The recording process for a band like The Most Serene
Republic always sounds like the punchline to a lousy joke: What happens
when you throw a big group of diverse, classically trained, cosmically
minded musicians in a room together? Fortunately, the band (who mostly
hail from pastoral Milton, Ontario) has somehow managed to produce a
unified front in two previous releases. Its third album, …And the
Ever Expanding Universe, is its most radio-friendly outing, while
still maintaining the group’s distinctive arty clatter. Sing-er Adrian
Jewett says the group listened to their parents’ records for
inspiration.
“In terms of a Motown-sounding record, we really wanted to explore
that era, melody-wise,” he says on the phone from Toronto. “We wanted
to be more of the body than of the mind this time around, get a bit
more grounded.”
…And the Ever Expanding Universe also bears a resemblance
to another album that has gotten people’s hips a-wiggling this year:
Phoenix’s Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. The song “Heavens to
Purgatory” has that band’s modus operandi figured out to a t—there’s
the ambient buildup, the sweet yelping vocals and the final stomping
release.
“We had to change our mode, our whole thing,” says Jewett. “We get
bored very easily. We had to make some kind of drastic change.” The
band looked to super-producer Dave Newfeld to put it all together.
Newfeld is no stranger to larger groups, having produced Broken Social
Scene’s You Forgot It in People and Feel Good Lost. The
band relished the warmth in his sound—and attitude.
“Newfeld brought a new way to record,” he says. “It was a lot less
fun before. He’s an intense guy, but this time it felt more like a
hanging-out process. We used to be all about the efficiency of a
particular line, not the mistakes. But sometimes we like the
mistakes.”
The song “No One Likes a Nihilist,” with its BSS-inspired drum
shuffle, features one of these unexpected moments. Jewett and bandmate
Emma Ditchburn improvised the chorus on the fly and it features their
voices skillfully weaving in and out. Overall, it seems the group has
softened, playing with the impromptu and embracing the lovely accidents
that emerge from within.
“We all have a built-in capacity for mistakes, that’s obvious,”
Jewett says. “It’s more important when you can find the beauty there
and make it interesting.”
This article appears in Nov 26 – Dec 2, 2009.