No afternoons off for The Matinée
Hardworking band hits the road to support new, heavier album Dancing on Your Grave
The Matinée have gone from being Young and Lazy to Dancing on Your Grave. Talk about aging quickly.
Singer Matt Layzell of the Sunshine Coast band explains that the title of the new album released Feb. 17 isn’t a comment on the hard-working rockers’ relentless tour cycle following the release of its breakout 2013 debut We Swore We’d See the Sunrise.
“The song off the record that sounded like an instant radio song was Dancing On Your Grave, which also happened to be the title track,” said Layzell.
“Whether it’s the best track on the album or not, none of us can say, but it was the one that worked with the radio game. We are all old school guys who want the piece of work to be a full album, from front to back, and all agree that this is the best that we’ve written, for better or worse.”
The mix on the new album’s 11 tracks is certainly a big change from the more twanging Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers type sound of the debut.
Some of the rockier elements that began to appear with Mounties’ Ryan Dahle and Steve Bay’s production on the 2015 Broken Arrows EP are fully in place now. Some of the new single’s grimy guitar and exploding arena chorus brings to mind Kings of Leon. Layzell says the sound reflects where the members are these days.
“We stepped back from the big runs of tours after the last cycle, keeping to more festivals and special gigs as life kind of happened around us and our drummer (Peter Lemon) got married and guitarist Matt Rose was having a child ...,” Layzell said. “Now with the album out, we’re ready to get back out there and bring it to the listeners.”
The Matinée knows where its bread and butter comes from, and it’s not from competing for the few radio slots available to Canadian artists.
Today’s musicians come at it with a very honest understanding of what it means to try to get airplay between the new Foo Fighters, Green Day or Shinedown song. Chances are Nickelback and Billy Talent will take those slots, but people who want to hear new music know where to go.
“Streaming and Spotify are becoming increasingly more the place where you get the action,” Layzell said. “And we’re seeing the love there and can actually set up tours based around the areas where the streaming is the highest. Right now, our biggest listenership is in New York, so I guess we’re going there.”
Layzell is pretty excited about the prospect. The truth is, this is a band most in its element in front of an audience. Layzell, guitarists Geoff Petrie and Matt Rose, bassist Mike Young and drummer Lemon have got the crowds moving everywhere from the former Squamish Valley Music Festival to such departed dives as the Railway Club.
The second single from Dancing On Your Grave actually tackles the loss of such venues in face of Vancouver’s seemingly unstoppable gentrification. Titled Blood Alley, the track was produced by Jamie Candiloro, who has worked with Ryan Adams and REM.
“We’ve had a few songs in the past about witnessing Vancouver change drastically around us,” he said. “It’s just such a different place and Blood Alley is a perfect example with high-end restaurants and boutiques up against halfway houses and the inevitable push that comes with that.
“But it’s more; it’s also about all those people like myself who grew up here their whole lives and just can’t make any headway.”
Like many of the new album tracks, the song was written in the studio during the session, a new method for the band. Layzell feels it brought out some really fresh material.
The title track is actually a celebratory call-out to his beloved late grandfather. The singer was on tour in Golden when he received a call that his grandfather was unlikely to live much longer. He didn’t. That loss, coupled with a breakup, and fatigue sent the singer crashing into a serious creative and emotional wall.
“It all added up to me suffering from some pretty bad writer’s block before we began the recording,” Layzell said.
“I even went on a few solo trips up the Kootenays trying to find my story and my voice again. Then when we were holed up in the studio for a couple of weeks with Jamie and still trying to find a few more songs for the record, the title track just came to me as a way of drawing all those memories and experiences together into something celebrating him.”
The album closes with My Heart Still Works, a deliberate bookend with the title track.
“Locked in my basement, unable to even leave to go out to get groceries at my lowest point, that song came out,” Layzell said.
“It was the first song written for the new album, my first attempt to get back into writing, and I can tell you that My Heart Still Works is turning into something like a Pink Floyd epic in rehearsals.”