The World Provider – Page 4 – Art/glam/garage/synth rock since 1999

The Undead Format

Recent figures show that digital music sales have overtaken physical ones for the first time. Some might be surprised that it didn’t happen years ago, or that physical sales still exist. We’re constantly told that the CD is dead, physical formats are dead, the future is digital. And yet the CD persists. The record stores (another thing that continues to exist despite declarations of its death) are stocked with new CDs. The programmers on campus radio (again, still exists) prefer CDs to the trauma of fishing through the sea of harder-to-manage-or-archive digital files or streaming options.

But there’s no doubt that the CD occupies a weird transitional space at this particular moment in time.

In 2008, I swallowed whole the gospel of post-CDism and released an album as a printed booklet with a download code. I called in favours with almost every artist I knew, and my designer and I put a lot of effort into to making the booklet look nice.

But when it was on the merch table at the release shows, all I’d hear was “where’s the CD?”

I’d be like, “the CD is dead, man, what do you mean?”

At the release show in Montreal, some guy was like, “Why should I pay $10 for a piece of paper?”

My argument that a CD is merely a piece of plastic was unpersuasive. The fact that I’d spent thousands of dollars of my own money on recording, mixing and mastering the album as well as printing the paper, equally so.

As I was preparing to release another album in 2011, the question of format was vexing. Among the hipster community, it’s self-evident received wisdom that vinyl is the only format worth releasing (or, even further underground, cassettes—which is a whole other topic).

But vinyl is expensive to produce. A guy a know from a once-prominent Montreal indie label told me that they had to sell every single vinyl record they produced to make a profit. And that was a label with over a decade’s experience and a solid reputation.

When the publicist I hired told me that I’d need a certain number of CDs for promo, I thought, fuck it, I’ll just produce CDs.

I had 500 made and used about 100 for promo. The second box of 250 is still sitting in my office, opened only recently. When I give them out to people as gifts, they’re regarded as a quaintly obscure item—at best. Recently, I gave a CD to a friend. She seemed perplexed and explained to me that, since the new Mac laptops no longer have a CD drive, she actually had no way to play it.

The only people I know who regularly buy CDs are my parents. I sometimes suspect that, aside from the format’s continued importance in the promotional arm of the music industry, the continued commercial relevance of CDs is attributable entirely to the boomer demographic, whether for themselves or as gifts for their children or (no doubt bewildered) grandchildren.

But then, in the spring of 2013, I interviewed Marie LeBlanc Flanagan of the music blog Weird Canada about their initiative to start a record distribution centre. She told me that the CD was experiencing a renaissance in the underground scene, as vinyl and cassettes had before. This was so counter-intuitive to everything we’ve been told, it left me speechless and stammering (which was inconvenient seeing as it was a live radio interview).

But the “backlash against digital” she described made a lot of sense: people like something they can put their hands on. Digital culture is so overwhelming, there’s a certain relief in the simple pleasures of a physical format.

Still, as it is with the recording industry, as long as manufacturers keep prices high, releasing stuff physically is going to stay stratified between those who can afford to do it properly, and those who don’t mind doing it in a sloppy DIY style.

Is there any love for the CD out there? Enough to bother manufacturing a batch for my next record? Or should I just burn a few CDRs from my laptop for the remaining market?

At the very least, I’ll burn a copy for my parents.

Montreal and Toronto

A few friends of mine have recently announced plans to move from Montreal to Toronto. These friends include the great Miranda Campbell, as passionate an advocate of the Montreal lifestyle as there ever was.

I’m all in favour of people making changes and blazing new trails, but something about these friends moving made me sad. Not just because they won’t be around—there’s something deeper that I can’t quite put my finger on.

Moving from Montreal to Toronto is a thing people do. They get tired of the bureaucracy, the corruption, the endless language wars, and above all, the difficulty of finding work.

I moved from Toronto to Montreal in 2001. When we announced the move, I would say 9 out of 10 Torontonians replied with a version of “Oh, I wish I could move to Montreal—but I can’t because of work.” I thought this was a weird thing to say, particularly when coming from people in their early twenties who had their whole lives ahead of them and were a little young to be shackled to a job.

But there’s no doubt that Montreal is a different economy.

When I lived in Toronto, I would routinely go grocery shopping without even looking at how much items cost.

Now, I’m like “Three limes for a dollar? Fuck that, I can get a better deal at the other place.”

The first time I paid for my groceries with a sock full of nickels and dimes, it was kind of romantic. The last time I did that, which was more recently than I care to admit, it just felt shameful.

In my early days in Montreal, I used to sometimes walk past the cafés of Mile End with a wistful sense of longing. I couldn’t even afford a cup of coffee.

Now, things have changed. My bills are paid, my debts are at a reasonable level, and I have money to spend on the odd indulgence. I’m able to buy a coffee, usually.

But it’s still nothing like the Toronto days, when I would go out for dinner several times a week, drink an entire bottle of wine with dinner every night, and buy new clothes whenever I felt like it. Today, none of those things apply.

A friend of my wife’s once told her, “In Toronto, people brag about how much they have on the go. In Montreal, they brag about how little they’re doing.”

It’s not quite like that anymore, but some of that spirit still remains.

In Montreal, I know several people who pay around $500 a month in rent. People whose rent is in the four digits tend to have really nice places in good neighbourhoods.

In Toronto, $1500 is considered a good deal for a high-rise apartment in the suburbs. In Vancouver, that’ll get you a one-room basement apartment.

That seems crazy to me, but I’ve been in the Montreal reality for over a decade now.

I once spent a few days in Kelowna, in the B.C. Interior. In the less than 36 hours I was there, I heard no fewer than three people say a variation on “Yeah, Kelowna sucks, but where else are you gonna go?”

I thought that was lame and might have even said so. But today, I find myself feeling similarly about Montreal. It’s a trap, a vortex. It sucks, but where else are you gonna go?

I live in a city of lost souls.

People get trapped here, they can’t imagine an alternative—or it’s too late, they couldn’t function anywhere else. They barely function here. But in this town, functioning is overrated. It’s considered bourgeois.

Montreal’s dysfunction is part of its appeal somehow. If it ran more smoothly, it would lose some of its ramshackle charm. Like a lot of its inhabitants, it can barely hold itself together.

The reasons to live in Montreal, especially as an anglophone, are not logical per se. But like romantic love, or religious belief, the attraction to Montreal is irrational at its root. It comes from the heart, not from the brain. My brain is constantly listing reasons why I should leave. My heart won’t budge. I fear it might stay here even if I moved on.

The Best and Worst WP Shows of All Time: Part II

Some time ago, I posted a list of the best and worst WP shows ever. But the list is from the WP’s earliest days, and there have been a lot of show stories since then. Here are a few of them.

WORST

Montreal, March 2006

We were booked to play a Concordia art party with a bunch of other bands. The show was in a space that used to be a swimming pool, which should have been my first warning. In an empty pool, the acoustics are challenging. And the show was put on by a bunch of students, who were not equipped to meet these challenges.
The set times were dramatically delayed and it was really late by the time we went on. The only thing there was to drink was some apricot-flavoured beer that a local microbrewery had donated. It was gross, but we kept drinking and drinking it to dull the boredom.
When we went on, we quickly realized that the sound guy didn’t have the faintest idea what he was doing. Each time I’d go over to him, the look in his eyes was pure fear. And I went over to him often, because I couldn’t hear anything, except at one point when a keyboard line of Kara’s floated through the sonic swamp and I realized I was singing in completely the wrong key. As a result, this show was literally a nightmare for me, as I have a recurring bad dream about performing onstage and being unable to hear anything.
Perhaps the worst part was that this was one of the best-attended shows we’ve ever played, with an audience of at least 600 art students. They were all wasted, though, and they didn’t seem to care about how horrible we sounded. Dandi Wind played after us and I went down into the crowd. The sound was pure mud, but the kids were dancing and drinking without a care.
Now, could I have done a better job of organizing something like this as a young student? Hell, no. So I don’t hold it against them. But I do have a traumatic flashback every time I see that apricot beer.

Baltimore, January 2009

As we were wrapping up our American tour, the weather in the Baltimore area was unseasonably cold. Our gig was at an art gallery on a cool little strip of town. The cold scared off a lot of people, including one of the other bands, who stormed out because they were afraid of their cymbals being damaged by freezing, which we found hilarious. People kept saying things to us like “y’all are from Canada, y’all are used to this, right?” The fact that our cold temperatures mean that we insulate buildings so that they stay warm inside in winter was lost on them.
Stacey and I got into a fight onstage during the soundcheck. She didn’t want to do the full costume change, mainly because it would have meant stripping down to our underwear in the inescapable cold. We ended up compromising by doing half the show in our winter coats then taking them off halfway. The entire audience (which was basically just the other bands) all kept their coats, hats and mitts on throughout.
After the show, one of the other bands offered to let us crash at their place and we were like “No thanks, we’ll just get a hotel.” (Some consider it bougie that we would rather spend $60 on a cheap motel than sleep on someone’s gross floor. This tour may have marked the point where I stopped caring what such people think.)
The guy was like “Um, you’ll never get a hotel.” It turned out that the newly elected President Obama was coming to town the next day on his triumphant whistle-stop tour. We were so deep into the tour bubble that we’d forgotten the historical moment we were in. So we crashed on some young students’ couch while one of the roommates played guitar and caterwauled well into the early hours of the morning.
The next day we went to check out Obama’s speech. We realized quickly we would never get into the main area where he was actually speaking, so we watched it on a live video feed from the harbour. The experience of the Obama presidency has made this moment a little bittersweet, but whenever people slag him off I often think of watching that speech and the sixty-something black man standing beside me with tears in his eyes.

Montreal, June 2009

We invited Toronto’s Hank down to Montreal to play a show with us. It was a Thursday night, which is usually a pretty safe bet. What I didn’t account for was that Wednesday was Quebec’s national holiday, so a lot of people had been partying for two days straight and were in no mood or condition to go out again. It was also the day Michael Jackson died, so there was a weird pall over the evening.
We played for an audience of about 10 people—including the five members of Hank and two weird old people who’d wandered in off the street. I really respect the Hank folks, as musicians and as human beings, and I was so ashamed that I’d brought them all the way from Toronto for such a miserable turnout. I had guaranteed them their gas money to get back home, which I had to pay out with the change float from the door.
I have to say that as well as putting on an awesome show in spite of it all, they were also a great audience, even though I had trouble summoning the WP’s traditional “stadium attitude” under the circumstances. 2009 was the 10th anniversary of the WP and it was an inauspicious way to celebrate it. I consider this show possibly the single lowest point of the WP’s career; on the plus side, there was nowhere to go but up. And we did have a pretty fun Michael Jackson dance party after the show.

BEST

Halifax, October 2005

I played at the Halifax Pop Explosion with Japanther, Special Noise and another local band whose name escapes me. By that point I was usually performing with the all-girl band version of the WP, but money and scheduling factors made it easier for me to go down and do this show solo. So the show was the road-tested, old-school costumed karaoke version of the WP, perfected over the previous few years’ touring.
Early in the set, my minidisk player broke (oh, my experiences with short-lived digital technologies!). I had a CD backup, but it was in the dressing room, so a guy from the audience gamely entertained everyone with an a capella song while I rushed back and grabbed the CD.
This was one of the only (OK, if I’m honest, the only) WP show whose audience was full of screaming girls, giving me an old-fashioned rock star ego boost. I later found out that Halifax’s student population has a disproportionate ratio of women to men, making their excitement perhaps more explicable.
I saw some old friends and made some new ones, making this night a sentimental favourite. It was also notable for being the last time I ever did the full-body spastic shake-dance during “The Trans-Atlantic Breeze”; I almost passed out and realized I was getting too old for it.

New Orleans, January 2009

Montreal to New Orleans is four days of hard driving. When we stepped out of the car, the warm air was an indescribable balm to our Canadian winter-hardened hearts.
We were staying at Quintron and Miss Pussycat’s house and they invited us to go to some art gallery openings before the show. It turns out they had just inherited a vintage limousine, which they used to drive us around. People look at you differently when you roll up to a vernissage in a limo.
As we went around to the various art shows, we started to feel intoxicated both literally and figuratively. This was my first visit post-Katrina, and the spirit of the city had changed, but was still alive with energy. As for the literal part, the New Orleans cocktail is a tall pour. Having a few drinks takes on new meaning when the drink contains more than twice what you’re normally used to.
By the time we showed up at the gig, we realized two things: one, Quintron had successfully positioned it as the afterparty to all the vernissages, and two, we were totally hammered.
The show was pretty sloppy, but so was the audience, so we were all on the same page. Also on the bill were MC Trachiotomy, 9th Ward bluesman Guitar Lightnin’ Lee, and The Bastard Sons of Marvin Hirsch, a punk band consisting of two brothers who at the time were aged 12 and 13. All in all it was an amazing and unforgettable night (with an equally memorable hangover the next day).

Chapel Hill, January 2009

A few days later, we were pretty burnt out. I’d convinced the promoter to add us to a bill; he seemed hesitant, saying that we might not fit with the other acts. I assured him that we were an equally good fit with anyone because we’re so unique, or something. When we got there, though, I realized that the other bands were folkies who were mostly still in high school.
Stacey and I got into a huge fight onstage during the soundcheck (again)—this time, I forget why. Before we played, my mind was consumed with thoughts along the lines of “Why am I doing this with my life?”
Then we played the show, and the young audience got really into it, even joining our choreographed dance at one point. Afterwards, Stacey overheard one of the kids saying “That was the best 30 minutes of my life!” And there was the answer to my question.

Toronto, September 2011

This was the release show for History of Pain. I was feeling a bit apprehensive about the show because it was almost cancelled when one of the other bands bailed out. Since I had declined to attend the wedding of one of my best friends because I’d been invited after booking the show, I insisted that it go on.
I only have a few specific memories from the night: a bunch of old friends showed up, and people actually slow-danced during one of our ballads, which has always been one of my dreams. What I do remember is coming off the stage and realizing I had forgotten that playing a show could feel that good.
Many years ago I had a job as a driver for an awards show, and I picked up the band members of a certain Canadian rock icon who shall remain nameless. As we drove, one of the guys was talking about the club show they’d played a few nights before. “It felt like we were playing music,” he said. “Most of the time it doesn’t feel like we’re playing music.” I was horrified and swore I would never be that jaded. But as much as I hate to admit it, now I kind of know what he meant. Sometimes, like on this night, the stars align—the sound, the crowd, the atmosphere of the venue, and the interplay among the band—and it really feels like you’re playing music.

Montreal, August 2014

We were booked to play the Passovah fest at 9:00. Normally such an early set time is a recipe for poor attendance, but the room was full and very supportive. Again, I don’t remember anything in particular about this show except a really good feeling—and the fact that the evening was very well curated, with a widely diverse but high-quality lineup including Maica Mia, Country and Charlotte Cornfield.
We played a short set and the audience called for an encore. I demurred, explaining that we’d been urged to play short sets to keep the evening running on schedule. Afterwards, a friend confronted me: “Your first responsibility is to the audience!” Duly noted for next time.

On Originality and Its Opposite

The music community was all aflutter lately with the news that Marvin Gaye’s estate had prevailed in the “Blurred Lines” lawsuit.

I was a bit surprised at the reactions I saw from the people in my community. The general feeling seemed to be that this legal victory was a bad thing. The basis for this perspective, as far as I can tell, is either a kind of post-modern/death of the author/nothing is original kind of mentality (one I’m all too familiar with from endless earnest debates in my university years) or a position of unvarnished self-interest: “oh shit, now we’re going to have to worry about being sued just for being influenced by stuff.” Andy Herman articulated this point of view, as well as giving a thorough overview of the case, in an LA Weekly opinion piece with an ever so slightly hyperbolic title.

I could say something about how strange it is that people who are otherwise reliably on the far left of most issues suddenly turn into laissez-faire free marketeers when it comes to the issue of musicians being compensated. Especially when many of those people are musicians themselves. But I feel that might go off track of the main point I wanted to make.

It’s certainly true that all art is influenced by what came before it; creative impulses don’t come out of a vaccum, though some brilliant and/or bizarre work might seem to.

I’ve stolen a lot from other musicians in my own work—sometimes subtly, sometimes overtly; sometimes by accident, sometimes intentionally, more often somewhere in between the two.

<a href="http://theworldprovider.bandcamp.com/album/the-elements-of-style">The Elements of Style by The World Provider</a>

For example, in the song “A Thousand Pardons” from the first WP album The Elements of Style, I spent a lot of time agonizing over changing a melody because I thought it resembled that of a Luna song—while somehow missing the fact that the instrumental bridge is lifted directly from Guided By Voices’ “Striped White Jets.” And my style of singing blatantly apes the Magnetic Fields, who I was listening to a lot at the time. (If Robert Pollard or Stephin Merritt want to come after me, I will happily buy either of them a drink—I think that’d be about equivalent to a fair portion of the money I’ve made from this song over the years.) (And yes, I’m aware that Luna, GBV and Magnetic Fields are all artists who used overt pastiche in their work. It was the 90s, what can I tell ya?) (And yes, I’m also aware that I’ve just used three parenthetical sentences in a row. It’s my own blog and I can do what I want.)

But I like to think I wouldn’t just take someone else’s song, shamelessly duplicate it, and then try to pretend I hadn’t—which is what, as Herman documents in his article, Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams did with “Blurred Lines.”

When I read Herman’s article, I was reminded of a passage in Randy Bachman’s autobiography where he talks about his mentorship of Canadian classic-rock band Trooper. Bachman recollects as follows:

The method I employed with the group was fairly rudimentary. First, I suggested they list their ten favourite songs. […] I then told them to pick one song from the list, keep the whole song and chorus, but sing a different melody over it using the same lyrics. Add a new guitar solo as well. Once they had a new melody, I told them to change the lyrics. […] Then change the phrasing and breaths. Finally, take the chord progression they had been using from the song and alter the tempo. Now they had a new song derived from their influences.

Now, some might call this a coldly calculated attempt at commercial hit songwriting that has nothing to do with creativity. Others might say that it’s as fiendish an example of creative thievery as the “Blurred Lines” case, but one in which the thieves cleverly covered their tracks. It is kind of brazen. (From another perspective, longtime friend and WP collaborator Steve Raegele suggested to me that it’s what all pop songwriters do, just not as consciously.)

But the point is, the Bachman method at least goes to the trouble of putting enough of a twist on the original that something new comes out of it. I think it’s fair to say Pharrell Williams is a creative enough guy that he could be expected to do the same.

When I realize that something I came up with (or thought I did) sounds too much like something else, I change it. Or I drop it. Or, in some cases, I leave it in and take my chances. Obviously that’s what happened in this case, and they got caught on it. I don’t see what’s so awful about that, to be honest.

If I’m wrong, and Herman is right that this will precipitate an avalanche of lawsuits, maybe that will motivate people to put a little more effort into putting twists on their influences—or just to be a little more original. Is that such a bad thing?

2015

Hi everyone, sorry for the long absence. I have about as rock-solid an excuse as it gets: becoming a parent. Only days after the release of our “Pam Pam” single and our Toronto show this fall, our son came into our lives and we have had our hands pretty full ever since.

Of course how this will impact the WP is not yet clear. All I can say is that I am still actively writing songs and scheming up plans for the future. Then there’s the small matter of the batch of songs we recorded last year. We worked again with producer Murray Lightburn, who endeavoured to combine the classic WP sound (if you missed the synths on the last record, they’re back in full force) with more refined song structure befitting our veteran status in the pursuit of pop perfection.

The tunes are all mixed, mastered and ready to go, and I’m very happy with them. It’s just a matter of figuring out what makes the most sense as far as a release format and strategy. Not so simple these days. But I’m working on it.

I don’t have a list of favourite shows from 2014, as I have in previous years. Shonen Knife at Pop Montreal was pretty much the best hands down, with a special nod to Julie Doiron and the Wooden Stars in the category of “shows I never thought I’d see.”

We also did a few WP shows that were very fun and memorable, and where we got to play with some inspiring artists. So to Blake Hargreaves, the folks at Passovah and Wavelength, and all the bands we played with: thank you. You gave us a much-needed and much-appreciated renewal of musical faith.

And if you’re reading this, thanks for caring. I appreciate that a lot too. Stay tuned for more updates.

Our New Single & Video

The new video for “Pam Pam” is directed by our longtime friend and collaborator Kara Blake. Katie Ward did the choreography. Chilly Gonzales plays piano on the track, which was produced by Murray Lightburn.

If you like the song, you can download it for free from our Bandcamp or Soundcloud pages. You can still also purchase it as part of this compilation of local Montreal bands, with proceeds going to the Ange-Aimée Woods memorial bursary.

WP in TO, new video

Somehow we let three years go by without a visit to the WP’s hometown of Toronto. That’s to be corrected when we hit TO this Saturday, October 11 at Handlebar (159 Augusta in Kensington Market). Also on the bill are The Almighty Rhombus, The Lord Almightys and Bardos. It’s all put on by our old friends at the Wavelength music series. We are super excited for this return and have prepared a set of songs old and new. Doors open at 9pm and the WP hits the stage at 10:30. Check out my Wavelength interview here.

We’re also happy to present our new video, which premieres today on the Exclaim site. It’s the first release from the batch of tunes we recorded earlier this year. That’s Stacey on the lead vocal and my man Chilly Gonzales on the keys. The video is directed by longtime WP collaborator Kara Blake. Check it out here.

Musical happenings

We played two shows this summer after a relatively long period of dormancy. The shows were super fun. I want to give a big thank you to the promoters, the other artists we played with, and everyone who came out. These were the kind of shows that remind me why we do this crazy thing.

Our show at Pop Montreal was a little less triumphant. I don’t know if it was the bill of wildly disparate acts, or just the simple fact that it was a rainy Wednesday night at midnight, but we had trouble getting out a crowd. Having said that, the crowd we did get was of a high quality, with some old friends and some people who’d never seen the WP in action, and who liked what they saw.

Onstage, I had to internally repeat my mantra that it’s as important to give the same quality of show for a small crowd as a big one. I really believe that, but I sometimes feel like saying to festivals, and other promoters: if you put us in front of a big crowd ready to have fun, we will deliver. Repeatedly proven, that’s the WP guarantee.

WP live at Pop Montreal 2014, photo by Cindy Lopez via Cult MTL.

I saw a number of other enjoyable shows at Pop this year, floating around ADD-style with the privilege of my artist’s pass, but the highlight didn’t happen until the final night of the fest.

On Sunday night I wandered downtown to see the Unicorns reunion. For anyone who missed it, these guys were a cornerstone of the whole “Montreal music scene” explosion (Arcade Fire’s first big US tour was opening for them)—or would have been, if they hadn’t broken up at the height of their fame.

The Unicorns and the WP shared the stage once in 2003, opening for our mutual hero Daniel Johnston. They were so new to the game that they were billed below me! The poster is by Seripop.

I thought the show would be like a high school reunion, full of old-timers, but to my surprise it was mostly younger people who never had a chance to see the band back in the day. I was happy to see the guys get their due, but seeing them play songs from their only album, recorded when they were still teenagers, didn’t hold that much appeal to me. Maybe the past 10 years have gone by too quickly for me to feel nostalgia! I snuck out and biked up to Divan Orange to see Shonen Knife.

And man, am I glad I did. Their showmanship, energy and songs totally renewed my faith in rock n’ roll, as corny as it sounds. And I know everyone there felt the same way. It’s been years since I’ve seen a show where the room was so full of joy. When I think about it, it’s crazy that a band that’s been around for over 30 years, and that toured with Nirvana post-Nevermind among many other accomplishments, was playing such a small room. But what fun to be in that room.

Shonen Knife live at Divan Orange, photo by Krista Muir.

Our next show is in Toronto on October 11, put on by our old friends at the Wavelength series. And our new single is coming very soon… stay tuned.

Oh, and one more plug: this Sunday, September 28, I’m super stoked and honoured to be co-hosting one of my favourite radio shows, Free Kick, on CKUT in Montreal. I’ll be digging deep into my collection for strange gems and hopefully previewing some new stuff by favourite artists. It’s from 11am-1pm on 90.3 FM in Montreal or ckut.ca.

Sad News, Show News, and a New Song

I was very saddened recently by the sudden passing of Ange-Aimée Woods. She and I were not close per se, but she was a friend as well as a big supporter of all my projects. I’m still a little shocked, not quite over the fact that she’s gone.

Her family and friends have set up a memorial bursary in her name which will support journalism students at Concordia based on financial need. Now j-school might not seem like the most relevant cause to some, but in my opinion, with the state of the media being the way it is, we need informed and passionate journalists more than ever. I think it’s a great way to pay tribute to her enthusiasm and integrity while supporting the people who still care enough to get into this crazy line of work.

I hate to tie this sad news in with self-promotion, but bear with me here. We are playing the Passovah Festival in Montreal on August 21. The festival has released a compilation featuring many of the artists playing at the fest. It’s available at a pay-what-you-can price, with all proceeds going to the Ange-Aimée Woods Memorial Bursary.

The WP has a song on the comp. “Pam Pam” is a brand new tune that will be “officially” released as our new single this fall. It features Stacey on lead vocals and my man Chilly Gonzales on the piano.

Check it out and if you have a few bucks to donate, you can get the whole comp for a good cause.

Enabler – 10th anniversary edition

Ten years ago this week, my album Enabler was released on Ta-Da Records. I’d self-released The Elements of Style a few years previous, but this was my “official” debut on a label. Though the label has since gone into a coma, I will always be grateful to Patti Schmidt and Jeff Waye for believing in my music and wanting to share it with the world.

To mark the occasion, I’ve put together a digital reissue on the WP Bandcamp page including a few bonus tracks from the vaults: a couple that were on Deep Inside The World Provider, a mini-CD EP that I put out in 2003, a couple of alternate versions of Enabler tunes, and a remix.

Enabler definitely has a special place in my heart, bringing on a nostalgic feeling for a time when I was definitely more innocent about the music business, the vagaries of trends, and so on.

The album was recorded and mixed by Jace Lasek at the old Breakglass Studio in downtown Montreal. The wood panelling and low lighting of the 70s-era studio, which reminded me of my grandparents’ suburban basement, was like a comforting womb. We recorded on and off for over a year, whenever I could scrape together the funds. A bunch of friends and family dropped by to contribute their talents, including my brother Nick Fraser, Bitch Lap Lap (who still prefers to be credited by that name on this particular collaboration) and Michael Feuerstack.

I remember agonizing over whether the “rock” tunes would fit with the “lo-fi electro-pop” tunes, and I actually considered splitting the recordings off into two projects. I still occasionally wonder if that would have been better from a marketing standpoint, since putting them together condemned the WP to a grey area between genres.
I grew up in the 80s, and rock songs with synths have always seemed normal to me. But if I’m honest, then as now I was not a prolific writer, and I knew it would take me ages to come up with enough songs for one album per project. Even as is, Enabler clocks in at just under 20 minutes!

I remember that when I sent the mixes around to some friends to get feedback, Mocky suggested that I re-record any vocals that were less than perfect. I dismissed the suggestion out of hand—I couldn’t bear (or probably afford) to go back into the studio yet again—but today, the occasionally off-key and/or mumble-mouthed vocals definitely stand out as a flaw.

But I love the innocent energy of the album, and it has a number of tunes that are still audience faves to this day.

Finally, I know no one cares about CDs anymore, but I must note that the CD version has some pretty amazing artwork by Lee Towndrow and Philippe Blanchard.

Check it out… hope you enjoy.

And forgive me this bit of wallowing in the past. I just got the mixes of the newest WP material and I’m currently scheming up the best way to get it out to the public as soon as possible… so stay tuned.