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Here’s a not-so-trade secret: Often, as a music writer, you get saddled with shitty interviews. Landed a high-profile Odd Future story? Talk to Taco Bennett. Scored some time with Tegan and Sara? Meet Andrew, their touring drummer. You requested Hall? Oates is on line 1, motherfucker.
That said, when given a phoner with Ohbijou drummer James Bunton — as opposed to Casey or Jenny Mecija, the sister duo that helm the Toronto orchestral-indie act — we’re hardly disappointed. Quite the opposite, actually.
See, Bunton, beyond his gig with Ohbijou, earned his stripes as an A-list producer, manning the knobs behind Diamond Rings, The Acorn and The D’Urbervilles releases. He’s one-half of Light Fires along with Gentleman Reg’s drag alter ego, which cut one of the summer’s most memorable dance tracks in “Ten Feet Tall.” Add performance credits on Barzin, Forest City Lovers and, well, Ohbijou records, and it’s clear Bunton’s hardly a session-player hack. And he’s hardly a passenger on the Mecija sisters’ ride, either.
So, what, then, did he bring to Metal Meets, Ohbijou’s stunning followup to their 2009 breakthrough LP Beacons? “Well, the drumming is the number 1 thing,” he laughs. “But I bring what everyone else brings — we all contributed to the arranging of the songs. You can hear a cohesiveness, where everyone is speaking in turn and putting forward their ideas. It’s an album with instrumentation that all finds it place.”
Go on, we urge. “A big part is [the concept of] spaces. We spent a lot of time on the environments of songs — it’s nice when a song feels like it’s in a space. Not a room or a location — or at least not a concrete one — but each song has its own identity.”
Bunton is being esoteric here. It’s likely the producer in him speaking. But he’s correct: With Metal Meets, Casey Mecija’s impossibly high-pitched, delicate vocals no longer carry the load. See “Turquoise Lake,” a track built on a shimmering string foundation. Or the delay-pedal mastery of “The Dreaming,” an offering that has Mecija’s vocals drifting between AM-radio fuzz and sparse, ringing chords. Or lead single “Niagara” — last week, selected CBC Radio 3’s chanson du semaine — a reverb-drenched slowburner punctuated by elegant violin swirls.
Indeed, Ohbijou aren’t your next-door neighbour’s orchestral indie project anymore — even if that precious charm typified Beacons and its debut, Swift Feet for Troubling Times. And while no one would mistake Metal Meets for, well, metal, it’s the band’s most cavernous, challenging release to date — a vision in part realized by producer (and Besnard Lakes mastermind) Jace Lasek.
“He’s definitely a spacey guy. In the best way possible,” chuckles Bunton. “We weren’t passive, but we took ideas from him, and he took the songs where they need to go.
“There’s a tendency to savour mistakes because they add character or realness — it’s like listeners relate a vulnerability or imperfection,” he adds. “But that’s not what we wanted to do with Metal Meets. In the recording process, we wanted to make sure that every strum is there for a reason. We wanted to make every drum hit sound important. We wanted to display confidence: [Our material] is stronger than ever, and as a result, it’s louder and bigger than ever.”
And much as Metal Meets is an evolutionary leap for Ohbijou, it’s also a victory for Toronto’s fabled Bellwoods scene — a loose affiliation of friends that includes Timber Timbre, Diamond Rings, Austra and the Constantines’ Bry Webb. So, we ask, what it’s like to be part of Canada’s musical new guard — and to have close friends dominating the nation’s musical conversation?
“It’s wonderful,” he says. “Everyone works together, and when one succeeds, it feels like everyone succeeds. There’s no sense of competition.”
He pauses. “I was looking at this picture from a few years ago, it was Casey and I and [Austra’s] Katie Stelmanis and [Out of This Spark’s] Stuart Duncan. Everyone looks like a child in those photos. It’s great knowing the old version — the kid version — and seeing the new version of people. It’s just amazing.”
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