Due to a tragic printing press accident, the Barmitzbah Brothers have been reduced to two sharply inked dimensions. Fortunately, their charming, whimsical pop has not suffered for it
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Broken City
Thursday, November 22 - Thursday, November 22
More in: Rock / Pop
Jenny Mitchell, a.k.a. Jenny Omnichord of Guelph’s Barmitzvah Brothers, is a third-generation collector of strange and beautiful things. Her grandfather was a salvage diver who scavenged shipwrecks and dived for bodies that no one else could find. Her father owns and operates a thrift store whose shelves have held a long list of bizarre items — author Gene Little’s tooth, two fake breasts that didn’t match, a man’s collection of prosthetic legs, a cow fetus in a jar and 80 pairs of ladies’ underwear. For a band that boasts a multitude of instruments, from fiddle, banjo, trumpet, ukulele and omnichord to wurlitzer, various other keyboards, electric guitar and bass, it seems handy that Mitchell’s family owns a thrift store. She’s quick to point out, however, that it’s not a situation she takes for granted.
“People think that we’re just stealing these instruments that would be at the store otherwise available for other people,” says Mitchell. “But all our instruments are ours because of us. Sure, my dad used to get the odd weird instrument in, but when we started the band, I think he started getting them in with us in mind.
“We’d go out together to antique markets and buy a sousaphone that we’d see there, or something that, before, he might have passed on. Knowing that we’re interested in weird instruments, he keeps his eye out. He cleans out estates when people are moving or have passed away. He’ll buy storage locker contents. He goes to garage sales and auctions all the time.”
As more and more unusual instruments found their seemingly rightful owners in the ramshackle group and their collection of wacky instruments grew, so did the Barmitzvah Brothers’ reputation. Along with band members and multi-instrumentalists Geordie Gordon, John Merritt and Tristan O’Malley, what started out as a “showcase for the omnichord” has turned into a virtual tour de force on the Canadian indie scene. By the end of the year, Mitchell figures she’ll have crossed the entirety of Canada, not once but twice. Not bad for a band Mitchell was worried people would see just as a novelty act. That would be pretty much impossible now that they’ve appeared alongside bands such as Arcade Fire, The Rheostatics, All Purpose Voltage Heroes, Great Lake Swimmers and Final Fantasy.
Combining equal parts folk, country and pop, you’d think that the Barmitzvah Brothers went to the same school as Calgary’s Consonant C. It would seem only natural to find Consonant C’s Lara Leif and Jenny Mitchell on a hilltop someplace serenading their friends on the ukulele and the omnichord. And though “quirky” acts tend to get old quickly, being labelled such is not something Mitchell worries about.
“I don’t mind it,” admits Mitchell. “For awhile, though, I was worried about being pigeonholed by anything. Novelty is a really risky word to me, but then we realized that people were coming out to our shows because they thought we’d be novel, and were won over because we were actually OK. So that people come and watch us and make their own decisions is cool. I don’t think we’ve been tied back by it.
The funny thing is, the Barmitzvah Brothers’ fifth full-length, Let's Express Our Motives: An Album of Under-Appreciated Job Songs, is novel; as in innovative, fresh and different. The 19-track album tells stories of various people, fictional or real, who work in jobs most people don’t take the time to think about, much less appreciate. From “Library Page” to “Rendering Equipment Tender” to “Sign Erector,” each song encapsulates the Barmitzvah Brothers’ wonderful ability to tell a story through song. The key, according to Mitchell, is to keep it simple.
“My style, for sure, is to build from something simple,” says Mitchell. “It’s easiest for me to focus by giving myself a subject to write on, or in the omnichord’s case, giving myself only a strum pad and a little bass line and then having to make each song interesting and unique from the one before it. That kind of challenge gets better things out of me.”
A challenge indeed. Under her solo moniker Jenny Omnichord and as co-band leader of the Barmitzvah Brothers, Mitchell is acting as a self-professed “liberator of the omnichord.” She is resolute that because of the simple nature of omnichord (a misunderstood instrument if there ever was one), her songwriting has improved.
“The simplicity of things is what I’m attracted to,” she says. “The ukulele has the same thing that the omnichord has, in the idea that something that’s so small with a really predictable sound could be used to make beautiful songs. Every ukulele player that I know says that every song they write with the ukulele has to be beautiful and intelligent because the instrument itself won’t sell it. It’s gotta be a really good song for it to stand on its own and for people to want to hear it again.”
