>>PREVIEW
THEY SHOOT HORSES DON’T THEY?
Thursday, July 5
Quincy’s on Seventh
Widely considered the best reason to move to Vancouver these days, aside from the statistical likelihood of finding Art Bergman sleeping on a bench across the street, the experimental pop ensemble known as They Shoot Horses Don’t They? combines punk downbeats with crazy circus music. The group, which ranges in size from six to nine players, is led by enigmatic ringmaster Nut Brown and his frantic sing-talk vocals.
"We try to create visual music," explains Nut Brown of the band’s method. "We’ve always been a good studio band, but a lot of what we do comes across best onstage. Live shows really let us get into the moment and we love that energy, especially when we feel it from the crowd. When we’re live we get into a state where everybody starts bashing away... it’s good."
Out this June, the band’s Pick Up Sticks is a zesty followup to their previous release, 2005’s Boo Hoo Hoo Boo. Generating plenty of buzz and maybe a few migraines, Pick Up Sticks challenges listeners to abandon their preconceived notions of timing, scale, melody and composition. And while deconstructing music note by note is by no means a new concept, Nut Brown’s communal approach to his audio artwork is refreshingly off-centre.
"I’m a music school dropout," Nut Brown confesses with a laugh. "We have a whole range of people in the band whose musical backgrounds run from self-taught to well-educated. We try to relate rhythmically but we all come from different traditions so everybody feels like the odd man out. When we write our songs we’re largely going by instinct, working back and forth between instruments. It’s about trusting your gut."
Finding the right venue to host their impressive size is an adventure for They Shoot Horses. Several of the songs on Pick Up Sticks were recorded in a church chosen by the band’s keyboardist for its acoustic qualities, and another of the album’s tracks, "Speck of Dust," saw the band return to a local art gallery where they once performed in a tiny room in complete darkness.
"The studio take wasn’t working," Nut Brown recounts. "We liked it better the way it sounded when we played it in the gallery, so we arranged to go back there and record. That’s the beauty of live performance: you never know what is going to happen. We try to pull the emotional flavour out of the music. A lot of people see it as being joyful and playful, and it is supposed to be enjoyed, but we certainly hope that we are achieving something more serious on an artistic level. Our desire to express ourselves goes well beyond our desire to party all the time." |
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