Ellevator rises in Hamilton with debut album this month
Band performs record release show May 27 at Bridgeworks
Sometimes it’s best to avoid your own personal experiences when writing a song. Best not to reveal too much about what’s going on inside of your head. But sometimes it’s unavoidable.
So Nabi Sue Bersche found in writing the song “Easy,” one of the first singles released from the debut album “The Words You Spoke Still Move Me” by the Hamilton indierock band Ellevator.
Nabi was raised on a farm outside of Guelph in an evangelical Christian tradition, that included speaking in tongues and an intense belief in miracles. After graduating from high school at the age of 17, she ventured to Australia where she joined an even more intense Pentecostal offshoot.
She left the group, which Nabi now describes as a cult, after about six months, returning home to Canada where she joined up with her now-husband, Tyler Bersche (guitars), and close friend, Elliott Gwynne (keyboards, bass), to form the band that would become Ellevator.
“There’s a whole lot that could be said about that time of my life, so I have a hard time knowing where to start with that,” Nabi says about her brush with extreme religion. “I’m an intense person and I like to devote myself to the people and things that I love. I don’t think I wanted to have one foot in and one foot out.
“There were a lot of situations involving religion that I chose to participate in. I’ve grown and learned a lot about myself through those experiences whether or not they were strictly positive.”
The lyrics of “Easy,” cloaked in a catchy synth-pop melody, are at times bitter, but mostly
contemplative:
The fistful of flowers we were handed on the day that we were saved Are blue and gold
And they smell like honey They’ve all dried out
But they were once so lovely
Adds Tyler: “Learning how to parse what is good and what is bad about these things that were handed to us is not only the work of becoming an adult, but also the work of art, (deciding) what is worth holding onto and what is worth discarding.”
“The Words You Spoke Still Move Me,” was released May 6 on Arts and Crafts, the uber-hip Toronto label behind art-rock acts like Metric, Stars, Feist and Broken Social Scene. Ellevator will perform a record launch show for the album on May 27, at Hamilton club venue Bridgeworks (200 Caroline St. N.).
Not all of the album’s 12 tracks are as autobiographical as “Easy.” Nabi is learning to express her world views through the lens of outside, sometimes fictional, characters. But “escape” remains a recurring theme.
On the radio-friendly track “Slip,” singer Nabi takes on the role of a seal-woman (or selkie in Celtic lore) escaping the clutches of a mythical beast. And the irresistibly fun “Charlie IO,” tells the story of a young man who tries to finding his inner self through hallucinogenic drugs.
“That song is not from personal experience,” stresses Nabi when asked about Charlie IO. “Charlie IO is an interesting character. Sometimes we get too focused on finding ourselves and it can become something that impedes our experience of the world and impede relationships for us.”
After Nabi returned to Canada from Australia, the newly-formed band moved from Guelph to Hamilton in 2010, working under the rootsy folk-rock name Medicine Hat.
The band moved into a more synth-rock direction and, after signing with Arts and Crafts changed its name to Ellevator, releasing an eponymous EP in 2018, and earning a place on the stage at Tim Hortons Field before 24,000 fans as one of the opening acts for the Arkells’ rally concert.
When Arts and Crafts decided it was time for a full-length album, the band was encouraged to draw up a list of “dream producers” to work with. At the top of the list was Chris Walla, former guitarist and producer of the American band Death Cab For Cutie. To Ellevator’s surprise, Walla accepted the assignment.
“The Words You Spoke Still Move Me” was recorded over a sevenmonth period in Tape and Catherine North studios in Hamilton, the Tragically Hip’s Bathouse studio near Kingston and at Walla’s studio in Seattle.
“I think he took what was there, which in our case is high-contrast, high-drama rock songs with big highs and low lows, and he just turned up the dial on all of that,” Tyler says about Walla’s production. “The loud parts became incredibly loud and the quite parts became a true whisper. He turned up the dial on our strengths.”