, for me, whenever I’ve done music that’s based around a text, what you’re trying to do is to set the text in such a way that the meaning of the words comes through better as a result of the music, even if people aren’t aware of that. I think that the way that The Hidden Words texts are used here, certainly some of the other Writings Alden’s been adapting, is based on the idea that you can’t necessarily hit someone over the head with it’s meaning, that’s not the point. You’re not shouting this in someone’s ear; you’re not saying “wake up! This is happening!” It’s reflective and it’s trying to tell you something that requires a little more reflection and a calmer headspace to understand. So in that sense, I think definitely the cyclical nature of the music and the focus more on that rather than angularity and abstractness puts the listener in a headspace where he or she may be more receptive to the meditative quality of the text also. Like, “O ESSENCE OF NEGLIGENCE! Myriads of mystic tongues…” it’s not such an obvious message. You can’t just look at it, and pragmatically say that “this is what it means, and therefore I got it”. So, to be able to relax into the beauty of the musical side of it I think definitely brings out the texts.

JF: The deliberateness of the adaptation reminds me of Arvo Pärt’s method of composition for holy texts. Rather than set a time structure and then try to fit the music in there, he looks at the sound of each word and then adapts it to the notes accordingly. He really makes sure that the text and the music don’t have to be stitched together like a Frankenstein monster. It’s something that’s natural and organic, and grows together and intertwines its roots until it’s one tree.

JT: There’s a wonderful history--- there’s this guy Harry Partch, an American composer, and he had a book, Genesis of Music, which I read, and the first chapter is this essay that he wrote that’s all about, for him, how music is corporeal. It should come out of the human body that’s making it and so if you’re singing words, you should approximate speech. That’s not the only valid way to do things, but for him if you’re gonna sing “I have a chair”, you wouldn’t go “I h-h-ave a ch-ch chair” because you would never talk like that. So, for him, the beauty of the melody should come from it being a natural speaking sound. This essay draws a whole history back to 1000 BC of all these different composers for whom this was a really important thing, this sort of naturalism of speaking the text.

JF: The development of this band can analogously be traced in the music of two previous bands Alden were in, one of them you were also in. There are these two songs, one of them on The Unicorns’ record which is: “Let’s Get Known”, and then on the Clues record, what concludes it is“Let’s Get Strong”.

JT: Which was written at the same time. It was written as a response.

JF: And now, Alden doesn’t even seem to need to make the statement, “Let’s Get Strong”. This band is just strong. It’s here, it’s ready to go, and there’s no need to comment on it because this is just what it is. I find that a rewarding way to look at it because this is the fruition of what’s been happening for years between you two. So in a sense The Unicorns is related to this band because it led to this destination for you guys. Not necessarily a final one, obviously, this is a continuous development, but maybe a more comfortable place for you both to rest--- where you can feel personally, spiritually, and musically fulfilled at the same time.

JT: Yeah. Personally, if I look at my own values and priorities in music, The Unicorns was this band--- the first band where I got nationally then internationally recognized and we could basically tour as much as we wanted to and people went and bought the record in large numbers. We were just thrown into it. None of us expected that sort of thing. So there are these three people who all have different desires and values that were important. And I think The Unicorns ultimately broke up as a result of the difference between “Let’s Get Known” and “Let’s Get Strong”. I think that pair of songs actually is really, really telling in terms of what’s important. I ended up going and playing in Islands because at that time, Alden didn’t want to play, he went and got a job doing something else and didn’t want to continue to be a professional musician and play in band like that and I very much did, even though Alden and I, I think, had a more complementary set of values about a lot of things at that point. And then Islands ended up going more in the direction of getting known than getting strong and I realized that I don’t even really like being known that much, when it comes down to it (laughs). I love playing music, and I love people, I love meeting people and getting to know people, and music has been an avenue to do that which I’m very, very grateful for, but it’s not important to me to be famous and be looked upon as someone who’s above anybody. Really, I’m the luckiest person to get to have the life I have and do the things that I do. It’s not like everyone else is lucky to have me doing this. I’m blessed with a wonderful opportunity for a life through this, and I feel like there is a concurrent responsibility: the fact that I get to do this means that I owe the world to do it in a way that helps it somehow.

A Conversation With Jamie Thompson

Hello my handful!

First, a requisite apology for infrequent updates: life in Chelsea (Ottawa area) is good but not conducive for blogging. More conducive for swimming and bbqs and hey yo, I got a life to lead.

As promised, below is the conversation I had last October with Jamie Thompson. He was born a Unicorn along with Alden Penner and Nick Thorburn, went on with Nick to form Islands in the last half of the 20-ought's, and now is back with Alden playing Baha'i music in The Hidden Words.

Full disclosure: I also play in The Hidden Words, so maybe I'm not qualified to give an objective P.O.V. This interview occurred, however, when my station in the band was confusing and tenuous, so perhaps I'm still in the green for journalistic integrity.

The Hidden Words, at this point, were preparing for a show at Casa Del Popolo for POP Montreal and I had offered to do a 500 word piece on them with a short quote for The McGill Daily to boost attendance. That short quote turned into a fifty minute interview that ran the gamut from the demise of The Unicorns to why World Music is a stupid term.

I have posted the interview in two parts in order to maintain focus. I hope you enjoy it!

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Part 1
Transcription of Conversation between Jamie Thompson and James Farr
Date: 20 September 2010

JT: One of my most important influences musically is this drummer from Ottawa who lives in Toronto now. His name is Jean-Martin. He’s not famous by any stretch: he’s this jazz guy. I did a bunch of workshops, and I used to go to this jazz camp outside of Ottawa and it was really cool because it was all different ages and all different skill levels. The whole approach had nothing to do with, like, “okay now we’re going to teach you every kind of scale you can play over a minor 2/5”. It was a broader approach to things and it really, really influenced me. I always try to look on the internet in my free time for music resources and there are a lot of them for technical things but for people who are trying to approach music from a broader perspective, there’s very little.

JF: I had a CEGEP professor who was very influential on me in the same way. Before, I was into straight-up tabs and then this guy said to me: “No, no! You’re playing this song like an idiot. You got all the notes right, but you’re playing like an idiot”. I think that sort of wake-up call is crucial to any musician getting any good at all. There are so many technically gifted people with no sense of how to move around their instrument properly.

JT: A big part of it also is that I find a lot of the time, when people start, there’s a real disconnect between the playing and listening. So let’s say you’re doing guitar, you’re so concentrated on something technical that you’re not even listening to what it sounds like.

JF: It’s crazy!

JT: Yeah, there’s no sense in that.

JF: There’s been a real inversion in the last maybe couple hundred years of technique over… I don’t even know what you would call what it’s over… do you call it the soul? The feel?

JT: Even if you just say the sound.

JF: How did you and Alden get working together again?

JT: Well I came back to Canada last summer for a bit, when I first got back from living in Germany and Alden was playing in his band Clues at the time and I went and saw them in Toronto, because I was in Guelph, which is near than Toronto, and it was the first time Alden and I had had a conversation that was more than, just sort of… maybe he’d come to an Islands show and we’d chat for a minute or two backstage. But we ended up hanging out the whole night and then I went with them to the Hillside festival after and we hung out for the whole weekend and it was really just a great interpersonal dynamic that came back right away. I think Alden was a little bit disillusioned with some of the stuff he was doing in Clues and I was talking to the rest of the guys in the band too, and it seemed like he was in a different place. I think he reacted really well to hanging out and we generally had this idea that we should do some kind of music project together again. And when I got back to Montréal in April and let him know that I was going to be here and that we should try and do something, he had been working on all these Hidden Words adaptations, putting to music these texts, and so it seemed like a perfect thing to get involved with.

JF: So it was more that he just happened to be writing Hidden Words at the time more than you being like, “I wanna get in on this Hidden Words project!”

JT: Well, the thing is, I think we were both in a really similar headspace too because I had just finalized my departure from this other band, Islands, I was playing in. A big part of it was that I didn’t necessarily agree with the purpose behind the band or what the motivations were. I’m not particularly a religious person per se, although I like a lot of the things that motivate religious people and the values and what’s important I share, but I just don’t happen to believe in a conscious creator god. But at the same time, the values, and the psychology of religion… I think the effect that religion has on people who do have that sort of faith is really, really positive and I think it’s a major benefit to humanity in terms of getting people to just think about morality and how people should treat each other. I think although those questions can be asked in philosophy or all these other things, really, religion is the main sort of forum for that. So for me it was perfect. I had known Alden to be sort of Bahá’í, like fluctuating, and then when I came back he was really fully committed, into it, and I had never seen him so engaged in his own life and really so genuinely happy and excited about what he was doing and it perfectly fit what I wanted to be doing, which was to be making music that has a purpose, that is a social purpose more than it is one of personal grandiosity---

JF: So not a kind of “art for art’s sake”, ivory tower thing?

JT: Yeah, well, I mean there’s art for art’s sake, but more common I think in popular music is art for my sake. You know, like “I’m going to go and play in this band, because I think I’m great, and I want people to recognize that I’m great” and it’s way more common than people are really aware of, in the professional pop music realm especially, and just like, “the reason I’m doing this is because I’m so talented and people need to hear this”, whereas I think the fact that this music is coming from a religious base is like, it can’t be that. It can’t come from a place of “this is about glorifying me”, because it just goes against---

JF: This is music about glorifying God, right?

JT: Yeah, exactly. It’s already, by definition, about that. Specifically, in this kind of case, (I’m also not that well acquainted with the Bahá’í faith but I’ve been going to meetings and get-togethers and talking to Alden) it seems very, very focused on human civilization and the idea that you glorify God by helping people, and that’s what’s important to me too. With music, at this point in my life, I’d much, much rather work a menial job and sacrifice making a living---I’ve made a living playing music since I was fifteen--- in order to make the focus to do something beneficial for humanity. I think the music can, when it’s done right, be one of the greatest gifts that humanity gives itself. I had been trying to, and I continually, continually have been trying to figure out ways to make music in a way that’s beneficial to people. So when I came back and that was what Alden was doing already, I really couldn’t ask for a more appropriate situation because it’s exactly what I want to do. And it’s worked out great; we don’t have to butt heads about anything, because we’re both on a similar wavelength.

JF: The nature of the outfit, the way it’s going right now and the way it’s developing suggests a deliberate break with conventional ways of promoting music, presenting music, and being part of a band. There’s no concept of a singular band, with one membership, with the goal of “the top”. I mean part of that may just be that it’s religious music, which is not part of the pop sphere right now. It seems that you guys are really oriented more to creating something good and something in a community rather than making it as a “big band” or being reviewed on pitchfork or whatever, I mean, not to badmouth any of those publications, but that’s a goal for a lot of bands.

JT: Yeah, exactly. It’s also great because there are certain kinds of pressures that come with those expectations. As soon as you go into a band thinking, “Okay, we’re going to make this a big, successful band” then there are all kinds of anxieties about things like, “well, is this good?”. You can second-guess what you’re doing if people aren’t responding to it in a certain way. I haven’t personally been that susceptible to reviews and the effects of that, but I know for a lot of people, things start to hinge on that, and if you get a bad review, then it affects your self-esteem. But for this band, so far, the majority of concerts have been at Bahá’í centers and the people who are coming are not part of the hip music intelligencia, they’re not people who know who the cool bands are, or who’s cool or not, and it just kind of carries its own set of criteria for success with it. It’s not externalized in the same way. It doesn’t matter what pitchfork says, it doesn’t matter if we fit into whatever kind of paradigm of hip music, which we pretty much don’t (laughs). I mean, I don’t know, maybe pitchfork would really like the record, but they might really not (laughs). But, you can have a sense of success because you go there, and if we play a show and there’s a seventy year-old there who really enjoys it, you have to wonder: when the last time they heard a new band they really liked? That’s its own success.

JF: Yeah, chances are they didn’t pick up the new Arcade Fire record. (laughs). It seems to me that this is a project that really sustains itself: there is no need for external influence and external support or anything like that. As long as the music keeps happening then the shows will keep happening, and the people will keep coming, and whatever sort of base you’re able to establish will sustain the project itself.

JT: A really good example of that is when we went and played this one show, the first time we played out of Montréal, and the first time we played not at a Bahá’í gathering, was at Quebec City at this festival, and they invited us because Alden and I were in this other band before, and they booked us as though we were going to sound like this band The Unicorns that we were in like 7 years ago, which really couldn’t be that much further, sonically, from what we’re doing. They put us as the headliner of the show; we played last at this big venue with a bar and after all these loud rock bands and electronicky dance things, and it was really poor fit, because the audience were all hyped-up and drunk and wanting to dance and stuff, and we’re playing this kind of quiet, meditative music, and as we played, it became clear that a lot of people just did-not-want-us there (laughs). There were a good amount of people who were really into it, but there were people who were heckling, and yelling stuff, and, really, the racket from the audience was overpowering us. You could barely hear because so many people were talking. But, the whole time, Alden and I just had the hugest smiles on our faces and afterwards we just got up and hugged and part of it was I think: it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if some random drunk person yells “get off the stage”, okay, that’s fine. I don’t know, I feel like in most bands that I’ve ever played in, if we’d been faced with that kind of situation, we just would have not spoken and had a really horrible night, but it was one of the most enjoyable shows to play almost just because it was like: this is fine. We’re not doing this so that everybody in the world likes it. We’re doing this because we believe in what it is, and we believe in this music, the message behind the music, the actual music itself, the sort of social implications of it, and the relationship between the people playing. All these things are already there, and certain, and everything else is just kind of, “whatever happens, happens” because the criteria for success is our own. It’s not external.

JF: It’s interesting that a lot of these shows, and a lot the attention you guys are getting is from this band that became extinct years ago. Does it bother you guys that this Unicorns thing is going to follow you guys around in The Hidden Words?

JT: The thing for me is I’ve already been through that. When that band broke up, me and the other guy from The Unicorns started that Islands band, and it was brutal, because that was at the height of the popularity of The Unicorns, we broke up at the height of our trajectory for personal reasons, and then me and him go make this other record and the expectation was, “Okay, so this is it! Now you’re taking over where the last one left off!” I think for the first year, at every one of our shows people were yelling out Unicorns songs to play, and every interview would talk about it, and every poster would say it, and it was just non-stop, and so I’m kind of just used to it by now. It’s kind of annoying, but at the same time, how many people get to have played in a band that people are obsessed with about six or seven years after the fact, you know? I feel like I’m lucky for that. It’s easy to lose sight of that, but…

JF: Gratitude is definitely a much healthier reaction than total resentment and bitterness. Especially if you want people to hear this band, it’s awesome that you’ll be able to get some attention for it because of a band you were in before. It’s miraculous that something you did seven years ago is still popular now, and that people will want to listen to what you’re doing now.

JT: Yeah! There are kids that are listening to that band who were barely cognizant when it was around. But, I mean, there’s the flipside of course which is that people who want more of The Unicorns, they find out that we’re giving this now, which is very different, and they may be less receptive to The Hidden Words because it’s a let-down that it’s not this other thing that they like so much.

JF: But like you said, the Quebec show just confirmed how little that is an important factor.

JT: Yeah, the people who don’t like this are welcome to not like it. I’ll still be your friend, even if you don’t like this music (laughs).

JF: So what about the show at Casa, then? It’s probably going to be a similar situation to the one is Quebec City, don’t you think?

JT: Maybe a little bit, because it will be mostly louder bands, mostly rock bands and stuff. But Casa’s a little bit more intimate of a space; the other show was also a free show, so I think a lot of people just came out to see whatever…

JF: (Drunken impersonation) Heylet’sgoseetheUnicornsI’msodrunk.

JT: This show, my friend Noah’s [Ed. Noah Bick of Passovah Productions and Blue Skies Turn Black] putting it on. All the bands that are playing are all really interesting, and I feel like the people who will come to this will tend to be a more open-minded group, but we’ll see. Maybe it will be a total disaster (laughs). I mean, musically, I’m sure it’ll be great, but I don’t know…I don’t imagine people heckling at Casa Del Popolo for some reason…(laughs)

(photo by Amanda Rachel Gardner)

Glossolalia Hits the Road!

Hello my handful!

This is a brief announcement, just to say that as of next week, Glossolalia will be relocated to Ottawa for the summer. Instead of simply calling it quits, as is my wont, I will shift the focus of my blog to the Ottawa scene. She is a neglected rough gem in the Canadian music crown.

I am moving to Ottawa in order to find more work opportunities, and so this shall be the supreme meeting point of business and pleasure. From May until August, I will keep my blog updated with interviews, posts, and essays; all of which will be concerned with Ottawa music.

I hope this post finds you well, faithful reader. Stay tuned for the promised interview with Jamie Thompson (it's long and good) and more goodies.

A Curious Encounter With Alden Penner

Alden Penner is a curious character to begin with, thus prefiguring all encounters with him as mostly curious also. For those of you who aren't too familiar with the indie scene (I just felt a little wave of shame for using such a silly term), Alden was in a quite popular band called The Unicorns about seven years ago. He also played in a band called Clues, which was signed to Montreal's indefatigable Constellation Records
. These are only his most visible projects---he's had his hand in almost all kinds of music, as evidenced by this awesome video:

Pierre Mulumba en concert from lorraine on Vimeo.

I know Alden best as a restless creative spirit: he goes where the music guides him.

Alden and I met last year through the Montreal Baha'i community, and we currently play in a band together called The Hidden Words, along with Jamie Thompson, my brother Eric, Marie-Claire Saindon, and Neah Kelly. They're all really great people and talented musicians. Sharing time and songs with them is a joy.

Alden is the type of man who is unfazeable. He recently took a trip to Mali and people were asking me, "do you think he'll be different when he comes back?" I knew better than to ask such questions, however: wherever Alden goes, he remains in Aldenland.

Not to say of course that he's clueless---nothing could be further from the truth. Instead, there is an element of unshakability to him, an "Aldenness" that is distinct yet impossible to define. Anyway, here is a funny thing that happened to me today which involved his unique personality.

I was playing a song of Alden's on my electric guitar by my second-story window and singing in full voice. The song was "Let's Get Strong", a favourite of mine which recently was released on Clues' self-titled release. As I finished the song, I heard applause sounding faintly from the street below. I look out my window and who should I see but the composer himself, AP, dressed in a long black coat and clapping vigorously.

I had seen Alden earlier that morning. When he was over, I offered him some fruit to eat, and while he took an apple on his first visit, it seems he was back to claim the blood orange. In any event, he came in and we had a nice conversation.

It was really weird being "caught in the act" of playing his song. It's one of those uncanny moments which blends horrified embarrassment with supreme pleasure. This stiff mixture tends to mainly characterize my encounters with people far cooler than me, though, so I guess I shouldn't really be surprised.

Anyway, this was just a funny music-related moment; I'll have some more stuff up soon, including an hour-long interview I did with Jamie Thompson of The Hidden Words, previously of Islands and The Unicorns. Stay tuned.

You're A Good Man, Steve Day

As a preface let me say that I have definitely been neglecting my duties. Glossolalia was not intended as a “puttering-around” type of thing, and I have made it even less than that by not doing anything. A host of other responsibilities has been dominating my time lately; I apologize sincerely but swiftly: on to the music I promised so many months ago.

Let me recommend The Youjsh. A group of disassociate McGill music majors hardly sounds like a recipe for fun, but it is without reservation that I proclaim The Youjsh to be one of the best bands in Montreal. I realize that this is a bold statement, but I am more than willing to defend it. First of all, I doubt that anyone who has seen them live will dispute my claim. The Youjsh describe themselves on their website as treading the line between art and party (let the reader remember that you can’t spell one without the other!). This tightrope walk is executed gracefully.

I remember the first time I heard The Youjsh, though it’s a bit of a ribald tale: I was on the crapper. After finishing a set with my brother at the Segal Performing Arts Center, I had to go to bathroom. As I sat there, I was suddenly assaulted by blasts of trumpet, clarinet, sax, piano, bass, and drums. Oh boy, those drums. This was not the corpse of some jazz standard dragged along by a listless brush on a snare: it was alive and bombastic. I sat there, grinning like an idiot with my pants around my ankles, as they blew through “Don’t You Think She’s a Bit Young For You, Steve Day?” (more on this elusive figure below). I am usually quite leisurely in my bathroom visits, but on this occasion I rushed out as soon as possible to witness what I was hearing. The Youjsh went on to dumbfound both me and my brother (and probably everybody else there that night) with a set of original compositions that spanned in influence from klezmer to Dixieland jazz.

The brains behind the operation: a short, humble hairy guy named Malcolm Sailor. What a dude; what a great name. When he plays, he stands behind his keyboard carefully, making sure his fingers go to all the right places: the immaculate bandleader. I’ve seen another of his projects, Mr. Goldschneider and his Personal Flaws, which confirmed to me that everything he touches turns to gold. But if Malcolm is The Youjsh’s brains, then surely Philippe Melanson is its heart. He is the best live drummer I have ever seen. His playing is tempestuous, yet at the same time totally controlled.



I know I’m sounding like a total groupie or something right now, but you really have to see it to believe it. My brother and I just kept repeating the same thing to each other on the ride home that night: “it was pure joy”. Despite my gushing, however, the band does not take itself too seriously. This is very refreshing given the self-importance of some of the utterly forgettable indie bands of Montreal. Every song is named after Steve Day, the band’s official mascot whose true identity and whereabouts are unknown to me (Is he Malcom’s roommate? He seems to enjoy pillowfighting, if the myspace photos mean anything…). In any event, if he is responsible for The Youjsh, I wish him well.

The Youjsh are playing on March 15th at Le Belmont in Montreal with Five Alarm Funk and Grooveattick. What the world needs now, is Day, Steve Day. Hallelujah.

http://www.myspace.com/theyoujsh