Go For the Eyes has a new look
The circus has left town, metaphorically speaking. And that’s a very good thing.
For years and on a pair of prior releases, Calgary band Go For the Eyes prided themselves on being purveyors of a style dubbed “circus rock,” to characterize how many influences and sounds they could pack inside of the project, even inside of one song. It made for a listen that, true, unique and often impressive, was also at times unnecessarily challenging.
Now, though, the quartet has packed up the big top, put the aural acrobats out of work and given the clowns their walking papers, producing a straight-up rock record with the recently released Six Through Twelve.
“I’m calling this our coming of age album,” says vocalist Elise Roller on the road back from Canadian Music Week. “We came together coming from different genre influences and, at first it was just sort of a mosaic, just slapping genres in places in our songs, and now it’s more of a melting pot.
“We’ve really come into our own and figured out or own sound from that and I think it’s a lot less confusing now. . . . We’re really striving to be one of those bands that anybody can relate to in some way. We want to be unique but we don’t want to be confusing.”
There’s no confusion, just rich, deep, heavy, velvet red rock that leaves a catchy lasting impression like a lipstick kiss —like Paramore or Evanescence with a little more punch.
Roller credits the new-found sound and focus for the band, which also features guitarist Jeff Turner, bassist Scott Perrin and drummer Nathan Raboud, as being the result of a combination of factors over the past two years.
One is they’ve come to know each other as musicians and found more of a middle ground with those influences. A bigger part, though, Roller says, was the departure of bassist Eric Svilpis in late 2011, which required everyone to step their game up a little more.
Roller calls him “a musical genius” and says not only did the other band members rely on Svilpis to produce their records but direct them as well.
“Jeff and I really relied on him to tell us what to do,” she says. “When you have somebody who’s really musical in your band, you can get lazy and you’re like, ‘What should I play here?’ So we had someone coming in and writing certain parts for us and being the main influence there, but when he left it forced Jeff and I to step up to the plate ... to research and to get better.”
They also, she says, put a great deal more work into the songwriting for Six Through Seven. While she says the previous two efforts were put out quickly to get something out to sell on tour, this one saw the band actually taking time off from the road and locking themselves away in the basement to write.
And when it came time to bring them to life, they hit the studio with producer Kirill Telichev, from local band The Suppliers, who had just opened his new studio and also brought to the project his own ear and expertise.
The result, again, was a Go For the Eyes record that captured their best at its best.
“The difference is there’s no filler on the album and we worked so hard on the writing,” Roller says. “We just really wanted a good product so we’re not wasting our time and money any more.”
That product will be available as the band gets set for its CD release this Saturday at The Gateway.
And not only will that show find Go For the Eyes confident that they’re putting their best effort forward, but with that confidence reaffirmed thanks to what was, by all accounts, a pretty great showing at CMW.
A Toronto publication listed them as one of the Top 25 acts of the hundreds who performed at the industry showcase, and Roller says their gigs were packed and remarkably well-received even by the promoters and bar owners who made it clear that the new focus has worked and the band has reached another level.
“You get off stage and you’re told that you just blew everybody away, that,” she pauses, “that’s a really good feeling.
“I think we’re all the happiest we’ve ever been right now.”