Ciaran Smith, chief of Dublin-based three-piece Crayonsmith, is an excitable man. His tongue trips over itself as he tries to relate all his ideas and his answers, and he worries sometimes if he’s said the right thing. His thoughts can be seen effervescing like a roughly-shaken can of Club Orange after each question and he answers everything insightfully and sharply, referencing Gaudi as easily as Les Savy Fav while not coming across like, well, a wanker. He has reason to be excited of course. His sophomore effort, White Wonder, does not suffer from a slump but an upsurge of refreshing ideas and masterful execution, and the band are about to set off on a transatlantic flight to tour with Islands in America. We recently talked about the upcoming tour, anticon, inspiration, Out On A Limb and that album cover.

You’re supporting Why? this week and Islands on their American tour, which are pretty big coups- How do you feel supporting bands that influence your own sound?

It’s an honour, I guess. You’re delighted that somebody out there, either somebody in the band, or their promoter, recognizes the similarities between the music and thinks “Yeah, these guys would fit.” With Why? it’s Foggy Notions that picked us, and we’re totally grateful for that, and with Islands it was Nick Thorburn, we kinda know each other from the last time they played here. We hung out in Whelans afterwards, and stayed drinking at the bar all night, and he said he’d love to do a tour. We talked about different producers we liked, and different filmmakers, and records we loved and stuff and found we’d similar interests.

And is that the same thing that happened before with the other bands you’ve supported in America?

Yeah. It’s like, if you like somebody’s music, get in touch with them and tell them you love their music, say thanks for the positive influences, and ask if it’s OK for you to send an album, as a thank you or whatever. That’s what happened with Sparklehorse, and Casiotone For The Painfully Alone. It’s great with the whole Myspace thing that there’s no entourage between you and another artist, it’s just human-to-human.

Regarding Why?, anticon’s influence is all over your new music. What is it about anticon that you like, that you want to carry over into your music?

Between the last album and the new album, when it came to doing the beats, the guy I worked with is George Brennan, who’s in Deep Burial. He had this AKAI MPC sampler. We’d seen this DVD, this anticon tour DVD with cLOUDDEAD and he’s just hitting out beats with his fingers. It’s great if you’re into making drums sound different, or detuning things, giving it a different texture. It goes back to Beck with Mellow Gold. If you’re into that kinda stuff there’s a whole label making that music, and that’s where the template for the album came from.

The first album was quite slacker rock-influenced, did you feel sick of that kind of music in between, or did feel like you had to make yourself move on?

I think what it is, right, is you have your first album and all the bands that have influenced you up to and during the last album come out, and you kind of purge it. You’ve got all of that out of you. There’re certain bits that stay with you. In my case I’ll always veer towards melody and an interesting beat. So then when you move on to the second album and you listen to bands like Why? and Of Montreal, and Mice Parade and think “wow, this is influencing me on top of all the old influences”, and because it’s fresher you absorb all those in, and they’re there when you go to make your next album. I’m sure it’ll be the same way with album 3 or 4. It’s like Bruce Springsteen and Nebraska. He comes to the band with the songs, and they’re like “we’re not going to play on that. There’s no room, there’s no need for us to play.” You just go with the feeling at the time, and the circumstances. Also, you look back to what you’ve done before, and you don’t want to repeat yourself so you’re always trying to do something new. You have to keep yourself interested as well as everybody else.

Do you take inspiration from outside of music as well?

Yeah. I’m mad about nature, about movement. Gaudi said “Everything comes from the book of nature”, and it’s true. Whatever has been produced has occurred in nature, now it’s just documented. The Microphones use the studio so that you hear things like wind going through the music, it’s anything to represent what’s around you, what turns you on in the world.
Socializing is another one. Going out and drinking. But, that’s not in a… not in a…

Not in an Arctic Monkey’s way?

No, exactly. More like the idea of people releasing, they get their lives back at the end of the week and there’s a giddiness with people within this free time, they get to be fully themselves. There’s a certain energy when people get together. It’s how bands happen. People want to do something with their free time. I’m into how people integrate, and bounce off one another.

Is there any difference between Irish and American audiences, do you find, from having played extensively over there?

On the American tour with Mt. Eerie and Casiotone it was 14 dates from Vancouver down to LA, and the gigs were everywhere. In a house, in a clothing store, in venues. From my experience from there compared to here, there’s more of a can-do attitude there. Whereas here people associate quality with a certain established venue. We’ve played house gigs here in Ireland and I thought they were great, and they don’t happen enough. Ireland is so small that we’ve played pretty much every venue, and we don’t get offered house shows. Whereas in America you get offered to play and the gig can happen anywhere. That’s why we’re going to do these shows with Islands, and if we weren’t doing them, we’d be going back ourselves. I guess it’s because America’s so much bigger that you can have houses big enough in different towns along the coast. Here you’ll be lucky to get a house show every few months. There’s that whole scene in Kilcoole though they have house shows all the time.

The DIY hardcore punk scene?

Yeah, so I don’t know that our music exactly fits that. But I’m amazed by it. 16 and 17 year olds are putting on these gigs, and it’s totally independent of Dublin. They won’t pay more than 10 quid for a show in Dublin, which is how it should be I suppose.

Steve Shannon produced the album, what was it like working with him?

Very good, very good. Before we even recorded the album we’d been playing the songs for a year, just to make sure everything was ready to go, everybody was happy with their pieces. So we brought the beat tracks that we’d made with George to Steve, put them on the computer, and he tracked them. He’d make suggestions then, like to play certain things an octave higher. He helped us realize our ideas. He’d know if something should be put through a certain filter or whatever. He had the know-how we needed, and suggestions that we brought into our songs. You can definitely hear touches of Steve on the album. There was always room for criticism both ways. It was a great experience.

You don’t seem to get an awful lot of press in Ireland considering the success you’ve amassed, I think. Do you agree?

With this album we’ve got good reviews, wherever it’s gone. We’re going to do our thing anyway, and if people are coming to our gigs that what matters. Press can help and all, but if they’re not into it we still have the Myspace and stuff. Since we told people about the Islands support our profile views have jumped double, we’re getting comments from Americans and there’s no press there. It’s hands-on, DIY work, like sending bulletins to fans of Islands and stuff. You do your thing, and if the press want to get on board, cool, if not, if it’s not their cup of tea and that’s cool. If both the press and the people aren’t into you, then you have to ask yourself questions, you know?

You’re on Out On A Limb, what’s that like as a label to be on?

It’s great. In terms of our band dynamic, they’re like the business band-members. It’s totally candid, nothing is not said. If something has to be dealt with, it’s dealt with. Nothing’s put on the backburner. It’s always moving, it’s like a 24 hour shop, somebody’s always chipping away.

Do you ever feel like if you wanted to get bigger you’d have to move on from the label?

We’re totally happy where we are at the moment. If the time comes when we’re asked to make a jump, we’ll ask how we can keep Out On A Limb onboard, how can money go to them, because we love their way of working. That’s probably totally idealistic, but I’ve heard too many horror stories of bigger labels where the person who signs them loves them, but then when they’re moved on the person who takes their place doesn’t like the band. It fluctuates. Whereas with Out On A Limb the lads love every band that’s on the label. Grassroots is all we know for the moment, we seek refuge in that because it’s workmanlike. A needs to be done, B needs to be done. Has it been done and has it been done? If you call somebody you get an answer straight away, there’s no waiting on emails or anything in between.

Was the helmet D.A.D.D.Y’s idea?

Yeah! The day before the photo-shoot the guy who was doing it, Mike, told me he had this idea to do a lo-fi version of a high-brow painting, like a goofy version of Joan of Arc. So they brought me into the prop room of D.A.D.D.Y. and they had this white kind of bunny suit, and it had been made from bathmats. Mike had just been in Smyths and he brought back a rubber sword and helmet and breastplate and stuff. I didn’t even question it. I said he could do whatever he wanted, as long as it’s not a standard Irish album cover. It’s one of those things that sticks, I suppose. So at the album launch I wore the suit and helmet and it was a pain in the whole. It’s so sweaty. These things flap all over the place and hit you and… But it adds a mania to the gig. If you’re just about holding the whole thing together it adds excitement. Pavement were famous for it.

Are you going to continue wearing it?

We’re debating whether to bring it to America with us or not. The other lads aren’t in costumes so it’s a bit like the Super Furry Animals or the Flaming Lips. Or maybe it can be like Les Savy Fav, where the lead singer Tim Harrington can just do whatever he wants and the other bandmembers are just in their shirt and jeans, it could work from that angle. So I’ll keep you posted about that.

We could do a tour diary from the helmet…

Exactly, that’d be great.

So where to from here?

We’re working our jobs for the next month to get money together for America, for the tour with Islands. Then we’re going to try and focus on America for the next year or so. We’ve been given this golden opportunity. We’ll be playing to over 12000 people over those 14 dates and hopefully we’ll get offers from other bands to do tours with them. We’ll do a tour in between in Ireland to bolster the profile. People will be coming on board hopefully having heard the album since the launch, around September or October.

Do you feel like you do need to break internationally? Is Ireland too small?

It is, yeah. You do your first year or two of gigs here, and see how that goes, and you might get offered Oxegen or Electric Picnic. But at the same time, I don’t see what the point is to just be big in Ireland. Nobody makes music for exclusively one country, it’s meant to be universal, international. You have to push yourself. Each country is a new challenge. We use Ireland like our base, do our tours here, but try to play in other countries as much as here.

Do you think it’s a case that Irish acts are too comfortable being successful in their little clique, or is it just genuinely so difficult to establish a foothold in Europe or America?

I don’t know. Jape is doing well. He’s broken out in Europe. It’s the whole “who-you-know” thing I suppose, in a sense. But some acts are just satisfied to fill out Whelan’s every couple of months, and that’s all cool and all, but don’t you want to go somewhere else? Look at the Redneck Manifesto. They cut their teeth here, and then went off and did an amazing tour of America, and I think they’re going off to Japan next year. You have to see yourself as an export, that you can compete, or that you’re music is as good, as other bands out there. It’s not about you being the big fish in the small pond.

Jump into the ocean?

Yeah. You have to push yourself forward, or you get complacent. You can make loads of money and yet nobody in Europe or America will know you. You push and push and your music gets better, since you have more to play for.

Crayonsmith play their last Irish gig before embarking on their American tour on the 26th of May in Crawdaddy, with Mae Shi. White Wonder is available from yer usual outlets now.
Check them out at: www.myspace.com/crayonsmith

Neil Campesinos!, the guitarist in this year’s most hyped indie-pop band, chats about their debut album, their all-ages shows and the impending egomania.

A line on We Exhale And Roll Our Eyes In Unison runs “four sweaty boys with guitars say nothing about my life”. Do you think Los Campesinos! provide a healthy alternative to that traditional British indie outfit?

I really hope so. When we first started we were completely sure that we didn’t want to be that standard lad-rock post-Libertines, boring, stale…

The View!

Yeah! There are bands like that coming out every single week. We didn’t know what we wanted to sound like, we only had ideas of what we didn’t want to sound like.

You associate a lot more with North American acts. Are you complete anglophobes? Are there any British bands or scenes that do interest you?

Oh yeah, there’s still lots of awesome British bands. On the tour we’re doing we’re playing with Johnny Foreigner from Birmingham, and 4 Or 5 Magicians, which are bands that we all know. So we’re not anglophobes at all. British bands that get press attention aren’t particularly good. And all our favourite bands are American anyway.

Have you found your reception in North America has been more welcoming?

The North American reception has been quite surreal. They read the British press in a different way. I can’t fathom the fact that we can go to gigs in America and play to people who are singing all the words along. I guess the internet has done so much for us. It’s really amazing.

You’re signed to Arts and Crafts over there which is fairly prestigious. You have a similar sound and ethos to other bands on that label. Did that play a big part in you choosing to sign with them?

I think the A+C thing was down to a lot of bands on that label. We got to work with David Newfield who’s connected with Broken Social Scene. It all just came about without us looking for it. We never really considered getting on a record label in America. When the Wichita thing happened they were like “We’ll get someone to put it out in North America too. How about Arts and Crafts?”, those two labels have a connection. So we were like “Why the hell not!” It was very flattering. A year ago we were huge fans of that label, and now they’re asking us to be part of their roster.

Have you met any of the bands you like off the label yet?

Yeah! Several times. I bumped into Kevin Drew in Toronto at a gig. Well, he bumped into me, I didn’t even notice him at first! We’ve met them all now, they’re all really nice. David Newfield especially so.

Do you think he’s made a contribution to your sound?

Yeah without a doubt! He’s such more musically advanced than us in so many ways. He’s older than us, he’s got more experience. He has ideas that we’ve never even thought of, and this vast array of instruments, mics, compressors, everything. He’s exactly… a mad scientist, but he’d be like “Let’s try this through a 1940s vintage amp.” And it would work.

A lot of your influences, like Pavement, are distinctly lo-fi, but the Los Campesinos! sound is quite clean. Was that conscious?

We didn’t necessarily want to go for a clean record, but somewhere in between… I don’t think we could have gotten away with releasing a lo-fi record, although it would have been amazing. I don’t think it’s a super-clean mix, but I guess it is essentially a pop record. I think our first record almost has to be a pop record. It’s meant to be fun. Not mainstream pop, that American type of indie pop.

Is Los Campesinos! the dayjob now?

Yeah. We just graduated in June. To be able to walk out of university straight into this is a bit ridiculous.

I know it’s a bit into the future, but do you think you’ll be a quick-fire releaser of albums, or will you take your time over them? You haven’t been together that long, and your first album is already finished.

Well, Hold On Now, Youngster comes out in February, and we’ll pretty much tour this year out. The longer you drag it out, the longer you get to be in a band for, so I think we’ll take our time!

Milk it for all it’s worth! Release You! Me! Dancing! four times!

No! No! That is a no-no. It’s so frustrating when bands re-release their songs… If you’ve not made it by now, stop trying! If that first single you released three years ago isn’t popular now, it’s not going to get popular. Just go away and quit! If you’re not in a band where you want to release material because it excites you, why are you in one? Just to get famous.

Most of your gigs on the upcoming tour are all ages gigs, is it a fight with venues to allow this?

It has been, some venues make a big deal of it. I don’t know why, I’ve been to plenty of gigs where it’s not over 18s. Some people just don’t like it. Gareth (singer and lyricist) is quite active in getting our gigs all ages. I like it, it makes the crowd more exciting. When I was 14 or 15 at a gig I’d go mental, whereas if I go to a gig now I’ll probably just stand there, move my head and say “Yeah, this is good”.

Have you noticed at your gigs whether people are like that? Static, with some head-nodding thrown in, or have you been getting a more excitable reaction?

Actually, really amazingly, we’ve been getting really excited reactions. During our UK tour we had stage invasions. Generally we do get an exciting crowd. We find it weird, because when we go to gigs we’re not like that. We’ll just enjoy the music and not go mental. Maybe they actually HATE the music, that’s why they’re going mental.

That’s a fucked up way to look at it! Last time you played some of the band seemed quite nervous. I suppose it was the first time you’d been on tour. Do you think next time you’ll be more comfortable on stage?

Yeah I hope so anyway. That was pretty much one of the first gigs of a big tour. We’ll be much more comfortable now. We’ve much more songs to play. We’ve not even started learning them yet. They’re songs we played for the album but haven’t actually played live on the album yet, as a band proper. When we recorded the album we didn’t really play the songs together, as a band. We’ll see what happens in a few weeks, how that goes. When we realize we probably should have started practicing about two weeks ago. I think we’ll still be nervous, if a little bit more confident. But still nervous, and still excited.

Is Los Campesinos! a democracy?

Yeah, I guess it is. Everyone has differences at times, but most of the time it’s all positive. We do try and always agree on, say support acts, and tracklisting and album names. Gareth writes all the lyrics, Tom writes a lot of the lead lines and hooks, and we’ll all structure and arrange it and add our own parts into it.

Speaking of tracklistings, you left International Tweexcore Underground, It Started With A Mixx, and We Throw Parties! You Throw Knives! off the album. Did you want an album of mainly new material or were you just bored of the older songs?

We just really wanted to get a mix of newer material and material that had been released, and then songs people new anyway. So we left International Tweexcore Underground off the album because it didn’t fit in terms of the mix of the album and sonically… also we just liked the idea of a standalone concept single. We left It Started With A Mixx off because it’s an old song, and we’ve played it for a long time. Perhaps it wouldn’t fit on the album. And the same goes for We Throw Parties!. We still really like it, we’ll still play it live, but it was time to move on. I think we made the right choice.

How easily did the songs come together for the album, it doesn’t seem like you had a lot of time to make it?

I guess a lot of them, even the new ones had already been totally written, practised and demoed. We had more songs that we didn’t pick to go on the album. It didn’t feel particularly stressful at the time, even though we didn’t have a lot of time. We approached it quite sensibly. We knew how much we had to get done, so we focused and did it. Also, we were staying in a town where there was nothing at all to do, it was very dull, which meant we didn’t get distracted at all.

It is a “big” album, are you ready for the inevitable backlash against it? The band gets so much positive press, do you think it’ll be difficult when negative comments start appearing?

Probably. But so what? However it balances out, it doesn’t really matter anyway. We’ll do what we want to do. It all depends on how seriously you take yourself, and how seriously you take other people’s comments, and one thing we really don’t want to do is take ourselves too seriously. We’re well aware this bubble could break, in a year’s time people might not give a shit about us, and if that’s the case it’ll be sad. But we’ve had this opportunity, and none of us ever expected to do this, none of us aimed to do this. Every day on tour, I know it sounds really cheesy, but every day is exciting.

You’ve been getting an awful lot of press for a young band, how’ve you been dealing with it?

Just not thinking about it too much, not taking it too seriously… When you see yourself in magazines you like, say Pitchfork or Plan B that’s cool. If people ask to do an interview with us it’s really flattering that somebody cares that much, whether it’s national press, university press, or fanzines. It’s so surreal that people care at all what we have to say.

Do you think the ego will come eventually?

Oh yeah, hopefully. We’re practising it now… Not really, though, we never meant for this to happen, and it wouldn’t be fair to get too carried away with it.

What I first notice about Jens Lekman are his shoes. They are a marvel in shiny white leather engineering, tapering off to ridiculous pointyness like a pair of miniature concorde jets. Backstage in Whelans, as Jens speaks about touring in that melifulously well-spoken manner shared by male Scandinavians, they keep distracting me and I wonder if the tips of them are splitting atoms. You might, by now, be asking yourself why this piece is starting off with a digressive observation of the interviewee’s footwear as opposed to the standard snappy relevant quote to get things going. I could lie and tell you that I am a bisexual shoe fetishist and the sight of a dapper Swedish man in patent leather rendered anything he had to say about music completely irrelevant. Or I could admit the sad truth, and tell you that the battery in my recorder ran out after 2 minutes, meaning that the few shreds of actual quoted material I got from Jens are to be guarded jealously and sprinkled sparingly across this piece like dinky bits of white truffle on a posh omelette. But we won’t worry too much about the details of the interview that (mostly) got away, as there is much to relate about Jens himself and the festive gig he played later that night accompanied in part by Owen Pallett and a woman who looked freakishly like a young Britt Eckland.

Jens Lekman is a Swedish singer-songwriter who writes wry, lyrical and heartfelt pop that is polished and meticulously constructed like, yep, those shoes. A few things set him apart from the dreary masses of guitar-toting workmen that haunt this dreaded genre. One is the way in which so many of his original melodies are woven through samples cribbed from the vinyl he obsessively collects in second hand stores and flea markets. It’s something that could potentially be a clever parlour trick, but in Lekman’s hands the samples imbue the songs with timelessness, like he’s selectively dipping his lyrics into the huge collective vat of love and loss that informs so much great pop music. For me, this is best demonstrated in an earlier song of his called ‘Black Cab.’ Here, a heart-rending lyric of alienation from friends is married to the jaunty sounds of a 60s baroque pop song by The Left Banke, creating a finished product that leaves you grasping for suitable adjectives and wishing the term ‘bittersweet’ hadn’t become such a cliché.

There are two other things that mark Jens out from many contemporaries. They are his light and playful way with words and his rich singing voice, which sounds whiskey mellow and often belies his young age. I ask him about the way he plays around with words on his most recent album ‘Night falls over Kortedala,’ whether it comes naturally to him or whether he has had to work hard at it and sweat everything out? He tells me it comes easily to him, that he’s been fascinated by words and language since a very young age, and likes how the one word or phrase can mean many different things, “for example, the words ‘cigarette lighter.’ I’ve been fascinated by those two words for a long time and I think I used it as an image in maybe about five of my songs.” In Jens-speak, meanings of things do not only change across different songs, they often get turned inside out suprisingly in the space of a lyric, like when he describes how a crab crawls out of a shell he holds up to demonstrate his homelessness in the song ‘The Opposite of Halleluiah.’ Now, I’d say that some readers who have never heard Jens Lekman have gotten this far and are thinking ‘Cripes, pass a sickbag, cos this sounds like some sickeningly twee fluff.’ And there is no denying that, taken alone, or even on record, some of the lyrics might seem a tad affected and suited to only the sweetest palates. But when he takes to the stage in Whelans, twee and grating are transformed to dry and funny as he delivers his lines with the easy and expert timing of an old comedian. It’s something that really strikes me during his gig, this mixture of calm charisma and fluent banter that has the audience hanging off his stories and song lyrics. It is exactly like Johnny Cash playing San Quentin prison, but only if you replace the grizzled and murderous cons with fey kids in cardigans and wonky spectacles.

Talking backstage, Jens’ demeanour is as impenatrably calm as it is live. He chats in such gentle and quiet tones that I’d later wonder if my battery died from the sheer strain of trying to pick up his voice. I ask him about how songs which seem to have such complicated arrangements on record translate live? “Some songs I have to change the arrangements a lot on,” he says, “and some I can’t even play live.” I tell him I heard one of the songs he rarely plays is ‘Maple Leaves, (a swooning ballad from an early EP built around a violin sample) which is a shame because it is such a beautiful song. He smiles, and says it will probably get a rare airing later on. Sure enough, about halfway through the gig, Jens announces a guest musician will be joining him, and a beaming Owen Pallett (Final Fantasy) walks into the fray. Together, he and Jens play a wonderfully stirring version of maple leaves. It’s a showstopping turn but more is to come. In a spontaeneous and electric moment, the man who earlier proclaimed “I wish I could have brought [a full band] with me,” leaves me secretly glad that this particular wish did not come true. During ‘Black Cab’ he turns the mic to the crowd and they softly sing the song’s melancholy chorus back to him. He loops it and plays it back to us over the venue’s speakers. The effect is hair-raising and touching. He really didn’t need that band at all.

Young Galaxy only work as a couple. Made up of partners Stephen Ramsay and Catherine McCandless (along with 4 other members), the band’s main energy- and content- emerges from Ramsay and McCandless’s relationship. Ramsay is excitable and unguarded, while McCandless is wary and reserved. Many times during the interview, she motions to Ramsay that, perhaps, he should think before he speaks. A touring member of Stars, Ramsay ‘walked into a scenario in Stars where two of the members were breaking up and one of them was getting together with another member.’ McCandless quickly interjects with-‘Is that out right now in the press? I don’t know!’- and Ramsay apologetically draws back, saying ‘Oh fuck yeah, only certain people know.’

The interplay between their two personalities becomes even more apparent when Ramsay muses that ‘I think we’ve staked our, well, everything, in a way, on our relationship, and that’s the sort of approach we took with this project. I think everything, at the heart of it, comes from that place. If in a year from now we find ourselves broken up, I don’t think the band will continue. We’ve staked our relationship on the band.’ McCandless assures that ‘we won’t break up though. We won’t.’ This affirmation spurs Ramsay on further, and bringing the WAV recorder closer, he enthusiastically adds ‘We know that. You wanna know why we know? I’ll tell you why we know, here’s an exclusive. Katherine was married to, essentially, our best friend. I was the best friend of her and her husband. We had an affair. At the same time as this, Katherine was diagnosed with M.S. We were in our twenties, and we were living like rock stars already, we weren’t in a band or anything. We had the world at our feet, we felt like everything was possible. We had this really idealistic way of looking at the world and it felt like all our best efforts were being challenged by the universe essentially. Our lives were fucked.’ At this point, McCandless flashes her eyes towards Ramsay, looking worried, saying -‘My look is that you’re going to tell the whole story.’ Ramsay promises that he won’t, McCandless looks unconvinced and attempts to logically sum up Ramsay’s point- ‘We were so destroyed by the devastating after-effects of what we’d done, and yet, so in love that we feel we’ve built something that’s super-strong. As strong as our destruction was.’

Though the circumstances for Young Galaxy’s conception were unfavourable, they have been fortunate in coming from a large musical community (members of Stars and the Besnard Lakes played on their debut record) and in being signed to Arts and Crafts. McCandless agrees that ‘absolutely it’s helpful to be part of a scene I think, you see other example of people leading the life that you want to lead. It’s not a simple thing to just drop your day job and decide to make music, at a huge personal cost. It feels like a risk. When you have other people in your community doing the same thing, and going to each other’s shows, and playing on each other’s albums, there’s so much support and it makes it that much easier. I don’t think it limits us in any way; it doesn’t make us feel like we can’t do our own thing.’ Ramsay concurs that ‘the only thing we may feel pressure to do is to define ourselves on where we sit on our own label, because the label has a tendency to be viewed, um, that every band on Arts and Crafts is part of a collective. We have had, by and large, very little input from bands on Arts and Crafts. But then you know, I played in Stars, and we’re on Arts and Crafts, and we’re called Young Galaxy and people like to mash all the associations together and make a nice tidy package and that’s fine. We feel like we’re working in a very liberated scene, if you want to use that word’. They cite the Arcade Fire as an inspiration, though for differing reasons. Ramsay admires them because ‘they’ve decided, very pointedly, to not play the game of playing into their fame or any of that, for anything other than the best reasons. That sets a really nice tone, because everyone admires their fame and aspires to that. But beyond that, they also have a very reputable approach. It has integrity, and that’s hard to do when you’re that huge.’ McCandless however, applauds their business savvy -‘it’s not the size, it’s the way they’ve built a business. It’s sustainable. They can do what they do forever now.’

The forthcoming self-title album is standard Arts and Crafts fare, and while Young Galaxy shrink from comparisons with Stars, the similarities are self-evident: Boy/Girl vocals, keyboards, melancholic lyrics and soaring melodies abound. Though the record was recorded as, essentially, a duo, when it came to performing it live difficulties presented themselves. Ramsay and McCandless added in four other members, and Ramsay, tired of having to play someone else’s music whilst touring with Stars, was adamant that the new members would be allowed creative input also: ‘My experience is- having been a touring member of Stars- it’s hard to be told to play parts and not just make it your own. To faithfully play someone else’s idea, it’s hard to do. I sort of figured we had to give some leeway to people, and sure enough, that meant that our set-up would change. There’s so many layers on the record that we could never pull off live. We had to strip it back, deconstruct it and put it back together and equally share it with the six people involved.’ While this egalitarian attitude is admirable, it in turn factored in more problems. McCandless adjoins- ‘that kind of screwed us for a while, for me. That was the first thing we realised, we had to learn to sing loudly. I was so used to trying to sing under my breath so that people wouldn’t hear me. Suddenly I have to sing over two guitars, bass, keyboards and drums.’ The incline of their learning curve is not to be underestimated. Previous to making the record, Young Galaxy had no record deal and had played no live shows- ‘We had no live experience; we’d never been in a band. I’d been in Stars, but only as a touring member. We’d sung this record in a studio but had no experience playing these songs live. Despite the fact that it worked in the studio, you can’t, for instance have this big racket going on and be whispering your vocals the whole time. It sounds brutal; it sounds like ducks being strangled.’

On the album’s opening and stand-out track- what Ramsay later calls ‘our creed’- ‘Swing Your Heartache’, the lyrics are achingly bare. They don’t speak in terms of Stars’s ‘Endless Beauty’ but of more grown-up concepts- ‘It’s time for you and I to face the signs/ and realize that living’s a battle’. Ramsay’s world-weary vocals combine with McCandless’s searing harmonies to create a battle cry for the bruised, the underdog and the dreamers- ‘For all the times we cried/ absorbed the lies/ and realized/ life’s not a rehearsal’. The gung-ho attitude of the lyrics is re-enforced by the personal investment that Young Galaxy have made in the band. Ramsay and McCandless are unflinchingly honest about the financial risk involved with the project – ‘We could make about 50,000 dollars if we sold our music to an ad right now, and we are probably equally as much in debt, in terms of getting the band launched.’ McCandless’s practical side manifests itself once more when she ads bluntly that ‘we’re by nature selling ourselves, cause we’re performers, that’s what we do.’ However, with a sidelong glance and a sigh towards Ramsay she inserts an ellipses and continues, ‘but we’re willing to have long-term sustainability be the goal, instead of short-term, so we can make choices that feel like they have integrity to us.’

I’ve seen Cap Pas Cap live four times in the last twelve months, thrice in support slot capacity, and they never fail to strike me as a band extremely assured in their own sound. Often shy and retracted onstage, the band stand in contrast to their confident, carefully-constructed clamour. The Not Not Is Fine EP, their sole release to date, exhibited the early stage of a sound that’s rapidly developing into something more complex. However, things have been all quiet on the Cap Pas Cap front since its release in December 2006. I caught up with the band before their recent These New Puritans’ support slot to see how 2008 is shaping up.

“Not Not Is Fine” EP has been doing the rounds for a while now, and you seem to have a lot of realized songs in your live arsenal- Will there be a new release soon?

Ed : We’ve already begun recording and we’re really happy with the results, it’s taken us a while to figure out exactly what songs work well as a set but it’s really taking shape now, completely new stuff and some older songs from the live sets that we really want to document. We’ve been recording with Al O’Connell who’s worked with Klaxons and The Rapture among others…The EP was released in December 2006 and the hope would be to release our first album later this year, probably Autumn. In the meantime we have a split 7” with Marnie Stern coming out on Hidden Hive Records in the next month or so.

Full details here..

Does having the band signed to your own label offer a lot of artistic freedom, or is there more pressure on you to be successful?

Ed : Only one member of Cap Pas Cap is involved with the Skinny Wolves label, so I wouldn’t describe it as ‘our label’, plus, as far as I can tell, they are actually just as busy working with other bands (Indian Jewelry, Luftkluster/Luftfluks amongst others), since Skinny Wolves released our EP we’ve been talking to a number of other labels who are interested in working with Cap Pas Cap, we’ve also managed to have the EP released in Japan on the Rallye/Klee label. The only pressure comes from ourselves, we’re quite self critical and cautious about what we release, but outside of our own circle we’re certainly not aware of any expectations.

You’ve played a lot of high-profile support slots- Have you learned anything or gained new ideas from any of the headline acts?

Ed : Definitely, playing shows with Errase Errata, Crystal Castles, Gossip, No Age have been so important for us, mainly because it informs us on where we want to go with Cap Pas Cap, which is outside of Ireland, and it defines for us how we want to work, we feel more comfortable placing ourselves in an international context. The biggest eye opener was probably The Go! Team tour, those venues were much bigger than anything we had been used to so that was very exciting and a learning experience I guess.

Who would your dream support slot be for?

Ed : Speaking for myself? This week it would be HEALTH, I couldn’t even guess what the others would be..

You’ve garnered some international recognition, like in Dazed And Confused. Is it an ambition for you to break out of Ireland?

Ed : Yeah, it really is, it’s hard to point to very much that we identify with musically and visually in an Irish context, nearly all our references points are international, the few shows we’ve played abroad has only confirmed that for us, particularly the gigs we played in Malmo last year, we met some amazing people and played to new audiences. Our EP has just been released in Japan too; we would LOVE to go there!

Are there any frustrations with being an Irish band, such as the smaller audience?

Ed : It’s not frustrating, it’s just a fact, there is a limited audience for what we do in Ireland, but we’re quite realistic about that. Again, it’s just another reason to explore the UK and Europe and further..

Do you pay attention to lyric-writing or are you more interested with providing vocal hooks, using the voice as another instrument?

Gavin : I think both lyrics and delivery are equally important in a song and we try to combine these to make every song as imaginative, engaging and unconventional as it can and should be.

Your sound seems quite informed by post-punk and krautrock- Have you always been interested in this type of music? Was it a conscious direction you wanted to take?

Gavin : We all listen to different types of music individually and Cap Pas Cap is music that happens when the four of us meet up. We didn’t sit down and decide to make a certain type of music; there
is definitely no blueprint for what we do.

Official Website
Myspace

Band member and the man behind the greatest thing to come out of Brazil since Giselle! Adriano from CSS talks to Analogue.

So 18 months on the road and over 5 concerts in Ireland alone, you must be the hardest working band today!

Yeah our agency, since we have been through a lot of bad things made this little frame or picture saying “Most Hard Working Band Of the Year”. We played like a 180 shows last year!

When you were leaving Brazil 18 months ago you were just getting big. You went back recently for the first time since and now you’re huge. How was that?

It’s weird as a lot of people didn’t like us and then they wanted to interview us but we didn’t do anything we didn’t want to. Like we didn’t speak to Globo Television (Brazil’s largest tv company). They wanted us to go on the like the David Letterman of Brazil and we said “no way we’re not doing this”. We don’t sell that much records there, we don’t have a record label there. So there’s no point in doing those things. We were wasting our time rehearsing and recording and we didn’t want to waste our time doing those things for people who didn’t like us. Just because we were famous in Europe and America. It’s really boring.

But you did a few shows in Brazil when you got back. How was that?

Yeah we did. We were at a festival and 6000 people were there watching us, which was cool. We were on at the same time as Lilly Allen and people left her to see us! That was emotional. For a moment I thought people were there to criticize us but they were all there singing and dancing. It was really beautiful.

The first time I met you guys was when I was living in South America and you were on a bus, a normal bus from

Sao Paulo to Rio in November 2005. Then I see you less than two years supporting Gwen Stefani on her European tour. That must have been weird, that quick rise, that trajectory from local band to world tours.
Yeah we played the Wembley Arena 4 times! Like 12,000 people each night! Ok they’re not there for us but to see Gwen Stefani.

But you must get people who go to those gigs to see Gwen but come back to you and say “Wow, I didn’t know you guys before and you’re really good!

Yeah! I never thought of the marketing aspect of touring but when we do tours like that our sales increase tremendously after. Of course there’s a lot of people who have never heard of us. You know if we play in front of those 12,000 people and only 10% of those like us and buy our record that’s 1200 people buying our record. So they are in HMV or Virgin and they see our record and go “That’s the band that opened for Gwen Stefani!” and they buy our record. That’s really cool.

How do you come about nabbing these big names to support? Is it a question of the record company coming to you?

Nah, it’s the agent. It’s the people who schedule our show. Like Gwen Stefani is from Primary, our agent. Primary, they have been really good to us. Our agent, he’s brilliant.

You’ve supported over the past year or so Ladytron, Basement Jaxx and Gwen Stefani. Which one was the best?

Ladytron. We became really good friends with those guys. They are the sweetest people ever. Like Daniel from Ladytron, he lives in Milan so everytime we go there we meet up. His wife is Brazillian. She’s really nice and we really became close friends. Like Helen from Ladytron always goes to our gigs in London. And Gwen, she’s really, really cool. She always went to our dressing room and she brought her kid Kingston and she is so down to earth. But she’s also kind of unapproachable as she’s a big star, you know. So we didn’t get that close so I don’t have her email or her phone number so I can’t ring her up and go “Hey Gwen, how are you!?”. Basement Jaxx, we met them 3 or 4 times in the catering area at the gigs and they are really nice. We had the most fun supporting Gwen. Basically we had a show and a day off, a show and a day off. Her show is also amazing. Watching that show every night it was amazing.

So you’re working on the second album. How is it different in sound from the first album?

I think it’s gonna sound more like a live show. It’s going to be less electronic but still sound very pop. When we recorded the first album we weren’t a band. We didn’t play that much and I didn’t know what we would end up doing. I have been working on this album since we started touring. I work on it on my computer touring and I am a workaholic so I am writing all the time. We already have 13, 14 songs so the album is all done. Man, at the beginning we didn’t even have songs. We would have maybe 4 songs and we would do one song twice and move on. And everyone was so shocked we had the guts to do that. But now the girls have gotten way better. I really trust them as musicians. I know I can make a bassline and Ira would pick it up. At the beginning they couldn’t. But now we play every day and we’re practicing. I still write all the arrangements for the instruments but now when we’re playing they’d change something as maybe it’s easier for them or they discover it’s better. Although I’m not really happy as we won’t be able to rehearse all the songs before we record and that’s something I really wanted to do. I wanted to go somewhere like a farm away from things and play the songs for almost forever but it’s not gonna happen. It was funny we were thinking about songs in ways like how it would sound on the main stage of Glastonbury or we would go “let’s make a break here so Lovefoxx can jump into the crowd” and stuff.

What goes on in Lovefoxx’s head when she thinks of things like “Music is my hot hot sex”?

She’s really unique. I think she’s a little genius. Her first thing is not music. It’s drawing. She’s an amazing illustrator. She’s more graphical than musical. I think her lyric writing is very visual as she is so graphical. She’s one of the best artists I have ever met.

So how did you two meet up?

It’s all Ira’s fault. I used to have another band called I Love Miami, which was the worst band. It wasn’t a proper band . It was me with like 10 other girls and we would just go on stage and make loads of noise. Then Ira saw us play one time and said “ I would love to be in a band like that” and she called me and said “lets make a band” and I said ok. She invited the girls. I never met Lovefoxx before the first rehearsal. She said we met once when I was in my other band but I don’t remember.

Did you get on well from the beginning?

Yeah! Ira was thinking when starting the band about who would be the best people to party with so she thought it would be cool.

With touring and the stress, do you still get on well?

Yeah we do. I think it’s because were a lot of people. I get along very well with Ira. Yesterday we went for dinner and I live very close to her in Sao Paulo. Lovefoxx hangs out with Luiza. Its not that we are jealous of each other and we have two gangs, it just seems natural.

So what is it like as the only guy in the band?

I never really thought about it. Most of my other bands had girls. I was in one band with all guys. The difference when you
have a band with girls is that people tend to treat you better. In Brazil they would put you in a better hotel as they would think they wouldn’t put a girl in certain hotels.

Have the girls rubbed off on you? Have you developed an appreciation for good shoes and make up?

Ha, and astrology too! We speak a lot about astrology too. I don’t know how they do it but they guess the star signs of everyone. They go “ Oh you are a Virgo” and I go “Yeah!” They are always right. And it’s good. They always have creams like when my hands are so dry….

So what do you think of today’s fast moving world where people come and go and more specifically bands form, go global and break up in such a short space of time?

Since we get along so well and we had a lot of shit together and we didn’t break up or fight I think that if we want we could be a band that could last 10-15 years. This idea of brief famousness is so new now. I think our fans are not those trendy people looking for trendy bands. They like our music so if we get smaller or become less famous we would do well.

Are you the beginning of something new, a wave of Brazilian bands to come over here and make it big?

Nah. There are a lot of bands that suck. There are a lot of bands that sing in Portuguese. Bonde do Role kinda work cause they have this different funky kind of sound. But they’re not big in Brazil because their lyrics are so filthy. Like if you understood what they were saying you would freak.

What is it with Brazilians? You guys and Bonde do Role.You seem to be overtly sexual? And your lyrics are too?

Well it’s when we sing in English and its not our first language. Like when Lovefoxx sings Art Bitch she would be ashamed to sing it in Portuguese.

But why sing in English and not Portuguese?

Well because I was listening to bands singing in English. I’ve been that way since I was in bands at 14 years or age. I’m a terrible Portuguese writer. In English the words are very small.

And so you’ve been on the road almost 2 years non stop. Are you going to take a break?

No! All New Year we are recording the album and then we are back in March. Actually in January we are going to Australia from Brazil for three days, which from Brazil is awful. We have to go to Chile, then New Zealand and then Australia. Its gonna be awful. Then we will be back. In February we have 2 or 3 shows.

And this year you’re making the big move to London. Are you apprehensive about going to London?

I don’t think about it much. We stay so much there so don’t think about it. Once I have my own house Ill be fine. I hate hotels. I’m paranoid to the point I travel with my own pillow! I keep thinking about who has drooled into that pillow. I was even thinking about bringing my own sheets but I thought that was too much!

Photos by Loreana Rushe 

Analogue got a chance to speak to Owen Pallett before he took to the stage to support Girl Talk at the Foggy Notions Christmas Party in Whelans. Sitting around in Whelans mini boardroom come makeshift green room, Owen chats openly about “doing new things with technology”, why comparisons to other musicians don’t bother him and how he unexpectedly came to score the strings for Alex Turner’s new album.

A: Your show at Vicar Street on Tuesday went pretty well, you tried out a quadraphonic sound set up. When did you start experimenting with that and how do you think it’s going so far?

FF: Well literally about two weeks ago, I was originally just going to do that and have that something in the distant future but just because this was a hilarious one off gig, I was just like whatever I’ll do it! I’ll try and make it, like I mean it’s not even technically quadraphonic but rather it’s just like doing a looping show that’s more than stereo is, or even more than mono is. It’s really really difficult and requires some extra programming and concentration and stuff like that. It’s also my way of trying to stay ahead the curve, you know.

You haven’t used laptops in the past, have you?
No I never have and I always think there is a stigma to having one on stage.
I think at this point I think people are pretty familiar with the set up and understand that it’s a live show and that there’s no prerecorded stuff going on. I think it’s safe that I can have a laptop on stage and plus the amount of stuff I can do now is crazy, I get so excited that I’ve actually started to dream about it. It’s opened up this whole new world, I’m a little bit embarrassed about the nerdiness of it, reading about Stephen O’Malley from Sunn and reading interviews where he’s talking about amps and I’ve been getting really excited. I’m like ‘ohh I’m going to play with amps’. I don’t have a huge savings account so I can’t really afford to go out and get a huge rack of amps but wouldn’t that be exciting to just surround the audience with big amps, just a wall of sound. That would be so cool but we’ll see…

So it’s still in the experimental stage at the moment.
Yeah I really needed to change something from my mono set up because all the new songs I’ve been writing have been getting a little more complicated sonically and when you’re doing mono looping, the amount of sounds I have at my disposal are very limited but now it’s really cool, I’m using Mac Msp to do all sorts of crazy things where I can have the violins go in circles and carosels around the audience and stuff so I’m really excited around when I can get it perfected.

Was that the first gig where you played like that?
I did one before that was a total disaster but because my computer didn’t crash I decided I’d do this one. Even this one I kind of thought was a bit of a failure, I played every song badly. My singing was so happening and I was really concerned about playing it all correctly but it was the same thing when I just started off and I was doing mono looping.

I wouldn’t say it was a bad show at all but it seemed like it was a little bit different to what you played at Electric Picnic and a lot of people who were there on Tuesday night would have been at your Electric Picnic show and for them it was a totally different experience because you didn’t play all the same songs.

Well the Electric Picnic set was really…I tried to make it very like “let’s have fun at the festival” and this one was actually kind of like “I am doing new things with technology!”
Because really I looked into it and there’s nobody else doing this, isn’t that exciting? Because when I first started off people were like “Oh Yeah, Andrew Bird blah blah blah” and now you know…

Loreana: No don’t say that!
I didn’t say it.

Loreana: I mean in your favour.

No I think it’s really disrespectful to both me and him. He does this amazing thing.

Gareth: You’re both great in your own unique ways…

Ahh that’s nice. Well we’ve decided that we’re going to fight to the death and I will emerge triumphant and then nobody will ever listen to Andrew Bird again.

Loreana: Or join forces, Final Bird.

Final Bird! Ha. Actually we were talking at a Latitude Festival in Ipswich because he heard this cover I did of his song, I did a cover of, actually it was three of his songs, that I smashed together into one song and I was looping parts from different Andrew Bird songs all on top of each other while Cadence Weapon did his Shark Song which has “that means stop biting my shit” over and over again in the song. I was like this is hilarious! And he when he heard it was like really confused so we had a conversation about it but was ok, he like “I thought it was nice”. I was like you know when you’re compared to somebody all the time it’s best to just look them like right in the eyes and be like, fuck you.

Bren: It doesn’t happen to a lot of people, if they’re compared it’s always like the journalist doing it and it’s probably fairly rare that they actually come head to head.

No dude, I don’t feel bad about it because I see what happens to any female musicians, because it’s impossible for female musicians to be considered original. Either female musicians sound like Cat Power or Jonnie Mitchell or they’re considered crazy, like these crazy bitches. I’m serious, like you read about any sort of female musician who is doing anything even remotely weird and it’s always just like “Oh She’s crazy”. Even Joanna Newsom until She was like “fuck you I’m going to get all these men to help me make this record and there’s nothing you can say about it” and granted everyone loves Joanna Newsom now but up until She made that record people were just like “She sings crazy, your music is about weird things” you know what I mean? Scout Niblett is still at that point where people are just like “She sounds like Cat Power, it’s Cat Power”. It sounds nothing fucking at all like Cat Power, it sounds like Black Sabbeth, her music sounds like Black Sabbeth. If you put on Black Sabbeth and put on Kidnap by Neptune, you’re listening to the same record. I don’t feel so bad about getting compared because I feel that women have it so much harder than any man does.

You’re past the whole, well not stigma but like that guy who recorded with Arcade Fire and now I don’t know how often you get that any more.

Em I don’t know, yeah it’ll just be replaced by something else.

So next week you’re scheduled to record with Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys on a side project of his, how did you get involved in that?

It’s pretty confusing actually, I’m not sure how it happened. I think they contacted Nico Muhly who is the guy who arranges for Bjork and he did the best Bonnie Prince Billy record ever, Letting Go. He did all the strings on that and he’s doing the new Anthony record and stuff and Sam Amadan and every other record, it’s going to be amazing. Anyway I think they contacted Nico, I don’t know how and he has started passing stuff off in my direction because we became friends earlier this year. We both have ears for different things like I could never do a Bonnie Prince Billie record because I’d just be so precious about it, every second I’d be like “no no no no!” you know what I mean, whereas Nico is just like “whatever, here it goes”. With Alex Turner I feel more relaxed, I’m like “Yeah!” so you know. Not that I don’t connect with Alex’s music, it’s just I feel a little more relaxed about it.

It just seems like you would move in different kinds of circle, it’s strange that you would come together on something like this.

I don’t know, you think so?

Well your fans would be different to Arctic Monkey fans.

It’s kind of funny because I’ll be talking to…you know I’m friends with like a few really famous British musicians like Keli from Bloc Party and Patrick Wolf and when I started working with Alex, they were so surprised and even a little starstruck by the whole thing because I feel like Alex Turner moves in different circles to the entire British music scene. Because he’s not comfortable with being a star, he is actually some dude who he just like “I play in a band with my mates”. You know what I mean?

You come across a lot like that, except that you don’t have a band behind you. You’re very much like this is what I do.

Like unromantic?

No, I mean that you’re not like searching for fame, you just seem like you do something that you’re passionate about and not in a way that’s aiming to be a star.

I think everybody does stuff the exact same way. I feel as if different people have, everyone who’s making music have like a different level of ability and a different background and everyone has like different levels of substances that they abuse and different diets and stuff like that. But other than that, everyone just wants to make records that everyone is going to love, everyone just wants like everyone in the critical and public community to love them for the rest of their lives and proclaim that they’re geniuses. So I don’t think it’s that different.

Are you going to be writing any of the songs on this album or just scoring strings to accompany it?

For Alex’s record, no I didn’t write anything. In fact they came to me with pretty specific things of what they wanted me to do so I just tried to flesh them all out. I have no idea how this is going to sound. I’m so excited about it, I was tapped to score a song on this last Spoon record, the Ga Ga Ga one and so I worked on it. It actually took me a long time to work on it because Brit was like really precious about what he wanted on the song and I did a lot of research and I just spent like a week listening to all these songs off records that he liked and I was listening to all the Spoon material. I did so much research for it and then I sat down and wrote it and it took me an entire month to do an arrangement for one song which is like insane, I’ve ever put so much time into anything in my life and I sent it to him and he like “Nah I don’t like it” and so that was that.

Loreana: Are you for real?

Yeah so he didn’t use it.

Loreana: Which song?

It’s the very last song called ‘Black like me’ and he ended up writing his own arrangement which was very very simple. I thought my arrangement was pretty good but what he ended up using, his arrangement was far more suitable in the context of the entire record which I hadn’t heard so obviously Brit Daniel knows how a Spoon record is supposed to sound and I don’t so I mean it’s totally good.

Bren: When I spoke to you at Electric Picnic, you told me a bit about your next album Heartland. How’s that coming along? Have you gotten a chance to work on much of it? Have you been sitting in the back of a van writing that?

Yeah I mean I’ve got about four songs now written for it, of which I’m going to write eventually twenty. I tend to write songs quickly when I’m actually at home. I’m like today write songs and I can write a song but I just haven’t had much of that time so I’m kind of behind. These spectrum Eps have been taking up a lot of my time as well.

They’re coming out pretty soon as well.

Yeah they’re going to be maybe coming out in April I believe. I’ve still got to mix them, I’m still working at the mercy of other peoples schedules and stuff like that, there’s been a lot of other weird things that I’ve had to take care of. Margarine commercials…

So will you take time off from touring in 2008 to get that finished?
Yeah I’m not going to tour until the record is done, until Heartland is done and I’m not going to play any shows.

Apart from the Maximum Black festival.
Yeah apart from the festival.

So 2008 is going to be an exciting year between the album and Maximum Black, what’s the idea behind creating the festival? Have you any ethos that you want to bring forth?
To be honest the whole festival is fine but I’m happy to let it slide, do you know what I mean. I think that was something that I feeling really negative about but now I feeling much better about.

Pitchfork posted a story about it and it came from various different sources.

No it came from a single email that I wrote to them because they were like “what is this?” and I wrote them, well this is what happened. I mean honestly I didn’t want to spend any time thinking about it and I kind of still don’t, I’m like sure I’ll play this festival and I’m really happy to be playing with my friends bands. It’s as much Susanne’s [Owen’s manager] project as it is mine because She’s the one who settled up with the finances and is booking the shows because She’s the professional booker. I’m just like “Oh, get these bands”.

In terms of the whole Werner Stadwerker thing, from what was essentially a terrible situation you’ve come out on top.

I didn’t even think of it as a terrible situation, it’s just like the ad company who made the ad is like a group of eight people, the dude who recorded new violin over the track and added the ‘Can you feel it?’ is just like this fifty year old dude that makes music for commercials, he’s just some dude. Like some of my friends do the exact same work that he does in Toronto so it just didn’t bug me all that much. I definitely didn’t want to pursue any sort of litigation. But they [Werner Stadwerk] were very nice, they came forward after the show in Vienna, I actually played their version of the song at the show. To the people I was like you might of heard this song before you went to see the Bourne Ultimatum or something and then I played it with the ‘Can you feel it?’ and the new violin solo.

Did you do the “Der ist ein Stadt” part over it?
Yeah I did!

Where did you get the name for the festival from?
Oh yeah it’s from a song by Bohren and the Club of Gore, which is a really awesome German metal band so Susanne was like “ where should we get our name from?” and so She came up with all these song titles from her favourite band which is Born and then came up with a whole bunch of song titles from my favourite bands and all of my favourite bands have lousy song titles so we picked Bohren.

What were the other options?
There was a Destroyer song called ‘Don’t become the thing that you hated’ and I was like that’s a terrible name for a festival And then there was a teabjbob song Hair hair hair hair hair hair hair, that was a contender for awhile. I’m just kidding, that would be a pretty funny name. The Boy Soprano music festival, that would be ok.

Photo by Loreana Rushe 

 If you thought Caribou was the only 60s obsessed Canadian one-man-band recording psych-pop, think again. Graham Van Pelt (aka Miracle Fortress) has been at it too. His full-length LP ‘Five Roses’ was one of the most quietly beguiling records of last year. It was a record with an astonishing amount of attention to detail- the songs seemed to come sealed inside their own hazy and summery micro climate. Graham recently toured the record with a full band. I caught up with him before his band supported Final Fantasy in Vicar Street. He chatted about touring with a full band, the merits of 1960s recording techniques and the Montreal music scene.

Okay, about miracle fortress. Graham, you started this project as a one man thing, now that the guys are with you, it’s sort of a band dynamic. How is that going for you?

Yeah its alright you know. Its really different and something that we are still working on all the time. Its been so quick. Like we have only played together for 8 or 9 months. I’ve gone through 3 different types of line-up.Hah, a bit like Guided by Voices. Well, yeah. But mostly the people have been the same. We’ve been messing around with different ways to pull off the album and sort of departing from the album a lot more and feeling a lot better about it. Every time we go on a trip its gotten better, like I know there are going to be growing pains and all that but its certainly working.

Listening to the album, it’s sort of a summery sound, an optimistic sound. Would you find that an appropriate description?

Yeah, I dunno. I actually made it during blizzards in the dead of winter. So I don’t really know how much I had that in mind but I guess a lot of the imagery a lot of the stuff I was thinking of was indirectly summery. A lot of what I’m into, a lot of sort of 60s psychedelia, well you don’t exactly think of blizzards and snowdrifts. You sort of picture a whole thing of meadows and sunshine.

Another album your record reminds me of is another Canadian record, Andorra by Caribou,listening to the two of these albums, I thought there was an air of 60s revivalism about them, and there is the whole ‘one man band’ thing, but both records have that 60s sound...

Ok, well I don’t really think I was trying to revive anything. But what I do see, is the production and that is just something that I prefer and I don’t see why things have to sound the way they often do now. Like now, things are produced really heavy and really big. And I just recorded the album that way, is because regardless of when they were done I just prefer songs that were recorded that way. Songs that are maybe a little more delicate, a little less drum and bass heavy in the mix. I guess things like that made it sound a little 60s, but otherwise I guess it would sound more like contemporary pop.

Yeah it does. It has a real sort of classic sound. But you did all that yourself right? So just how did you go about that?

It’s funny but a lot of it comes down just to the thinking that you put into engineering a band or engineering a rock song. The way things were done in the 50s or 60s was specifically about the limitations that they had and they had to work with y’know things that were naturally occuring in the rooms that they were recording in and that’s just a principle that I brought to it. I have a kind of distaste for a lot of pro-tooly and clean digital production. Now I know that can work well sometimes and record a lot of cool stuff. But as far as recording a sound well, I mean I suppose my subjective take on that would be to get a sort of natural thing happening. And what that meant was recording things in the room really naturally using room sounds and putting mics away really far from your instruments.So yeah I suppose instead of using some kind of effect to get an echo, you would actually…Yeah, y’know there’s a difference between taking a drum and putting a mike an inch away from it, playing it and sitting there with equalizers and compressors and treating it like a big sound, putting it in a digital reverb space y’know. Or you could just play the drum and hang a mike six feet in the air in a really reverberant room and that’s just basically the difference.

Hah, it reminds me of My Morning Jacket. When I was into them a few years ago I used to always tell my mates that they recorded their album inside a grain silo, you know to get the reverb sound they got into an empty grain silo!

To me its actually a lot easier. People ask how did you manage to get that sound, you know that more 60s sound. But basically it’s a lot easier to record things that way. You could just imagine hanging a mike and playing a drum the way things were done versus hours of trying to craft it. That’s actually just quicker and easier. Its actually almost sort of a lo-fi thing.

 I want to ask you about coming from Montreal. To a lot of Irish music fans there is this notion of Montreal as being some sort of indie-wonderland where everyone knows each other and are all in the same bands. How’s that for you guys, is the scene really that tight over there or what?

It’s definitely a great city to play music in and everyone from this band basically came together because of all our other projects. Like we knew of each other that way before we decided to start this. So yeah, in that way there is a lot of camaraderie and people messing with each other’s stuff. Also, if you look at Toronto its even more the case there. Toronto is definitely another city where you see a lot of huge collectives. It kind of makes sense. If the city has a lot of musicians that you reallly like you sort of end up wanting to play with them.

Right. To get back to the ‘Five Roses’ record. It’s a pretty cohesive record. It’s one to listen to from start to finish. So I’m just wondering about MP3s, how easy it is to rip songs out of their natural context and put them up on blogs. Now you find that songs have to sort of stand on their own. How would you feel about that in terms of your own record?

I mean it probably does hinder these songs a little bit to be taken out of the context of the album. That’s because the whole time I was thinking about making an album. I had in mind how things would blend into each other. I wasn’t thinking about writing a single or having things pulled out of it. That’s something beyond my control, but it is meant to be heard all together.

Do you think that this will ever effect the way you record music?

I dunno. Maybe it already has. Now that we are all playing together as a band the focus is on songs. I don’t think we’re going to all sit down and focus on like a suite of 12 songs all blended in together.

Who or what are you listening to right now?

Everyone is listening to such different stuff. Im kind of obsessed with poppy lo-fi punk bands. I’ve been listening to ‘The Clean’ and these lo-fi bands from New Zealand. I’ve also been listening to the band ‘Japanther’ from New York and ‘Cause Commotion’ from New York. Just really dirty garage music.

New Zealand lo-fi, yeah that was a bit of a scene wasn’t it? 

Yeah a lot of that stuff was from the early 80s. There were a bunch of bands that came out of it. David Kilgour who has a lot of stuff I really like.

Finally, what’s next for Miracle Fortress now that it has become a band?

We’ve just been talking about getting home. Staying at home and writing a bunch of new stuff because we have more or less been playing the same 7 song set for almost a year. Basically quality time at home.

Menomena were not that well known outside of their native Oregon when they bounced into 2007 on the back of their record ‘Friend and Foe’. But as that record gathered countless rave reviews and plaudits, things quickly changed. ‘Friend and Foe’ was a remarkably intricate piece of work, stuffed full of playful looping arrangements and melodic charm. It also came neatly wrapped in what is bound to go down in history as one of the coolest album covers ever, a dizzying, scrawled psychedelic menagerie with rotational settings. Because they used their own specifically designed software to record individual loops of instrumentation, the record felt different when compared to your bog standard indie release. It was fluid, elastic, like it was made out coloured rubber balls and twisting neon. Well, to me it was anyway. Ahead of an extensive European tour that will include a date in Dublin on February 29th, I spoke to one third of Menomena, guitarist Brent Knopf. He’s a really nice guy who says ‘totally’ a lot.

It’s been nearly a year since ‘Friend and Foe’ came out. So what kind of a year has it been for Menomena?

It’s been incredible, so much fun. Friend and Foe came out in the US a year ago but it just got released in Europe last September. And it’s been amazing because we started off, like playing a show a year ago in Denver to, like ten people. And from there we’ve been able to play some sold out shows and even go to Europe for the first time. And it’s been so busy, I got fired from my waiting tables job ‘cos I was away from work so much…

So Menomena better work out for you huh?

[laughter] Eh, yeah. It better.

Okay so I’ve noticed on your Myspace page, there are some nice mock up posters of classic 80s family movies starring Menomena and I was wondering if you could arrange for one to be made starring me? I’d like to be Elliott cycling his bike in front of the moon in the poster for ET.

Totally, no problem. We’ll just delete all our posters and replace them with ones of you. How does that sound?

Ha ha sounds cool thanks. So on the topic of band art, the amazing cover of your album ‘Friend and Foe’ record has given lots of people hours of fun, and I was wondering what the next stage in interactive album art is? Like will you be able to bring it up a level for the next record?

Emm, maybe. But can you tell me what the higher level is because I’m dying to know.

I dunno, how about a three dimensional hologram or something?

Yeah totally. Or how about every new CD will be its own nuclear reactor. We’ve been able to buy a lot of enriched uranium from Sudan and each CD will play Menomena and power your home.

So Menomena aim to tackle the global energy crisis as well?Totally. That’s what we’re all about. Solving global crises.Ha ha, well following on from that, how important is the design element of your music? Like the actual physical design of your records and stuff?

Well we look at the artwork like we look at the music. We try to challenge ourselves to make an experience that’s worth revisiting. Our first album was packaged in a flip book and that took a long time to make. With ‘Friend and Foe’ we had a chance to collaborate with Craig Thompson who is a genius and our goal with him was to make an experience that people are intrigued by and hopefully come back too. Hopefully that’s the thing with our music too. Hopefully people will listen to our songs more than once and on subsequent listens will hear something different each time.

So what album covers by other bands do you rate?Well I think Tool have done a good job. Their most recent one had 3D goggles on it. The one before that had a sort of multi-layered anatomy textbook and the one before that was some sort of animated thing. I respect their work a lot. How about you, what are your favourites?

Emm, I like that Spiritualized cover. You know the one that’s like a medicine packet with its own prescription and you burst the foil to take out the CD? That’s cool.

Yeah it is. That’s awesome.

So your album artwork got nominated for a Grammy award right? Are you bummed that it was your album cover and not the music that got nominated for the award?

[Laughs] No, naturally because the music sucks.

Okay to change track. Nearly every piece that’s written about Menomena mentions the software programme called Deeler that you made and used to record loops for both albums. They pretty much go on about it as if you reinvented the wheel with this thing. So I was wondering, did you ever think of putting a patent on it, making some money?

You know I was always so poor and exhausted. I was working a couple of jobs and trying to do the band on the side. I didn’t have any resources to explore what I could do with it in that regard. I always used to show it to people, and I’d get blank stares. It just ended up being really useful for us. Although I ended up rewriting it and it became incredibly complicated and digital. I basically went insane and wasn’t able to finish it. It got too unwieldy, there were bugs I couldn’t trace. And since then I think there is new software that came on the market that can basically do the same thing.

Sure. So it won’t become an all-consuming scientific obsession that could destroy Menomena?

No I think there will be a different obsession that will do that to me. I tend to go in stages. Since then I got obsessed with doing a music video, and built a kind of home made motion controlled camera device. I built all these sets, and characters, a storyboard and then I had to put it in a box and it lived in boxes for two or three years and then it got resurrected and made into the video for evil bee.

To continue with Deeler- Did the stuff you recorded with it need to be dragged kicking and screaming to the point where you could play it live or was it easier than that?

Our music tends to be very layered and we are only three people so it can be a challenge to choose which layers to perform. So if you come see us live you will see that sometimes Justin is playing the sax and at the same time playing the foot synthesiser, and that Daniel is pretty much playing drums and singing at the same time. So yeah it can be a challenge. But once we get going and hit our groove it feels really good. Some people say they prefer the live show to the album.

Okay because I was going to ask that. Just how different does ‘Friend and Foe’ sound live? Because it seems to me to be more a kind of headphones-suited studio album.

Well, it’s louder. It’s sparser too, but more dynamic, and usually we play the songs a little faster. It works well, but it’s different.

In between your two well known albums, you recorded a lesser known record, which contained instrumental music for an experimental dance company. Was this a pretentious folly or a sign of things to come?

Ehh, both. It was a miscalculation on our part because we thought when ‘I am Fun Blame Monster’ came out there were all these sort of punky bands like the Rapture and the Strokes and we thought, clearly, the next big thing is gonna be instrumental dance music [laughs]. We tried to beat everyone to the punch, but it turns out we were wrong. But it was really a good experience. It’s an album that not many people know about but when we play shows people will often come up to us and tell us it’s their favourite. It’s not for everyone, but we are happy we did it because it gave us the opportunity to collaborate with an amazing dance group.

Okay, another quick change of topic. My friend took one look at your album artwork for ‘Friend and Foe’ and he also heard that your recording software is called ‘Deeler’ and now he’s convinced that you are all on hard drugs. Is this true or will I have to disappoint him?Well I don’t really think crack cocaine is a hard drug. Do you?

Well I suppose in moderation its fine. A nice way to relax on a Sunday afternoon right? Yeah, and as long as Amy Winehouse is with us, we feel comfortable.

So Amy is a spiritual inspiration for Menomena?

Totally.

Okay last question about music. Are you working on a follow-up to ‘Friend and Foe’ yet?Yes [pause]No more information other than that?

Emm. Okay yes. We’re writing lots of baby songs, I call them fragments or baby songs because they are just ideas for songs. You might call them embryos and we are extracting stem cells from them.

Stem cell songs huh? So you won’t be voting Republican because they won’t let you record your own music?

Ha ha that’s right. No, we’re working out ways to record these baby songs, we have over a dozen of them so far and maybe more than half of them will never become viable and reach maturity. But we’re starting that process and taking old Deeler sessions and mixing them. It’s going okay so far.

Finally, a question for our under-12 readers. What’s your favourite colour?

My favourite colour is… polka dot.

“Holly, Michigan is a small town full of small-minded people”. Our Brother The Native are a band that seem to come straight out of suburban middle America. There is nothing small-minded about their music, however. It is experimental and ambient, and above all it is imbued with an over-riding sense of space. Heima showed us that Sigur Rós are making the music their landscape commands, but it is a testament to the artistic powers of this trio that they can conjure music of such scope from a world of white picket fences.
The obvious thing to mention about Our Brother The Native is their age. Of the trio, only John-Michael Foss could legally attend gigs in clubs in America. Chaz Knapp is close too, but has his own DIY label to keep him occupied instead. Josh Bertram, who I talked to, is eighteen and not long out of high school. They met over MySpace in 2005 and signed to the same label as Animal Collective and Sigur Rós in 2006. And their latest album, ‘Make Amends For We Are Merely Vessels’, is not even their debut. It can’t have been easy starting out in the weird world of freak-folk and post-rock that their dense, pastoral music inhabits.
“The reviews of [debut] Tooth and Claw made me think we weren’t taken very seriously. But I feel anyone who has met us or seen us hopefully could understand that we are very serious about our music”, Josh says. That’s that then. “I know for me, college is just for the time being. The band and music is my definite priority and passion in life”.
The band’s formation is a matter of some discussion too. Josh and John Michael met in high school in Michigan and had started playing together, but Chaz lives in California. How did they even find each other? “I contacted Chaz through the MySpace for his DIY label Delude Records. He had been putting out some really interesting obscure folk recordings and I told him that if he ever needed a new release to contact us. So he did. He was really adamant about putting out something of ours. We put out the six-track EP “Cheer Up My Dear, The Sun Will Shine Again. Over the course of working on the recording, we became great friends. I talked to Chaz on the phone almost every other day. We started to do collaborations via e-mail on two songs, and they turned out beautifully. So I thought we should just add him to the band. He accepted the invitation, and that was that.
Tooth and Claw was received as a record from the New Weird America camp, but Make Amends… is much more panoramic and spaced out. Combining that sort of cinematic quality with falsetto vocals was always going to draw comparisons to Sigur Rós. This is not a problem for Josh.
“That is an endearing compliment to have. To be compared to Sigur Rós is an honour, and I will always strive to make our music as dramatic as some of Sigur Rós’ work. However I think we are much different in terms of what we are trying to convey. We will always be much darker in mood. I also think there is a little more experimentation happening on our part. I try not to have many rules for us when we go about writing a song.” And the vocals? “The falsetto comparison I can understand, but I have been singing that way long before I heard Sigur Rós. I have a weird fascination with women’s voices and hushed, cute vocals. Also I guess I have always wanted to have a range that fits the mood of any style I want to sing.”
Fat Cat signed the band after Chaz sent them a link to their MySpace in the hopes of getting some constructive criticism. The label liked what they heard and asked for a demo. They liked the demo even more, and instructed the band to record a full-length album with a view to releasing it. For an experimental but still mostly teenage band, to share a label with the likes of múm and Sigur Rós must have been exciting.
“I would say we feel a closeness to the bands on the label. They are all so amazing, and I feel we share a lot of their ideals. There is a lot of bands on the label trying new ideas all the time and that’s something inherent in our goal as a band as well. But if you’re asking if I think we’re on the same level as múm or Animal Collective or Sigur Rós, I would have to say no way. We still have much more room to expand and grow.” Most bands that lean towards the sort of organic, experimental music Our Brother The Native make come to it through improvisation, or jamming at the very least. It’s interesting to find out how that works in a long distance set-up.”John-Michael and I wrote Tooth and Claw long distance, sending parts of songs back and forth to Chaz until they were complete. On Make Amends… John-Michael and I wrote songs over the course of two years since [the band's first gig, at a Fat Cat festival in] Belgium, playing them live with Chaz occasionally. Parts got added here and there as they aged. When the time came to record, Chaz wrote a load of new parts for it, including the piano base for one song and the entire two parts for The Multitudes Are Dispersing.”
“There is a balance of improvisation and structure. The music part of it has been planned out for the last two years and hasn’t been improvised on the album. But a lot of experimentation I did with the atmospherics in each song came from testing new ideas out to make the songs fresh to me, considering I had been playing them for quite awhile. I do a lot of searching for the right samples to fit each song.”
In an attempt to have a little fun with Josh, I asked him to describe his idea of Ireland. “Lots of pubs, green pastures, Nessie and leprechauns”. Despite this slight gap in knowledge of the specifics of European affairs, he says there’s a good chance they’ll see Ireland this summer. “We actually are looking at a little summer European tour. We have a couple of promoters inquiring about us in Ireland, France, and the U.K.” A good chance to get to know the place a little better perhaps.