Parlour Steps
The October 2009 release of The
Hidden Names by Nine Mile Records act Parlour Steps should
finally put a spotlight on one of Canada’s most intriguing bands.
“If there is an overall theme to
be distilled it would be of the never-ending search for meaning and
connection in today’s world,” Caleb Stull, the band’s founder,
chief songwriter, singer and guitarist says of the album.
The keen intelligence, the
ambitious ideas, the pride in tackling heady, cerebral concepts that
has characterized the band from Vancouver, British Columbia, from the
get-go remain intact. But a newfound musical confidence gives a
carefree flow to the band’s music, with a vivacious presence and
palpable warmth.
Lauded by the Canadian press,
Parlour Steps has at various times evoked comparisons to the brainy
pop of XTC, the drama of Arcade Fire, the lyrical focus of Sufjan
Stevens and the snappy rhythmic grip of the Pixies. But it is Caleb
Stull’s relentless curiosity and daring songwriting that separates
the quartet from the indie-rock pack.
The opening track, the buoyant “As
the World Turned Out,” for example, attempts to explore “our
laughable, small- lensed grip on ourselves,” w …
Parlour Steps
The October 2009 release of The
Hidden Names by Nine Mile Records act Parlour Steps should
finally put a spotlight on one of Canada’s most intriguing bands.
“If there is an overall theme to
be distilled it would be of the never-ending search for meaning and
connection in today’s world,” Caleb Stull, the band’s founder,
chief songwriter, singer and guitarist says of the album.
The keen intelligence, the
ambitious ideas, the pride in tackling heady, cerebral concepts that
has characterized the band from Vancouver, British Columbia, from the
get-go remain intact. But a newfound musical confidence gives a
carefree flow to the band’s music, with a vivacious presence and
palpable warmth.
Lauded by the Canadian press,
Parlour Steps has at various times evoked comparisons to the brainy
pop of XTC, the drama of Arcade Fire, the lyrical focus of Sufjan
Stevens and the snappy rhythmic grip of the Pixies. But it is Caleb
Stull’s relentless curiosity and daring songwriting that separates
the quartet from the indie-rock pack.
The opening track, the buoyant “As
the World Turned Out,” for example, attempts to explore “our
laughable, small- lensed grip on ourselves,” while “Miraculous,”
says Stull, “riffs on our nihilistic self-absorption, so woefully
out of place in such a massive universe as ours.”
Stull calls “Soft Lies,” “a
simple love song about getting mired in too much self-awareness,”
while the closing tune “Mad Mad Day” he describes as detailing
“our common alienation of ‘others,’ and our general suspicions
that people different from us couldn’t possibly want and need the
same things out of life. The end line, repeated over and over, is
really a call to arms, to never let others decide your values for
you, to never let ignorance and pride lead the way.”
The Hidden Names is the
lovely and logical successor to Ambiguoso, 2008’s previous
full-length for Nine Mile Records and the first Parlour Steps album,
(after three previous albums, including 2005’s acclaimed The
Great Perhaps) to get a full United States release.
“The confidence on The Hidden
Names comes from the rather successful experiments in pop
simplicity of our work on Ambiguoso,” says Stull, who also
produces the band’s work. “The emotion is closer to the surface.
We feel less and less concerned with coming off as cool and
calculated and have decided, instead, to just write simpler pop
tunes.”
The Hidden Names also
benefits from a winning chemistry in and out of the studio, on stage
and off. It is the first album to feature Alison Maira on keyboards.
Joining singer/guitarist Stull, bassist/vocalist Julie Bavalis,
guitarist Rees Haynes, and drummer Robert Linton, Parlour Steps now
has the ripest, fullest musicality and emotional balance it has ever
had.
“Alison is an excellent player,”
Stull says. “Introducing her and her keyboard work has lent us a
lyricism, a beauty we didn’t have before.”
What makes The Hidden Names
stand out is that the five-piece band contributes with single-minded
energy to what Stull calls “the greater good of the song.” The
greater good of the song: If there is any commandment that defines
Parlour Steps, it is yielding to the greater good of the song. That
is something the world discovered in 2005, when “Thieves of Memory”
won second place in the rock category in International Songwriter’s
Competition, an annual event which that year drew some 15,000
entries.
But that was then, and Parlour
Steps are not ones to rest on past achievements. In those days, the
band got much mileage out of Stull’s somewhat tongue-in-cheek
coinage of the phrase “thought rock” to describe the band’s
music. Though Caleb is certainly unapologetic about the accuracy or
usefulness of the phrase in gaining some attention for Parlour Steps,
he is quite content to let fade away what he acknowledges may have
been a “rather pretentious sounding conceit.”
“While I would love to pretend
the lyrics evoked some sort of cerebral itch in our listeners, all
the while our music was becoming more intuitive and visceral and
ultimately less cerebral,” Stull says. “To paraphrase Zadie
Smith, we have tried to bolster a rhythm that does not exclude
thinking.” Listen to “The Hidden Names” and you’ll snap your
fingers, shake your body, twitch your leg, and soon enough, most
tracks will have you dancing – without even thinking about it.
--Wayne Robins (Music Critic &
former Senior Review Editor, Billboard Magazine)
LABEL:
Nine
Mile Records
(www.ninemilerecords.com)
Rick
Pierik, rick.pierik@gmail.com, tel. 413.885.3465
PUBLICITY:
(US)
Team
Clermont
(www.teamclermont.com)
(CAN)
Killbeat
Music Promotions
(www.killbeatmusic.com)
Ken
Beattie, kb@killbeatmusic.com, tel. 604.683.2124
DISTRO: (US)
Burnside
Distribution
(www.bdcdistribution.com)
(CAN)
FAB
Music
(www.fab.ca)
BOOKING:
File
Under Music Agency
(www.fileundermusic.com)
Rob
Perron, rob@fileundermusic.com, tel. 604.377.7625
BAND: info@parloursteps.com,
tel. 604.339.3683
WEB: Sonicbids
(www.sonicbids.com/parloursteps)
Myspace
(www.myspace.com/parloursteps)
Band
Website
(www.parloursteps.com)
“Vancouver’s Parlour Steps are just sensational!”
- Ryan’s Smashing Life
“There’s something beautiful in Parlour Steps and everything they produce.” - Northeast In-Tune
