NOSTALGIA FOR THE RECORD
Montreal acts find elegant ways to revisit the past
Montreal’s famed indie bands have an important tool for navigating economic uncertainty in the age of music streaming services and catering album sales: nostalgia.
In September, Arcade Fire completed a lengthy world tour in support of their most recent album, Everything Now, by returning to their first full-length release — playing 2004’s famed Funeral in its entirety over three nights in California.
Back home this past March, Plants and Animals celebrated the 10th anniversary of the release of debut Park Avenue with a multinight residency at St-Laurent Blvd. venue Le Ministère.
And the looking-back is not just on stage, either. Classic album reissues can excite hardcore fans and collectors alike. Sam Roberts’s first release, We Were Born in a Flame, just received a deluxe reissue on vinyl, with added original demos and previously unheard songs, to mark 15 years since it hit No. 2 on the Canadian charts.
There are two major reasons why Montreal’s still-active bands, and bands from all over the world, like to look back from time to time. Our brains are wired that way naturally, and every week on the calendar there’s a new round-number anniversary being hit, whether it’s something momentous like the upcoming 50th of the White Album or the recent 20th of catchy ’90s ditty You Get What You Give.
The other reason? Tumbling album sales; the emergence of streaming platforms such as Apple Music and Spotify have put the future of many bands in jeopardy. A Consequence of Sound article in August with the headline, “Musicians only received 12 per cent of the music industry’s $43 billion revenue in 2017,” made the rounds on social media, and a number of artists spoke up about this new reality.
“The economic ecosystem of being in a band has changed completely. It’s almost 180 degrees from 10 years ago, and I think the economy of music has been hollowed out,” Dan Boeckner of Wolf Parade said in an interview. “Labels don’t really matter as much as they used to, or even at all, especially if you’re starting out. Then there’s the death of many large music festivals. It’s a reflection of the greater economy as a whole, and what we’re seeing with the middle class.”
Wolf Parade played a four-show residency filled with deep cuts during this year’s POP Montreal at La Sala Rossa, similar to a classic run of shows they did at the venue in 2007. The band was on hiatus for much of the decade, but reformed in 2016. For a band that had been away for a while, a nostalgic set list can signal a return to form.
“When we decided to make the band active again, we started talking about what kinds of shows we wanted to play. POP Montreal was always top of the list, since it was the backdrop to a lot of the rise of the scene that birthed us. Sala was the first big venue we ever played. We thought a residency would be great there,” he explained.
While it might be the case for big bands that have thrived on the reissue market — such as the aforementioned Beatles, who manage to get fans to re-buy the entire discography every few years — Montreal bands don’t necessarily have it so easy.
The Dears are one of the best when it comes to meaningful rereleases. In 2017, the band put together their first three albums in a limited edition boxset on the Paper Bag Vintage sub-label and just this month released their fourth album, Missiles, on vinyl for the first time.
Frontman Murray Lightburn says a reissue for the band is more painstaking than just rubberstamping a shiny new package.
“For us, we are always ever involved with everything. We’ve been that way since the beginning. We’ve never had dozens of minions around us. And now there are no minions in the biz anymore anyway,” he said.
“With old releases, you’re up against a technological challenge. Things have changed so much over just the last 15 years. You pray that the tapes will simply play, or that SCSI connection or Zip disk will actually work. We have an old laptop whose sole purpose is accessing old stuff. The master hard drive for No Cities Left was missing for about 10 years, only for us to find out that it was on our U.K. tour manager’s bookshelf the whole time. Even then, there’s no guarantee that old tech will spin.”
Sure, completists love reissues, but for the Dears and many established bands of the CD era, doing new versions of old releases is about survival.
The Dears’ original releases are out of print and mostly on CD. They never were released on vinyl, which is the main way many hardcore music fans prefer to consume physical music at home these days.
In turn, listening to the old albums — something many bands say they don’t do on a regular basis — can prove inspiring or make them rethink the past.
“Our fourth album, Missiles, was just printed on vinyl for the first time and it’s by far my favourite Dears album that I would actually sit down and listen to,” Lightburn said. “I personally went through a lot making that one, possibly more than the others. Yet I can barely listen to any of the other records. For whatever reason Missiles is special and when I listened to the test pressing I just couldn’t believe how wonderful it turned out. So much of that had to do with Bob Ludwig ’s original mastering job, a day in my career I’ll never forget. He has a touch that is … godlike. Finally, I went to pick up a box of records and when I first held and opened a copy of the thing, I just sat in my car alone and cried a bit.”
In a way, Boeckner said, he thinks older bands have it easier than new acts just starting out.
“You’re still going to make most of your money from touring and licensing,” Boeckner says. “With Wolf Parade, we were lucky enough to have come up during a time when labels were interested in giving money to bands to help them grow their audience bases to the point where they could sustain themselves from touring. Luckily for us, the people who started going to Wolf Parade shows in 2004 still go to shows today, and those who were too young to go then are coming now. We’ve been able to increase our audience over the years, but we wouldn’t have been able to do that if we had started in 2018.”
Boeckner says it wouldn’t work for Wolf Parade because they were always behind the technological curve, but for his other band, Operators, he is contemplating opening a Patreon account. The platform at patreon.com allows people to pay a monthly subscription directly to the artist, in return for exclusive content. The platform, along with PayPal, works not for just musicians, but for writers, illustrators or pretty much any artist.
“Something like Patreon also has a good side because it lets your fans feel like they ’re supporting you directly. There’s satisfaction in giving artists money for their art and helping them make more art in the future. I think that’s gotten lost in the equation the past few years,” Boeckner said.
There are consequences to making it economically less viable to be in a band. Artists from lower and middle-class backgrounds can’t devote themselves to their art fully if they’re working 9-to-5 jobs, making music accessible only to those who can afford it. Young bands can’t tour without proper backing. Wolf Parade offered to support a few local bands by having them open their Sala shows.
“If we started Wolf Parade today, there’s no way I would’ve been able to quit my day job. Not a chance,” Boeckner said.
“I think people need to speak up about it. There was this whole belief that this digital revolution was going to democratize the flow of capital for art. But it never happened.”