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.

Darragh McCausland thought he invented the ice-cream float aged six. When news to the contrary was gently broken to him by his primary school teacher, he embarked on a drink and drugs binge that would put a young Drew Barrymore to shame and has never recovered.
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