The Acorn w/Gianna Lauren

“This time we know what to expect,” says Acorn leader Rolf Klausener of the band’s show at St. Matt’s, where the band played last HPX. “We had fun playing dodgeball in the gym downstairs with Ohbijou.” The capital city quintet comes back on the strength of June’s No Ghost, the follow-up to 2008’s Glory Hope Mountain. The Acorn decamped to a cottage in northern Quebec, making music at all hours, then finished the LP in a Montreal studio. “I didn’t shower for about eight days. I slept in the basement of the studio,” says Klausener. “I felt like it would be nice to stay immersed in the studio atmosphere. It was pretty gross.”

Considering The Acorn began as a recording project in Klausener’s bedroom, adapting to a group songwriting process was difficult. “I think if I was going to go write collaboratively again, it would be with one other person. If you have seven people, which we did in the first week, for me personally it’s too much. When I write lyrics I generally need to be in a very comfortable space, and I just didn’t have that privacy.” But that doesn’t mean there weren’t rewards: “‘Misplaced’ was completely written at the cottage and it’s easily my favourite song on the record. The lyrics came out in minutes. It was one of those beautiful things.” Halifax will mark the debut of The Acorn’s “small stage show,” says Klausener. “We thought it’d be fun to bring a little bit of the cottage with us on tour, the show’s gonna reflect the cottage vibe…We’ve been touring Canada for a bit now, and Canada has been so wonderful for us, and how much love and support we seem to get. It feels like I want to bring a bit more of a show.”

This article appears in Sep 9-15, 2010.