SET FREE BY SAM PATCH
Kingsbury releases solo debut
I reached Tim Kingsbury on his cellphone in New Orleans, where Arcade Fire is in the mixing stages for its highly anticipated fifth album. The reason for the call was the guitarist-bassistkeyboard is t’ s debut solo album, Yeah You, and I, under the name Sam Patch, but it was going to be hard to avoid asking questions about Montreal’s world-famous indie-rock export. Seeing no way around it, I came out swinging. He, gamely, ducked and weaved.
“It’s good,” Kingsbury said, coyly, when asked how things were going with Arcade Fire. “We’re plugging away on this record, but it’s coming along well. We’re getting there.” Yeah, thanks, big guy. Arcade Fire has been cobbling together the as-yet untitled album “in fits and starts” over the past year and-a-half, he explained.
“It’s been a long process. We haven’t been constantly working. We’re split up all over the place these days.”
Grilled about what the record sounds like, he finally cracked. “It sounds different than our other records,” he revealed.
Yet on the topic of when the album might reach audiences, he remained elusive. “It will definitely be before the snow comes,” he said, “when the weather’s nice.”
The release date for Kingsbury’s own album is far more tangible. Yeah You, and I came out Friday. The name Sam Patch was taken from an American daredevil, who died in 1829. Packed with wry humour, from the title (it’s all about that comma) on down, the song cycle screams out quirky good times. And the headbobbing riffs don’t hurt.
“It wasn’t really a high-concept record by any stretch of the imagination,” Kingsbury said. “I limited myself to a certain palette of instruments — a drum machine, a couple of synthesizers, a vox organ and a guitar — and I just wrote stuff around that. I would come up with a loop or a sequence on the synth and start playing along with it. I treated the different machines as my band and sculpted songs together over a bunch of sessions.”
Arcade Fire has, of course, made high-concept its default mode. And over the past decadeand-a-half, Kingsbury has played along, waiting for the right time to try a different tack.
“Obviously, Arcade Fire has been a huge part of my life over the past 15 years,” he said. “I’ve definitely been influenced by everybody in the band, and the way everybody approaches music; I think I’m kind of a sponge for that. I’m also influenced by people I grew up with as a teenager, old bands I was in.
“With Arcade Fire, we’ve explored a lot as a group, such as song structures, that has certainly had an influence on me; but I noticed I don’t necessarily push (my own vision) in Arcade Fire. That’s just how a group works. This was an opportunity to follow my own thread more. It was liberating to do my own thing.”
That freedom is in evidence from the sliding synths and breezy guitar of opener Oversight; through the backbeat and electro undertones of lead single St. Sebastian; to the scattershot rhythm of You Never Meant No Harm; and the lugubrious vibe of closing hymn Up All Night.
Holding it all together are hooks that pull you and make you curious enough to keep listening. Kingsbury is obviously enjoying himself, and he wants listeners to do the same.
“I’m a sucker for a good hook,” he said. “I think it’s that way because I set out to make the record that came to me. When I was younger, I would over-edit myself to the point that when I tried to write songs, I would almost not be able to get it out because I was overthinking it. This time, I deliberately decided not to edit myself.”
Kingsbury’s influences run the gamut, and he made a point early on to adopt an anything-goes approach. If he thought of something, he threw it in.
“There are flashes of everything,” he said. “I’ve listened to so much music in my life — everything from Abba and the pop from my youth to classic rock like the Tragically Hip or AC/DC, or Suicide and ’90s post-rock like Stereolab, and older rock ‘n’ roll and country, artists like Webb Pierce or Leonard Cohen.”
Mischief slips in on the downlow, as on boppy, new wave track 100 Decibels, featuring the great chorus: “There are 100 decibels / coming out of my face / Trying to keep you and everyone / Standing there in your place.”
“I’ve always relied on humour a lot,” Kingsbury said. “I’m constantly making jokes, in a way that probably annoys most people around me. I think I really relate to the world through humour; even in music that has no lyrics, I can hear humour in it. That comes out of me as well. I think it’s partly, deeply who I am.”
While he acknowledges we are living through dark times, Kingsbury said he feels art can provide a respite, and perhaps a point of light. He was raised in an evangelical Christian family, where notions of good and evil were discussed on a daily basis.
“It’s funny, it still affects me quite a bit,” he said. “I’m not even calling myself a Christian at this point, but I went to a church where they preached about Heaven and Hell. So that kind of freaked me out for a long time.”
One of the few pop albums allowed in the homes of his parents and grandparents was Abba’s Greatest Hits, which still strikes a chord and, if only obliquely, has infiltrated his creative process.
“They have hooks, for sure,” he said. “Also, the production is amazing. It’s so beautiful. Every time I listen to it, it makes me emotional. It’s so nice sounding.”
While he’s not attempting to emulate Sweden’s pop masters, Kingsbury is not averse to a little good cheer, harmony and hope. But he has a short window to get it out. His 10-date, Sam Patch “mini-tour” kicks off in Montreal on March 2 and wraps in Chicago on March 18, following which he will have to get back to his day job — at least for the time being.
“I’ve committed the rest of the year to Arcade Fire, and it’s going to be great,” he said. “I really wanted to get this Sam Patch thing out before the new Arcade Fire album came out; I didn’t want to wait another year. But after Arcade Fire takes another break, I’m open to seeing where this can go.”