One of Ottawa's main exports as far as Canadian indie music goes is Amos The Transparent, a band that has been flying high form the critical acclaim of their first two albums and receiving praise for the most recent release Goodnight My Dear... I'm Falling Apart. Personally, the band has grown on me for a few reasons. First, out of all the music that's out there, songs or bands appeals to us for various reasons. Sometimes it's image, catchiness, or lyrics - in the case of Amos, it's a bit of everything. But to me the most attractive aspect of their music is honesty. The honest composition and delivery of their music is refreshing every time you put on their albums, and none more so than their latest release. Their announcement of festival dates at Pop Montreal and Halifax Pop Explosion affirms that they are serious about making their voices heard across Canada.
Tonight they are set to play Zaphod's, I'll be following up this post with a review/interview with the band in collaboration with Apartment 613. In the meantime, here are their tour dates and latest video for "Says The Spark".
TOUR DATES
Aug. 10 @ The Branch, KEMPTVILLE Aug. 16 @ Zaphods, OTTAWA (w/ Battle Mountain Band, Ben Caplan) Aug. 17 @ Rivoli, TORONTO (w/ Revelstoke) Aug. 23 @ Maxwell’s Music House, WATERLOO (w/ Sandman Viper Command) Aug. 24 @ APK, LONDON Aug. 25 @ Phog Lounge, WINDSOR (w/ The Archives)
Last night marked the beginning of this year's increasingly popular Ottawa Dragon Boat Festival 2012, and I popped by Mooney's Bay to soak in the evening sun and catch some of this year's bands. What's even better is that these events are free all weekend, which means people of all walks of life can witness some great Canadian bands in action - from families to die-hard fans.
I was most excited to see Prince Edward Islanders Paper Lions, as their ever-growing catalogue of great music captures the spirit of what Canadian indie is all about. After releasing their acclaimed full-length debut Trophies in 2012, their recent EP release At Long Creekhas been turning heads and was the #1 most listened to stream on Exlaim.ca. Bringing enthusiasm and on-stage character, these guys rocked the diverse crowd into the night as the warm sun set over the festivities. Plus, seeing kids dancing like no one's business up front is an excellent indicator of a great sounding band... it brought a little warmth to my heart knowing they may be the inheritors of this great Canadian sound in the future. After a fun set in which the crowd was involved with singing a few refrain melodies, I was able to meet Colin, David, Rob and John of Paper Lions backstage and get a few words from a couple of the guys:
Matias: You guys just
released you new EP on June 16th, and you have a full length coming
out September as well?
Colin:
That’s right, it’s actually completely finished. September
is a very tentative date though, as far as the new release… we’re basically
keeping the record in our back pocket for now. Just working out a few
logistical things in terms of how we’re going to release it, but yeah hopefully
the fall but chances are it won’t be too long from now.
Rob:
It’s hard to say, you never really know even when you’re not
releasing another record in the meantime, I mean we’re coming out with stuff in
the meantime to push and get out there so we can play that material for people.
In the best of circumstances, records never get released when we think they’re
going to anyway, so it’s often up in the air.
Matias: What’s the
writing process been like with the new album compared to previous releases?
Colin:
Well the latest bunch of songs? One thing we’ve done
differently this time around has been lyrically we kind of went back to our
childhood. We grew up together, John and Rob are brothers and I lived across
the street from them in the rural countryside of P.E.I… so we never really
struggled with lyrics but we always want them to be really good, and I guess
the best way that we’ve found to do that is to go back to our childhood and dig
into some funny stories… it turned out to be a really natural process to sit
around and shoot the shit about when we were kids.
Matias: You guys have
been touring a lot and playing a lot of shows, what band has been the most fun
to hang out with – or do you mostly keep to yourselves?
Rob:
We did a tour with Cake in 2008 and undoubtedly that was the
most fun… sold out crowds every night, accommodations we were provided with
prior to the show, early evening shows were really nice because we’d finish and
be like ‘oh wow, it’s still only 10 o’clock’… so it kind of gave us a taste of
what touring might be like as a really successful band - really delightful,
that’s definitely my personal favourite.
Colin:
I would totally agree with that.
Matias: Coming from a
small town (Belfast P.E.I.), what advice do you have for musicians or bands
form rural or sparsely populated areas?
Colin:
I would just say keep doing it. Whenever we started we kind
of had these grand ideas that we were going to be the hugest band on the planet
in a couple months time, giving ourselves all these deadlines of band dates
like ‘if it doesn’t happen by this time next year, then that’ll be it!’… but
we’ve found that little successes every few months was enough to keep us going.
So it’s best not to have a set mandate of success and to just be happy where
you’re at.
Matias: In your mind, what has been your greatest success as a band?
Colin:
You know, we’ve won some awards and they are nice and all but I think
the thing we are all most proud of us this record we haven’t released yet. At Long Creek was a really fun and
spontaneous project and we are really happy with the end result, but what we
are really excited for is pushing forward the record we worked on in the month
of May with our friend Howard Redekopp in Vancouver.
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Much thanks to the guys from Paper Lions for their time, hopefully we see them back in Ottawa soon!
