VALOIS

Bike to Death 

This song came together in the studio the same way Run to Soybomb did, almost exactly the same way. It started with a loop I created of a synth line, and then I just built over that, layering melodies and accompaniments until the song took shape.

The name has a few meanings to me. Cycling was at the time something I was scared of because of a particular incident, but something I loved. That duality was really on my mind. I didn’t want to get hurt and I didn’t want my friends to get hurt, but I was not willing to give up cycling for that. The more romantic explanation though is this image I have of biking out into the suburbs - sort of biking to the death of the city. Perhaps, as the lights grew further between, and the buildings more sparse, you could bike far enough that there was nothing around at all.

The track is probably the most classically eno-influenced that I’ve done (aesthetically if not by a similar process process), but I think NIN’s more lush work (think The Fragile) had a real effect on it. I also think the more esoteric electronic stuff I liked when I was younger - UNKLE, Air, that Daft Punk album that was super repetitive, etc. had an impression. The Virgin Suicides soundtrack comes to mind especially.

I’ve got a Heart (and it just won’t quit!) 

This track was one of the first recorded for this album. Originally it was much more like Nightmares - all programmed, and with a rigid and logical chord progression.

Connie Wilson sung vocals on this, and she did a fine job. She has a cute, girly voice that did the song better justice than mine would have. The lyrics are inspired by Mother Mother, the music by Phantogram.

When I revisited this track I decided it needed some drastic change if it was gonna fit in with the rest of the material. I also thought that the original arrangement was too complex for its own good. I added a bassline in the chorus. I brought up the guitar in the mix and simplified the drums. I got rid of the restrictive chord progression of the verse and tried different chord combinations before settling on the one I ended up with.

The layering of the synth/guitar riff in the second verse is inspired by Memory Pools.

Conceptually this song is similar to Autumn, but approached differently. It’s very bleak, like Nightmares, still concerned with self-destructiveness.

For comparison, here’s the original version. That melody at the beginning is from a track I wrote a long time ago. I kid you not, originally it had the lyrics “Oh Canada you’re just too wide/I just can’t get from side to side/I met a girl last saturday/now she’s 100 miles away/from Gatineau’s breathtaking trees/to Sudbury’s sulphur breeze/but Vancouver’s a world away/from the world of Saguenay”. Man I hope I’ve evolved since then.

Autumn (Oh Where are You?)
 

This song was originally written and recorded while I was working on Nightmares. If you noticed that the song begins with the synths from ‘Before Waking Up’ then it’s worth mentioning that that song was based on Autumn and not the other way around. For reasons beyond the scope of this post, the Nightmares version of Autumn was weak both in sound and performance. It still almost made the EP but thank god it didn’t. Sometimes, as enthusiastic as you are about a song, it’s just not ready.

When I went back to work on the song again, I redid the guitar with my twelve string and tried to really attack it. It was the day that I had recorded the acoustic part for University of Toronto. I remember I felt like I was on a roll; I don’t think I even actually tuned between the two songs (don’t try this).

I still struggled with the vocals and arrangement, until I had an epiphany. I was listening to the song in playback as I moved a hi-hat across the room. I thought to myself that I liked the sound of it crashing arrhythmically over the song. It then occurred to me - why not record it?

It seems so obvious now, but I was much more conservative for Nightmares. This decision to value sound over traditional musicality opened the floodgates for the Girls album. I added handclaps that followed the melody instead of the beat. I did my vocals in a slurred scream inspired by Bailey’s singing for Andy Sees the Reaper. New synth lines were added. I now loved the track, and this spirit of uncompromising set the tone for the rest of the album (at this point, I had only recorded a demo of Beautiful But Troubled Girls and the final version of University of Toronto).

The song came to me originally on piano. I had been toying around and came upon the chorus chord progression. I then hit upon the melody, which is sort of a permutation of the La Dolce Vita theme by Nino Rota (I can’t remember if that was intentional). The verses and lyrics came later. The song was in D minor until I played it on a uke to show some friends. I was lazy and played it open (which is like a fifth higher or something). I liked it being higher so I experimented a bit with capo position and transposed the song up a tone and a half all in all. The lyric at the end of “My chemical autumn, oh where are you?” came when I was (legitimately) on heavy migraine meds; There’s a hilarious garageband recording of me - totally zonked out - singing it a cappella. 

 Beautiful But Troubled Girls 

This song nearly didn’t make the album. The track came from a different track I had written that was all overwrought and dramatic. I sped it up twice as fast, and ended up writing lyrics that were more satirical and self-parody, very much inspired by Weezer’s Pinkerton and its transparently flawed protagonist. The chorus came to me while walking home from class (imagine a guy humming this song all the way from U of T to the village and that was me, trying not to forget it).

I tried to fit in every Beatles and motown cliche I could when writing the music. The reliance on 5ths, the major to minor change in the chorus, the falsetto before the bridge. I can’t put into words everything I did because I’m not really trained in composition and I do this in my head.

It took forever to write the bridge, but eventually I looked back to Pinkerton and decided to bookend it with two instrumental breaks which brought the song together; I owe that to a million odd listens to “Across the Sea” and “The Good Life”. I am glad, too, that I took my time finishing the composition; It was okay in its original form but is a lot smoother now.

Don Rankin came over to play the drums on the track. When it was recorded, I was still not sure of putting it on the album - it was one of my favorite songs I’d written, but it seemed to not fit. I decided to approach the song with a clean slate. I deleted my bassline and played a really simple synth bass. I laid down synths with the same pad I used on Soybomb and Bike to Death. I added loud, feedback-y guitar. Before long I’d come across a weird, lo-fi sound that fit with the album, even if it emphasized the indie sendup that the lyrics hint at.

Mixing the song took forever; I will be the first to admit that I screwed up when I recorded the drums. I’d love to know what exactly I did, I think I might have made the kit sound too dry without properly treating the room. I STRONGLY suggest listening to this with headphones or decent speakers. I did my best with the mix, but the balance is pretty delicate, and built-in speakers will just emphasize the vocals like crazy. 

Run to Soybomb

Soybomb is a Punk venue in Toronto. It’s a decent sized room with a half-pipe for a stage, and a rooftop balcony that leads to a garden. They’re linked to Food Not Bombs, which is a pretty cool group from what I have experienced. 

The first time I went I was invited by my friend Rebecca. I was blown away by the support and positivity at the show. The Toronto punk scene really seems to take care of its own, and the raw energy at the show was phenomenal. This was near the start of the Montreal student protests, too. There was a real political undercurrent to the night which was great after really not experiencing much at indie shows. There’s still been no action on a grand scale because Ontario’s student leaderships are often either corrupt or at best very complacent, but I have faith in the people who do care. Some of those people were there that night.

The one Quebec band there that night, Sartre, was actually from my turf - Ottawa/Gatineau. Deniz had gone to my high school, and a whole bunch of us hung out afterwards at sneak’s. After a summer spent recording and working, it was a great night and it planted some musical ideas in my head to boot.

This track is not hardcore, but I tried to capture the energy that I feel from punk rock. The physical geography of that section of bathurst/Queen also figured in the song’s aesthetics. The song came together in one night - it was based on a chord progression I had written when I was young on my synth. Each part was written in the studio, and I don’t think anything was deleted. It was a very fast flash of inspiration.

The drums were recorded halfway through the creation of the song - I only threw one mic on them. I did a pretty all-out take with some pretty brutal fills, and mixed it fairly quiet - something I’d gleaned from early Brian Eno. The sound was also pretty inspired by Mogwai’s Rano Pano.

Girls 
 

This song was written later in the sessions, and was originally called Fire Fight. It had a different melody and feel, and the verses had a vocal hook. I created the drum part by chopping up the drums from Berlin. I realized that the rhythmic feel was irreconcilably different once the drums were arranged. I began to challenge myself by rewriting the song to fit the new rhythm. I laid down each part with only the previous parts I’d recorded as a guide. By the time it began to take shape the song was entirely different from its original conception.

Once I had the basics finished, I had Alex over to lay down some bass. He is great at coming up with funky, dynamic lines - something that my verse was really lacking. For various reasons, I was pretty convinced the song had to be a feminist track. It was, however, going to be a magical analogy, which Alex pushed me away from. He played me Fucked Up’s Year of the Pig and I kept that as a mental model for the track.

The song is about rape culture and particularly victim blaming. At the same time, the song connects to bike culture with lines like “Convenience stamped, like a medal, on their death machines” and the intro. Cyclists are often blamed, as victims, as well - notably by Rob Ford with his “swimming with the sharks” quote. I had had some experiences that really affected my views and I had been really writing with a feminist slant as a result. Part of that was by analogy - biking experiences- but part of that was witnessing someone do something very immoral to sleep with a girl. When I came upon “We are the girls” as the chorus, I couldn’t resist how anthemic it made the song. I am not literally a girl of course, but I feel that in order to attack the patriarchy, the status quo of masculinity must be challenged or at least unbound from the dangerously blind loyalties it engenders. I was more than happy to call myself a girl in solidarity, though of course I have not had to go through the things a lot of women have went through.

David Bowie has a song called “Look Back in Anger” and I think subconsciously it had a lot of influence on this song, musically. My delivery in the verses was very consciously influenced by another song from the same album, “Repetition”, which is a really dark song about an abusive relationship that David delivers in a detached monotone. My guitar solo at the end was an attempt at doing some Adrian Belew style tapping. Alex laid down some cool rhythm guitar underneath, as well.

Come on City, Won’t you turn out the Lights?

This song began life when I finished mixing Nightmares. I was toying with an instrumental piece. It began with a Radiohead-esque sort of rock part and ended with a descending synth line over some sidechained synth bass and some chords. The synth line was based on a tapping figure I was playing around with on guitar. I felt it would work better as an 8-bit sort of arpeggiated thing than a guitar part.

Later on, I went in and cut out the beginning of the song. I recorded in its place a number of fingerpicked electric guitar figures which were heavily reverbed. I re-recorded much of the second half of the song with an actual synthesizer - replacing the programmed parts other than the arpeggiated lines with my own playing.

My original plan was to scream over the loud part, then I tried doing a jazzy, harmonized vocal line over the intro (which you can still hear at the end) - sort of as a call and response. Eventually I settled on whispering over the intro. I felt like this that I could lay out some of my political views and feelings. The song’s about Mayor Ford being fat and incompetent, indie music growing predictable, and a certain driver who started stalking me one weekend after a minor bike incident.

The feel of the lyrical piece is very much influenced by Einsturzende Neubauten’s “Prolog” from Haus Der Luege in which the verses are bookended by repeated phrases. Though I can’t really understand most of it, it always had a very tangible lyrical power just by virtue of its structure. The guitar sound in the first half was influenced by Foxes in Fiction - I wanted to have that kind of hazy dreamy feel. I have always found it hard to lend any degree of abstraction to my music and that was very much a struggle this whole album - how to remain powerful without being too literal, particularly in my arrangements. Alejandro Chal is an enduring influence, as well as Nine Inch Nails.