INDIE-ROCKERS FIND CLARITY IN THE MOUNTAINS
Raleigh’s hometown album launch set for Thursday
On the first single from Raleigh’s new album, vocalist Brock Greiger repeats the line “When did rock and roll become a costume party?” as if it were some sort of mantra for the Calgary act.
With its stately synth and a thumping backbeat, some might interpret Costume Party as serious-minded artists wagging their fingers at bands that put fashion or ego ahead of music.
Geiger acknowledges there is some of that in the song. But he stresses it’s supposed to be tonguein-cheek.
“I just thought it was funny,” he says, in an interview from a tour stop in Toronto. “The song kind of evolves. My idea for the concept was kind of laughing at the prima donna rock star type character. Then the song evolves into the very thing it’s making fun of. It ends with a really in-your-face raunchy guitar thing. All I was getting at with that one was that nothing has to be too serious.”
No one will mistake Raleigh’s third feature-length record, Powerhouse Bloom, as a comedy album, of course. The band trades in intricate and often experimental indie rock and, judging from its promotional photo, has perfected that pensive indie-rock stare that suggests this is serious business. Still, Raleigh has a sense of humour.
“We dabble with a lot of things that people maybe consider heady music, or nerdy and serious stuff,” Geiger says. “But we’re trying to just keep it fun, too. We’re hoping people are enjoying our shows. We don’t need people to be straightfaced and taking notes. I think that’s a theme overall. It’s just wellpresented in that tune.”
Raleigh came together in 2014 when scene veterans Geiger and cellist Clea Anais joined forces as songwriters. With two albums and a European tour under its belt, the band decided it was time to mix things up.
Having connected with Brendan Canning, Kevin Drew and Charles Spearin of Broken Social Scene while in Toronto during a tour a few years back, the four-piece were accepted into a residency at the Banff Centre, which Canning was overseeing.
So Geiger, Anais, drummer Matt Doherty and bassist Will Maclellan spent two weeks workshopping in the mountains in the late fall of 2015, developing songs and sounds not only with Canning, Drew and Spearin but also with renowned Calgary engineers Shawn Everett (Alabama Shakes) and Graham Lessard (Timber Timbre) and Nyles Spencer, who is the resident engineer at the Tragically Hip’s Bathhouse Studio in Bath, Ont.
Even in late fall, the Banff Centre is a lovely setting that has long inspired artists of all stripes. Geiger admits the surroundings probably did have an impact on how the songs and sounds developed.
“We weren’t necessarily writing about the great Canadian Rockies or anything,” Geiger says. “But it’s just the immersion that it allows you to experience. It is inspiring to be in a place where you can breathe clean air and have a beautiful view and you can start every morning with a walk around a forest or a mountain. But it’s also that you’re all in. That’s the best part. You’re there with your band and are alone. You wake up and get to be in it for 24 hours a day for two weeks. That totally paid off. It means you weren’t worried about going to work or being anywhere else. You’re there to make it happen.”
Raleigh put the finishing touches on the album at Bathhouse and enlisted Scott Munro of Calgary’s Preoccupations to help on Cos- tume Party, adding yet another collaborator to the mix.
All of which may seem like a lot of cooks in the kitchen. But that was the point. The approach, particularly in Banff, remained “collaborative and open” throughout the process, Geiger says.
“It wasn’t latching onto any one person’s ideas or doing what anyone said,” he says.
“It was more just getting alternative perspectives and ideas. We’ve worked with the same people in this group for five-plus years and you get used to certain processes or ways of looking at things. I think just having those different people in the room was like ‘Oh, yeah, that’s an interesting approach.’ It wasn’t them handing us ideas as much as it was them giving us new ways or approaches for landing somewhere.”
The resulting album landed with an array of sounds within the experimental indie-rock borders, from the delicate dream-pop of opener Just Kids to the jerky rhythms and guitar-jangle beneath Anais’s fragile vocals on We Met in Alcatraz, to the intricate acoustic guitar and horns found on Tithing.
Raleigh are currently road-testing the album on an Ontario tour, but will be back for a hometown launch of Powerhouse Bloom on Thursday, Oct. 26 at the Ironwood Bar & Grill. Despite all the experimentation that went into the development of the album, Geiger says the band has actually reined in its penchant for trippy, musical excursions on stage.
“We’ve been spending a lot of time trying to refine (the songs) live to be as close to the record as possible,” Geiger says. “There’s a lot of tunes we could let open up. But we’re enjoying presenting more of a cohesive show with not a lot of breaks. It flows like the album does, and a lot of times we are performing it almost in the sequence of the album. I think we’ve been trying to get rid of the excess. We could definitely jam and freak out on tunes, but I think I’m less interested in presenting that. I think those elements already exist within the structure of the songs. To do more would be a little selfindulgent.”
My idea for the concept was kind of laughing at the prima donna rock star type character. Then the song evolves into the very thing it’s making fun of.