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HiFi Club

No one loves music more than struggling musicians — the guys and gals who’ll work a day job just to be able to write and play at night. Pinpointing the exact moment when that love of music takes root is no easy task, but Scott Gallant, bassist for Edmonton’s Faunts, knows when it happened for him.

“I would always have to do the dishes — my dad and I,” he explains. When it was time for chores, his dad gave him control of the family’s record collection. “Huey Lewis was always one that I was super into. Synchronicity by The Police, or Supertramp. One of those three artists, usually, and then we would just crank it up and do the dishes.” If only Gallant’s parents hadn’t made him do the dishes, they might have a doctor or lawyer on their hands.

These days, however, Faunts are doing all right for themselves. Last year, Bioware, the Edmonton-based video game company, picked up a Faunts song, “M4-Part II,” to score the end of the Xbox 360 game Mass Effect. For the band, the effect was massive, giving them international exposure and a major bump in MySpace traffic. To follow up that success, the guys are releasing a digital-only remix record in November, and early next year, around February, the band will release their new album, Feel. Love. Thinking Of.

“It’s very Faunts-ish,” says Gallant of the new CD, which he hopes is going to press as you read this. “I mean, every band says they want to be different or unique, but I do think it sounds a lot like Faunts. At the same time, it’s very different. It has way more emphasis on vocal melodies. We wrote the record as something a little bit more accessible, a little bit poppier.”

To be Faunts-ish, it would seem, is to play carefully crafted experimental pieces, ranging from drifting ambient sounds to fluttering melodies to deconstructive electronic noise. As Gallant explains it, Feel. Love. Thinking Of. is far more of a collaborative effort than the band’s previous works. A quintet of perfectionists, it takes Faunts awhile to get a song right, but not because they’re arguing.

“We’re pretty mellow,” swears Gallant. “We’re pretty [well-]behaved guys. Probably the only thing that has gotten us in trouble is recently when we were on tour, we played in Vancouver with this band called The Clips. We headlined the show, and at about 12:30, the lead singer from The Clips came up to us and was like, ‘The cops are coming to shut us down, but keep playing. Don’t stop, no matter what.’ And we were like ‘What?’ Cause that shouldn’t happen — we’re in a venue, we’re in the middle of East Hastings, we weren’t disturbing anybody. So we were onstage and all of the sudden all the lights turned on and eight or nine cops burst through the backstage door and started pushing people out.”

The boys, as it turned out, were the unwitting victims of some venue rivalry and sabotage. Hopefully, they’ll be back in Vancouver playing again soon, because, for Gallant, it’s important that Faunts’ music has longevity. Like something a kid might listen to over and over again while doing the dishes.

“I’d want [audiences] to listen to it and think that it’s something that is unique, and something that people can emotionally attach to on somewhat of a deeper level,” he says. “You know, there are a lot of songs that for me, I love very shallowly. There are also a lot of artists, musicians and songs that I love very deeply. I would hope that they get a deeper experience out of the music.”