Traffic alert: P. E. I. band rolls into new territory
Change can be scary. Since the release of their last album in 2009, the members of Two Hours Traffic found themselves down a member, working on a new sound and finding a new producer after years working with Joel Plaskett. The result of those few years of uncertainty, Foolish Blood, is proof change can also be a good thing.
The band from P. E. I. recently released the album full of upbeat, retro- sounding pop songs. From the start, the band wanted to switch things up, from the location to the producer. Postmedia News talked with lead singer Liam Corcoran about the band’s journey into new musical territory. last On chance: the feeling that every album could be the band’s WE’VE FELT THAT WAY PROBABLY THE LAST THREE TIMES. It’s a hard thing keeping the whole enterprise going when you’re not making a ton of money and working little jobs when you get home. It takes pretty much a year and a half to get through the album cycle so it’s hard to look ahead that far.
On the band’s shift of focus to its rhythm section after the departure of guitarist Alec O’Hanley:
IT WAS A DIFFERENT WAY TO GO ABOUT IT and I kind of really liked it. I felt like trying to deal with lead guitar in the early stages can get in the way of the bones of putting a song together. It’s kind of a nice way to do it, really, even though we didn’t know it would work out that way.
On the band’s change of producers for their new album, from their mentor Plaskett to the less handson Darryl Neudorf: WE SENT DARRYL THE DEMOS AND HE LIKED THE SONGS so he didn’t have any desire to mess around with them that way. He was focusing on keeping the energy up in the studio. He’s pretty hands- off but he had a good way of guiding things. He gets the sounds that we wanted and he just knows how to execute his vision.
On sharing the band’s new happy, beat- heavy songs with audiences:
THE PREVIOUS RECORD WAS DIFFICULT TO MAKE for a number of reasons and we felt a lot of pressure. I think we let it get to us a bit and it wasn’t very much fun to record it or play a lot of it. This record is the complete opposite. Even if you come to the show and you haven’t heard the record before, you can hear it for the first time and like it just because it’s easy to get into it. It has a lot of classic rhythms, we put our twist on it, but you can kind of understand where the song is going right off the bat.
Two Hours Traffic
with Zeus and Rah Rah
April 13, 7: 30 p. m. | Biltmore Cabaret
Tickets: ticketweb. ca