>>PREVIEW
VAILHALEN
September 16 and 17
Broken City
Chris Vail may indeed be the Calgary music scene’s most visible participant. Thanks to membership duties in such bands as Shecky Forme, XL Birdsuit, The Killer Vees and now the mighty Vailhalen, he’s no stranger to local stages, or just about anyone with even a cursory interest in the local scene. Frankly, he’d be hard not to notice anywhere – the dude is tall, bald, looks like he works out, and is blessed with a strong-like-bull song sense and voice that is just as mighty.
Following the surprisingly quick dissolution of XL Birdsuit (after one album, co-leader Paul Coutts made a run for Edmonton, Calgary apparently being too small for two tall, bald, fit rock frontmen with big voices), Vail reconsidered, regrouped and restarted with the aptly named Vailhalen. Last year’s Becs d'oiseaux EP was a somewhat misleading introduction – it was recorded by XL Birdsuit but released under the VH banner. However, Vailhalen’s debut recording proper, Pop Violence, is the type of album strong enough to overcome any amount of homegrown hype, capturing in essence a sound nearly as big and varied as Vail’s ideas.
Leaping out of the gates with the twin rallying cries of "Awake In Flight" and "Bones of the Dead," Pop Violence starts grand and stays that way. "Tiny Frequencies" cross-matches marching-band etiquette with the propulsion of Garrett McClure’s drumming, while "Moodkiller" does completely the opposite of its title and fills the room with gradual climax. Recorded in the Henry Wisewood High School’s music room (a full high-school orchestra arsenal at their disposal and backing vocals on the razor-quick "Girls Fight!" by the school’s girls’ rugby team), Pop Violence makes mountains out of pebbles.
"I was getting sick of really fancy, expensive-sounding records," says Vail. "I started thinking about the albums that were really important to me and they all have a character to them seemingly created by accident — even the circumstances of them. We wanted to record an album with all-natural reverb and lots of mistakes."
Given Vail’s rock report card, the primary influences on Pop Violence may seem surprising at first. "I’ve been really interested with Motown records, but finding reference albums was difficult. I wanted to sound like an old Motown record without us actually sounding like Motown bands," he says. The resulting album lives up to its intentions — the occasional flourish not sounding out of place within the definition of the classic "Detroit Sound." In Vail’s opinion, "Indie-rock is losing its preciousness a little bit and becoming more about good music."
Recorded primarily live off the floor, Vailhalen’s big sounds require big groups of people to pull them off. For the album, Vail has once again assembled a local supergroup of sorts, hand-picking members from the ranks of The Summerlad, The Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir, the late Reverie Sound Revue and The Dudes. Given how Vail’s previous projects fell apart after the departure of other members, his approach to the membership of Vailhalen is in line with the impression given by the group’s name — everyone’s welcome to the party, but this time around it’s Vail’s show.
"If I worry about what everyone else in the band is doing, it’s not going to go anywhere. If it is going to get anywhere, I have to really take control of the situation and not worry too much about that. There’s a pool of players now and a group of regular subs that know the songs really well, so it’s becoming less and less of a problem," Vail says. "I don’t want anyone to move away. As involved as anyone wants to get, I’m grateful for it and I’ll be loyal to them and they’ll never regret it. They’ll get whatever they want out of it. But this time, if anybody leaves or moves or anything, the show will go on."
As for the name itself, Vail treats it self-effacingly. "The name was perfect in the tradition of band names I’ve always had that are just really dumb and you get used to them and forget they’re dumb after awhile," he says. "If you have a cool name, chances are you’re a really shitty band or you’re really flaky."
This fluid approach to membership (you never know who you’re going to see until they take the stage) adds an extra and particularly personable layer to the music of Vailhalen. You might even call it community. "I do seem tied to Calgary — I keep meaning to move and just when I think of it something awesome will come up," says Vail. "It feels like there’s a lot of momentum and like bands are taking bigger risks and making gestures that actually amount to something as opposed to just being cool in Calgary and whining (about) why we never get anywhere. People are getting a grip on that." Given the appearance of stand-in members from local long-running funk aficionados Recipe From A Small Planet in earlier performances, Vail’s also not afraid of crossing genres to get his point across. That – and his chuckling admission that "we haven’t had all seven people inside the same room besides for a show for a very long time," – keeps Vail, the band, and the audience constantly on its collective toes.
For the release of Pop Violence, Vailhalen takes the stage at Broken City for two consecutive costume-party performances — the first night is "Athletic Aerobics Day," while night two is "Sci-Fi Space Adventure." Last New Year’s Eve Vailhalen mounted a start-to-finish rendition of Prince’s Purple Rain so you know that this two-pronged live spectacle is an event not to be missed.
Given the themes of Vail’s newest material ("We’re working on songs that are Halloween themed, about werewolves and zombies, that are more danceable, for an album titled The Owls of Getchu," he adds), this type of rock ’n’ roll role-playing ensures Vailhalen will remain forever captivating in the live setting. While Getchu is still in its earliest stages of development, Vail’s keeping his hopes high for its recording. "I’d like to find a producer for this one. I’m going to e-mail Prince, but I don’t think he’ll do it." |
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