According to singer Jeremy Gaudet, it’s not the Tsarists who are grinding Boxer the Horse’s (named for the character in Animal Farm) gears. Actually, it’s actor Zooey Deschanel.
“PEI’s a summer province—it’s inspiring in the summer, not the winter, and we try to reflect that,” he says. “We [initially] named our album 300 Days of Sun, but we can’t compete with (500) Days of Summer. So now it’s Would You Please. Because Zooey,” he asks us earnestly, were we Ben Gibbard’s doe-eyed better half, “Would you please stop ruining our albums?”
But we’re not Summer Finn, and it’s doubtful that Deschanel’s ruining anything, much less the Charlottetown foursome’s new 11-song LP. Boasting the crackling pop production of Two Hours Traffic’s Alec O’Hanley, Would You Please is released April 23.
Recorded over the span of eight months in Halifax and PEI, Please is a vinyl snob’s dream: a melting pot of ’90s slacker rock, ’60s jangle pop and Dylan-esque Americana.
“We listened to a lot of Crooked Rain, the Kinks and [’80s power-pop group] the dBs,” he says. “We have a pretty strong subconscious when we’re writing. A lot of it manifests itself without us thinking about it.”
While their lauded previous effort, The Late Show, was a collection of displaced Middle American narratives, Gaudet says Please is more focused on all things local. “We’ve never been outside of eastern Canada,” he says, making clear the band’s not ready to leave the island yet, lyrically or otherwise.
“We don’t want to make the move blindly to another city. We’d want to establish ourselves first. There’s no destination yet.”
And for now, we’re fine with that.
This article appears in Apr 22-28, 2010.