Preview
THE SUMMERLAD
Saturday, March 5
Cathedral Church of the Redeemer
218 — 7 Avenue S.W. (8 p.m.)
Saturday, March 5
Broken City (10 p.m.)
Sitting in a dim, bustling restaurant, The Summerlad are huddled around a table and are obviously in a good mood. Vocalist-guitarist Garrett McClure is casually sipping wine and bass player Arran Fisher is picking intently at a tofu dish. Drummer Dean Martin has announced earlier that he intends to drink a lot of beer and is getting off to a good start. And guitarist Sean Grier has been delayed, but will arrive soon. The whole scene is what you would expect from a band that has been on tour for months, but The Summerlad have only recently been emerging from their basement studio to reacquaint themselves with Calgary audiences.
It isn’t that they’ve been in hiding, or that they haven’t been playing shows. But the fact they have spent almost a year on and off recording and mixing their new album has made them appear a little, well, withdrawn. The past couple of months, however, the band has been busy onstage. They just finished City of Noise for One Yellow Rabbit’s High Performance Rodeo and the project – a lengthy exploration written by the band that featured close to 20 performers including the quartet – was a huge success. And the band shows no signs of studio rust in regular performances, either.
"It wasn’t like a year straight," McClure clarifies with a laugh when asked about the time working on the new album. "It was sort of done when we could. We all have jobs, and (band members) went travelling, we went touring, there was the Golden Hammers project – so it’s not like we were there eight hours a day for an entire year."
The "it" he is speaking about is The Summerlad’s new album Themes: International, an epic album by most measurements, which is just one of the benefits of the arduous and lengthy process the band went through in its creation. Songs such as "With Bright Knives" are as much headphone candy as rock ’n’ roll and repeated listens reveal that there is much more going on in these songs than you initially realize. Much as the details are revealed to the attentive listener, so were they revealed to the band as they were recording.
"We wrote a song, then we would record it rather than having all of the songs written and then recording them all at once," says McClure. "So as we were recording the songs, they were still growing, parts were still being written. It made more sense to focus on each song individually because we weren’t limited by time."
The luxury of the basement studio comes with its own sense of challenges. Aside from the potential of driving your roommates and spouses crazy by listening to the same songs over and over, too many bands have fallen victim to the lack of limitations working at home can offer, creating bloated, unfocused messes. Fisher, who lives in the house with the studio, chuckles when he’s asked about how the band avoided falling into the trap.
"I realized as I went along there were more ways that you could make a part sound better," he recalls. "So it got more complicated and took more time. It ended up with only having to go back and remix one song, but the difference is night and day.
"We only really stopped mixing and refining stuff just basically because I said ‘OK. It’s been a year.’ If it isn’t good sounding in a year, well, too bad. I don’t think the actual number of hours (we worked) on it were out of this world," says Fisher – and it’s a point the band is all in agreement on.
At just nine songs (the band recorded 13 for the record, but elected to hold off on four of them), Themes: International clocks in at just over 45 minutes, a nice show of restraint. And in that time, The Summerlad cram in a dictionary’s worth of influences – psych- and prog-rock, experimental music and straight-up pop, among others – while sounding utterly unique.
"I think when we went into it, there was an unspoken understanding that we really wanted this record to sound like us," says McClure. "I think the first record was a good representation of us at the time, but there were songs on there left over from previous projects and I think we all really wanted this to be our own."
Martin adds, "There were times where things would begin to sound a certain way – familiar, easy – we just stopped and rearranged it right away."
"About halfway through the recording, the process really took on a life of its own, and that’s what I wanted to happen," McClure continues. "There are songs on the record that date back to the beginning of the band, but sound completely different now."
The growth of the band’s sound is undeniable – even a cursory listen to Themes: International makes that clear. Fans can find out for themselves at the Summerlad’s CD release party or wait for the disc to hit stores.
"I think it’s a good sign. When I can listen to something we’ve done and say ‘I like this,’" says McClure. "If I heard this and someone else was playing it, I would like this."
Ambition is not a dirty word
"I think previously in Calgary, with a lot of bands, they were really kind of afraid to try anything new for fear of being ridiculed by their friends," says the Summerlad’s Garrett McClure. "And I think it’s changed a lot in the past, say three or four years. I think a lot of bands are saying ‘We are past trying to please people – we’re doing this for ourselves.’"
The Summerlad should know. They have been one of the most adventurous bands in town in the past decade, and the last year is no exception. Take a look:
· The Golden Hammers Project: The band wrote one song – "The Golden Hammer" – and decided to record it with the intent of putting it out as a single with a remix. The project grew from that idea, and ended up including four producers from across the nation. The results were a wide variety of sounds, from experimental art noise to beats and pieces.
· City of Noise: Created at the behest of One Yellow Rabbit’s High Performance Rodeo, The Summerlad wrote 45 minutes of music, with McClure composing music for 19 performers (including nine guitarists) culled from various Calgary bands. Despite the amount of work required leading up to the performance, the band doesn’t intend to try and replicate it anytime soon.
· Themes: International CD release parties: Why not split your CD release over two venues? It’s a question that occurred to The Summerlad and they’ve decided there’s no good reason not to try. As such, they have booked the Cathedral Church of the Redeemer for an 8 p.m. show that promises to be a mellow affair, and may feature elements of City of Noise. The second portion of the evening takes place at Broken City, where the band promises to turn it up. Tickets for both events are $13 and that gets you into both shows as well as a $4 discount on the new CD.
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