Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry finds a new River
Arcade Fire member’s solo album finds him trying to channel ancestors and summon spirits of the past
I had an hour to kill before interviewing Richard Reed Parry a couple weeks back, so I headed to Jeanne-Mance Park, where I sat on a bench and took in the gently sweeping sounds of the Arcade Fire member’s second solo album, Quiet River of Dust, Vol. 1.
Let me first say, this never happens. Sad but true, I don’t spend my days wandering city parks listening to music. And yet, to borrow a line Parry used a few times during our talk, “it’s not a coincidence.”
The singer-songwriter/multiinstrumentalist’s new album is all about getting back to nature, with song titles including Gentle Pulsing Dust, Sai No Kawara (River of Death), On the Ground and Song of Wood.
After posing for Montreal Gazette photographer John Mahoney in his “Quiet”-emblazoned sweatshirt under one of Jeanne-Mance Park’s regal trees, Parry explained the lush and rather trippy album art, in which he had a big hand.
“I wanted it to be this kind of green world,” he said.
The front cover features a surreal image of a mountain, river and sunrise/sunset with blurry figures in motion, while the fold-out insert shows snapshots encased in globes, against a mossy backdrop.
“I wanted a natural environment, mixed with a Blade Runner kind of world,” Parry continued. “I had this idea of memory spheres and contained worlds inside of that. These are family photos, basically — of these outdoor medieval theatre productions my dad used to do; this is a Scottish forest I went to; and that’s me in a lake in Vermont ...”
Released last Friday, just before the first day of fall, Quiet River of Dust, Vol. 1 is the first of a twoalbum set, with the second due at the start of spring. It also marks Parry’s arrival as a solo artist.
While the musician is a big part of Arcade Fire — his engaging stage presence, striking six-foot-plus frame and red hair making him one of the band’s most recognizable figures — he has mostly kept a low profile outside of the group.
His off-Arcade Fire project Bell Orchestre allowed him to again operate as part of a collective, while his orchestra-assisted 2014 solo debut Music for Heart and Breath was a classically inspired album that came off like an evocative aside. This is different; the new album finds Parry singing, and playing, front and centre.
It took a while to get him there, plus a lot of encouragement from the National’s Aaron Dessner, whom he describes as the album’s “unofficial silent producer.” Dessner and his bandmate/ brother Bryce appear on the album, as do Parry’s partner Laurel Sprengelmeyer, a.k.a. Little Scream, and Andrew Barr of the Barr Brothers, among others.
Though essentially folky, the song cycle is uplifted by fleeting moments of Arcade Fire-esque grandeur, others of ethereal beauty, and a general sense of ownership.
“I was trying to channel the ancestors and summon the spirits of the past, which is something we also try to do in the Arcade Fire world,” Parry said. “It’s not coincidental.”
Parry’s past is marked by fond memories of his theatre-professor father, who died when Parry was 17 (“this is sort of the album I didn’t have the tools to make at the time”), and his dad’s band the Friends of Fiddler’s Green (whose members appear on the new album); his music-educator mom; and the regular musical gatherings he would find himself in the midst of while growing up, singing along to folksongs that inhabit his DNA.
“I’ll still take trips to Toronto to go to family friends’ parties just so I can get my sing on,” he said.
Quiet River of Dust, Vol .1 is equal parts tribute to that lost world of his youth and liberating emergence of an artist who has long folded himself into the galvanizing group dynamic of the world-famous band that brought him here.
“It’s mildly nerve-racking,” Parry said. “It really feels exposed, in a way, but I feel completely authentic about the music.
“I don’t feel like I’m trying to sell some far-fetched idea, and I don’t expect to be on commercial radio. I think the songs are totally accessible and beautiful to anyone who listens, but I definitely have no interest in trying to go for the centre of the mainstream, because that’s not a place I pay attention to or aspire to be.
“So that just makes you wonder: who’s going to find this music, and who is this music going to find? Where is it going to take me?
“I have played huge rock fests and massive arenas. I don’t need more of that; I already do plenty with Arcade Fire.
“I want this to be a new journey, and to try and do things and make decisions that will take it to places that feel interesting and beautiful, take it where it wants to be heard.”
I want this to be a new journey, and to try and do things and make decisions that will take it to places that feel interesting and beautiful, take it where it wants to be heard.