The Hippodrome

Crabapples (Live) Download

Photograph by David Waldman

Think for a second about the number of times you’ve asked an artist what their biggest influence is. Now think about the number of times you got Alan Lomax (a storied ethnomusicologist who traveled the American south collecting field recordings) as an answer. “We’ve always wanted the Lomax influence to be just a piece of what we do,” says Neil Haverty, who sings and plays guitar, snare, and metalophone in Bruce Peninsula. “It showed us a lot about what it takes to be really good singers and gave us an authentic alternative to some of the more contrived, affected singing that happens in indie rock.”

Judging by what’s come my way, Bruce Peninsula seems to deliver one of the most authentic vocal performances I’ve heard in quite a while. All eleven members — Matt Cully, Misha Bower, Neil Haverty, Andrew Barker, Steve McKay, Isla Craig, Katie Stelmanis, Casey Mecija, Kari Peddle, Maya Postepski, and Leon Tahen contribute to the choir. The band has begun work on their first record which I predict will make some serious waves, pun half intended. Haverty tells me it’s being recorded all over Toronto, most recently at St. George the Martyr, a huge Anglican church.

Even with quite a smaller budget than Canadian cohort’s The Arcade Fire’s church project, also known as Neon Bible, there’s reason to believe that this record will have some serious soul. This notion is reinforced not only by one of Final Fantasy’s engineers (Leon Taheny) manning the knobs and contributing musically, but also by the painstaking construction of the dense vocal parts that the band takes such pride in.

Understandably reluctant to pigeonhole themselves in any stylistic niche, Haverty, under duress, suggests a similarity to pop experimentalists like Smog, The Dirty Projectors, and Bonnie “Prince” Billy. “I was once told that we sound like Will Oldham fronting an aboriginal women’s choir,” Haverty says.

I can’t imagine that could be taken as anything less than a compliment, especially for this culturally fascinated super group, although I have trouble hearing it. I suppose its not hard to believe when you consider that BP has been playing Washington Phillips and Vera Ward Hall covers since day one, which have also been covered in recent years by Mr. Oldham himself.

The Hippodrome’s track available for download, “Crabapples,” was recorded live at last month’s Dog Day Afternoon Music Festival in Toronto. Bruce Peninsula has largely been a live act, and until their upcoming album is finished this Christmas, this track is a pretty good representation of what the band is all about. In order to preserve this “liveness,” BP opted to record some tracks on the upcoming disc in live takes, which will hopefully contain the same power and intensity of “Crabapples.”

“We’ve been careful not to play too much,” Haverty says, “because a band that plays any gig that comes their way is either going to burn out really fast or make people sick of them.” This maturity is rare in bands who haven’t even dropped their first record, and speaks volumes about these Canadians who may soon make every hipster in North America add Alan Lomax to their record rotation.

This entry was posted by Ben Bernstein on Thursday, September 27th, 2007 at 5:22 pm and is filed under Blurbs, Written By Ben Bernstein. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.