BeatRoute Magazine B.C. print e-edition - July 2016

JPNSGRLS
finding the right time for the right places
Vancouver’s JPNSGRLS have momentum
on their side. Last year was especially
big for the eclectic alternative rock unit
as Charlie Kerr (vocals), Colton Lauro (guitar),
Chris McClelland (bass), and Graham Seri
(drums) took the stage at Liverpool Sound
City, SXSW, and BC’s own Pemberton Valley
JPNSGRLS offer up a movable feast of creative evolution with their debut, Divorce.
Music Festival. For Kerr, performing at Western
Canada’s premier open air festival was a
life changing experience. “Not only did we get
to play this huge show for tons of people, it
was a great opportunity. As we go across the
country we find so many people who tell us
that they saw us at Pemberton and after that
became fans,” Kerr says. “Sometimes it takes
one of those instances where the stars align.
Sometimes all it takes is people seeing you at
the right show.”
On July 22, JPNSGRLS drop their long
awaited sophomore LP Divorce. Enlisting
the efforts of David Schiffman (Red Hot Chili
Peppers, The Mars Volta), Tom Dobrzanski
(The Zolas), and Steve Bays (Hot Hot Heat,
Mounties) to co-produce a handful of tracks a
piece, Divorce is shaping up to be a significant
step forward for the band. The band has
matured in many respects. Kerr remarks that
McClelland, Seri, and Lauro have become
more inventive players, and he feels that his
skill set as a vocalist and lyricist has also
improved. “As a singer, I’m pound for pound
better. There are more ambitious vocals [on
the album],” he says. “As a lyricist, it was
really important to me to get more personal
and write something that only I could write,
write something with my sense of humour
and my politics and my life experiences, as
mundane as they might seem to me. I met
somebody who was really terrific and they
inspired me to think that I was worth writing
about without having to stand behind a cliché
or sound like all the musicians and artists that
I grew up on.”
The emphasis that Kerr places on personal
reflection and exploration manifests itself
in an intriguing deconstruction of the title of
their soon to be released album. “The album
title is a reference to in ‘Oh My God’ when
I say ‘I was conceived in New York/ Two
strangers planted a seed/ And that was four
years before the divorce/ I think it had an affect
on me.’ I kind of started looking at myself
as if I was a character in a movie, as if my life
was a film” Kerr explains. “I was looking at
what my glaring flaws were and one of them
was a very warped experience and a warped
point of view of what love is, kind of an all or
nothing sensibility and idealism. I was trying
to dissect that and get to the bottom of it. A
hypothesis of mine was that perhaps love is
such a weird, twisted thing because I never
got to see it between my parents. The origin
story of the songwriter Charlie Kerr is that
divorce.”
Along promoting and touring to support the
new album, Kerr already expresses anticipation
at returning to the studio to begin
working on the next song cycle. “I think we’ll
be busier than we ever have been and we’re
really excited about that. Now I’m in a place
where I don’t quite recognize the guy who
wrote and sang all the Divorce material,”
Kerr says. “That seems foreign to me so I’m
excited to move on to the next set of songs
that I’m writing.”
JPNSGRLS celebrate the release of
Divorce on July 22 at the Fox Cabaret.
by James Olson
WHITNEY
hope springs out of the dead of a Chicago winter
by Jamie McNamara
When you sit down to talk with Whitney’s
core duo of Julien Ehrlich and
Max Kakacek, its hard not to smile.
They are indie rock mainstays; Ehrlich is an
ex-drummer of Unknown Mortal Orchestra,
and Smith Westerns where he worked
alongside lead guitarist Kakacek. The men
weathered the dissolution of Smith Westerns
in 2013 by forging a close friendship and
sharing a Chicago apartment that would soon
become ground control for a surge of positive
creative energy.
Those early writing sessions resulted in
two demos: “No Matter Where We Go,” and
“Golden Days,” both of which have been
spruced up for their appearance on the duo’s
forthcoming debut album Light Upon the Lake.
There’s a certain simplicity that runs
through Whitney’s music, the songs are often
short and usually simple, but not sparse.
The two often talk about their appreciation
of the confessional country rock of the ‘70s
and this has resulted in a collection of songs
that sound like instant classics; familiar yet
brand new. Ehrlich, who pulls double duty
both drumming and singing in Whitney, says
the simplicity stems from a desire to get away
from perfection and over-production.
“I think a little bit of it is that we didn’t perfect
everything. We performed the takes so
they’re perfectly imperfect. There are some
6 MUSIC
weird mess-ups in certain songs that we both
really love. If they were taken out it would
sort of change them for us in a way we didn’t
want them to change.”
The simplistic approach extends to the
equipment used in studio. The album was
recorded on a 16-track Tascam tape machine
which Kakacek credits with keeping the duo
from overworking the songs.
“Its way easier to overdo it, to make something
too busy, than it is to make something
really simple.,” he recalls. “For our personalities
it worked in our advantage where it
forced us to cut all the fat out of arrangements.”
That’s not to say the album doesn’t feature
flourishes. Rich horns and strings crop up
throughout, like on the stunning “Polly”; a
song that starts with Ehrlich’s gentle croon
and a Rhodes organ, but builds into a massive,
psuedo-Chicago horn chorus.
Yet while the record sounds effortless,
its creation came at a difficult time for both
Ehrlich and Kakacek, both having lost bands
and girlfriends in quick succession. Still, the
album sounds transitional but celebratory
and both are quick to mention they’ve made
it to greener pastures, which is clear at first
listen.
“I think that’s a testament to us as people,”
Ehrlich declares. “I think a lot of the lyrical
content is pretty serious, but even when we
were going through some of the darker stuff
that got put on the album - were just happy
dudes, so that’s probably why it would sound
more lax.” He follows this with a humble
laugh at his word choice.
“I think it’s an uplifting and hopeful record.
A lot of the music is by design pretty hopeful,
it’s a hopeful balance to the sad lyricism.
I think that’s exactly the state we were in.
We were stuck in, for better or for worse,
the shittiest winter in Chicago, but I think it
forced some good shit out of us.”
Whitney performs with Michael
Rault at The Cobalt August 1.
Julien Ehrlich and Max Kakacek melt the ice of the past to create a light-hearted future.
July 2016