“I wish we’d started when we were in Grade 10,” laments Raphaelle-Standell Preston while sitting in a coffee shop with best friend and bandmate Katie Lee. Their band The Neighbourhood Council has been around for barely a year, and they’re already feeling old. Not old enough to be cynical and jaded, mind you, but old enough to know that age has nothing to do with making music. “We have so much ahead of us,” says Preston. “Sure we all have jobs now, but we have shitty jobs, and that’s only so that we can buy more pedals.”
Neither Lee nor Preston is trying to rush things. Their first show this past summer, where they won the youth category of the Calgary Folk Music Festival’s songwriting competition, has certainly opened doors and created opportunities for the quartet. They have nothing but wonderful things to say about a music community that has supported and welcomed them with open arms. Sure, it’s early in the band’s life, but there is so much buzz around them that Calgary audiences might assume they’d toured the country and released their third EP. In reality, they’ve only played a handful of carefully selected shows and recorded one live EP at CJSW, and while Preston and Lee both agree that a debut album will be recorded sometime in the spring, they don’t seem to be too concerned about it.
“Being young, we can explore our sound,” says Preston. “It’s the music that we’re making at a certain time. I mean, you are never the same all the time. I’ve been reading a lot about Bob Dylan, and people really pissed on him because he changed. People somehow expect you to not change, and it’s just not possible. We still have lots of room to grow. At least that’s what [guitarist Taylor Smith’s] mom is always saying.”
You can’t help but love The Neighbourhood Council, although a little jealousy might creep in. Along with Preston (vocals and guitar) and Lee (keyboards) are drummer Austin Tufts and guitarist Taylor Smith. They’re your cool younger siblings that got a leg up on mom’s old piano while you were smoking pot and drinking beer in high school. The quartet creates pop music sophisticated beyond their years, but if we agree that age has nothing to do with it, maybe the key to their artistic success is the wide-eyed joy they all seem to get from having people listen to and like their music. That, and the fact that they really are all best friends.
“No one ever said being in a band was easy,” says Preston. “If things get rough then you have to sit down and have talks. We’re best friends, roommates and co-workers. We’re all going to stick together for a long time. Sure, people say, ‘well that’s what everyone says,’ but hearing that makes me want to even more.” Preston delivers this statement with such fierceness that you can’t help but be convinced that The Neighbourhood Council is going to stick around. They seem to have the formula for longevity figured out. “You have to let everyone be an individual,” says Preston. “We don’t have a leader in the group. We’ve totally steered away from that.”
“And anyway, if tensions get high, then we take a break,” pipes in Lee. “Raphaelle would just go for a walk.”
