Preview
THE MOOD
Saturday, April 17
The Den (U of C)
There are certain assumptions that can be made when a new act emerges from the ether of rehearsal spaces and basements in Calgary. It’s a relatively safe bet that at least one member has been in a local band before. It’s also a fair assumption that the group will start off sounding a little roughshod while they get their stage legs. And rest assured in most cases that a CD is likely at the very least two years down the road. For many bands, the result of five years of collective toiling is an EP and a full length, one or two tour stories and a farewell show.
The Mood, intentionally or not, flies in the face of these assumptions. OK, not all of the assumptions, but most of them. Let’s start with the given – both bassist Jeffrey Lewis and drummer Cameron Denman previously played in the familiar local outfit Plad. Aside from that, The Mood aren’t rewriting the rules of how local acts progress, but they’re putting their own spin on it.
"Our plan was to really record – it wasn’t to perform," explains guitarist Matty K, who along with singer-multi instrumentalist Matthew McLeod do the bulk of the songwriting. "We really wanted to get our ideas onto some sort of recording, and then kind of take it from that."
The group quickly recorded an early EP, The Honest Lies, with their original drummer, Trevor James-Kube, who, upon the disc’s completion, departed for film school (another Calgary band cliché, to be sure). The recording caught the ears of a few people, but The Mood didn’t get an opportunity to support it after Matty K suffered an injury that eliminated any possibility of performing. "As soon as we released it, I dislocated my arm, so we couldn’t do anything except songwrite," recalls K. "I guess that was more fate than anything else."
The pause also afforded the group some time to hone their grant writing skills, as they managed the relatively rare feat of being a pop-rock act that qualified for a cheque in the mail from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts. The band made good use of the money, as is clear on the resulting full length, What’s on the Surface and What’s Underneath.
The album is a lushly produced, 11-song disc that captures the group’s British-influenced pop with loving attention. And while the quartet’s sound isn’t defiantly singular yet, they’re effective at what they do, creating richly textured songs that boast an affinity for Radiohead, among others, while maintaining a distinctly unique sense of arrangement. It’s all pretty spectacular when you consider the group met just over a year ago.
With a flash-fancy webpage, a U.S. promotion company pushing their record to radio and favourable reviews rolling in, the band has turned their attention to performing, having played more shows in the past couple of months than the entirety of last year combined, while exuding the confidence of stage vets.
"We’ll really focused on performing," K explains. It only takes a minute, however, for the guitarist to admit that despite the plaudits for its live show, the band hasn’t lost its studio fetish yet. "We’ve already started writing a bunch of new songs. We can’t really stop right now," he says laughing. "We’re kind of on a good ride right now." |
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