Olenka and I

The first time I ever saw and heard Olenka Krakus, frontwoman and chief songwriter of Olenka and the Autumn Lovers perform live was in a barn on my father's property in Arva, just north of the city of London, Ontario.

My friend and I were holding a benefit concert for a Costa Rican charity on my dad's property, and we invited Olenka and a couple of her Autumn Lovers to close the evening with their music. Though I had heard of Olenka as a musician, I hadn't yet been acquainted with her heartfelt music, low haunting vocals and the Autumn Lovers' contagiously-enthusiastic energy and sound. I remember Olenka stamping through her early repertoire on the makeshift stage, drawing in the entire audience and leading them by the hand through powerful chorus' on songs like "Soldier's Waltz" and "When We Were Children". We watched and hung wide-eyed and mouths dry onto every harmony and 1-2-3, even as an electrical storm raged on the other side of the thin aluminum walls.

That was three years ago. I didn't actually meet Olenka until maybe a year later at a house show or a party, the details aren't as clear. The setting was incontestable though; it was at the Yale St. Speakeasy, former home-venue and headquarters of the Open House Arts Collective and record label by the same name, of which Olenka was a founding member. I had been an admirer of her music since the aforementioned benefit show, but hadn't expected such a warm and genial woman to be the source of music so poignant and sophisticated. Olenka is a fellow Engish Literature major, music-lover and raconteur, and she's gained an enviable cache of musical history, theory and utmost appreciation working as a record store clerk at The Village Idiot. Watching her get as excited as she would over a particular piece of music, or while we sat around singing a McCartney or Dylan tune at a Speakeasy soirée could inspire and enchant even the most pretentious of party-goers.

So I think it's safe to say I've been an admirer of Olenka Krakus as a person and a performer since before we met, and of course ever since. At the risk of sounding like an obsequious fan, she has always upheld the role of a sort of hometown-hero for me, and I've always been really eager to see her and her group succeed. So much so that I used to fear that my admiration would blind, or rather deafen me from hearing or even thinking a sullied word about Olenka and the Autumn Lovers' music, which is a pretty poor quality in a music reviewer. Up until the release of their sophomore studio album And Now We Sing, I would hear the new roundup of O&AL songs at a performance and get so excited for their next set of recordings. I really really didn't want to be disappointed by And Now We Sing, or be the only cloth-eared closet fanatic of the album when no one else was. Fortunately for me and the rest of the listening public, my fears were irrational and my hopes exceeded.

And Now We Sing stomps gloriously past any sort of uniform genre categorization. Dipping toes in Eastern-European oomp-pa-pa, country-western, chamber-pop and americana, Olenka's influences are as broad and extensive as her record collection. While in some artists' cases this can risk delineating an album, And Now We Sing is grounded in Olenka's powerful lyrical themes and adept songwriting. What garners perhaps the most attention and praise for the album, and recently a nomination for a CBC Radio 3 Bucky Award for 'Best Vocals' is just that, the vocals, which move freely in between the lines of warbling, yodeling and crooning, adorned with pitch-perfect harmonies from backup vocalists Sara Froese and Kelly Wallraff.

You can catch Olenka's solo show in London on November 21 at Gigs, or in Toronto opening for the Wilderness of Manitoba and Leif Vollebekk on November 25 at the Horseshoe Tavern. For now and until then, read my solo interview with the Autumn Lovers' frontwoman on the group's recent East Coast tour and CD-release show in London, the time and effort put into And Now We Sing, and Olenka's many vocal influences.

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How was touring the East Coast? What were some of the bands/artists you enjoyed playing with in particular?

The east coast was a blast as always. We had some start-of-tour difficulties (van problems again), but once we were over that hurdle and travelling through the Maritimes again, we forgot all our problems... It's so easy to do that in the Maritimes, because the people are generous and kind and the sights are inspiring. The first town we played in after Montreal was Edmundston, and the folks who took care of us (all the staff and friends of the staff at Lotus Bleu) were incredible: they fed and housed and loved us, and all but adopted us! And the drive in and around Edmundston was probably the most beautiful of the whole tour: hills upon hills of turning leaves. As for bands, we had a really great time playing our two shows with North Lakes - they're out of Charlottetown and feature our dear friend Chris Francis on bass. All the guys in the band were lovely, but aside from being great people they played really catchy Lou Reed meets Ventures tunes. I also really enjoyed our show with Cousins and Jon McKiel in Halifax: melodic, lofi, Haligonian melancholy. And all our shows with Kite Hill in Southern Ontario were wonderful: Ryan Carley is a talented, humble, hilarious gent who runs an all-star orchestral ensemble of his own.

Who was the most interesting person you met on tour?

Well, in my case I had already met Mr. Jim Laracey last year when we toured through Saint John, NB and played a crazy house-show with Bruce Peninsula, Entire Cities, and Weather Station at his abode. But a bunch of my bandmates made his acquaintance for the first time this year. I think our sax player, Shawn Clarke, put it best in his tour musings: "Jim is... something out of a Hemingway novel: a large man with a full beard, boisterous voice, and a big heart." Did I mention that he gave Blair [Whatmore, guitarist] a semi-hollow-body? You know... just cuz... so that Blair would start playing bottleneck slide (which the aforementioned guitar would do much to help) on a more regular basis. He and his daughter, Leanne, and all the fine folks in Saint John always take good care of us when we come down to visit.

How was the CD release show at Aeolian Hall in London?

Let’s see... so much to recount. It was the largest collection of Autumn Lovers ever assembled I think... or at least in a long time, and it won't be that big again for a long while. Kevin [Brasier, bass] flew in from Sackville NB for the show (!!), Shawn caught a ride with Kite Hill from Toronto to attend, and we had local musicians Christian Hegele and Kelly Webb join in on piano/keys and trumpet respectively. There were ten of us on stage at some moments... it felt pretty momentous: I mean aside from the additional members, we were all aware that it was Blair's last show with us, which made things a bit more emotional. Kite Hill were impressive and rich sounding, and it was a treat to be able to share them with the hometown crowd. The audience was also incredible: for the whole night it felt like they were there to celebrate with us, and that we were all there supporting each other in something that's ultimately bigger than all of us. So yeah, I guess it was pretty unique and meaningful.

Can you give me a brief economic breakdown of what went into And Now We Sing? How many hours, days, weeks, months, years of preparation? How much sleep did you lose? How many memories did you gain? Ballpark figures, of course. Approx. how much blood sweat and tears went into it?

Well I won't reveal too much in the way of finances, but let's just say that my VISA is maxed. ;) In terms of hours, I think when we had finally settled on the songs and started rehearsing and were ready to go into Andy [Magoffin]'s studio (House of Miracles), we were at work on the album for about 8 months straight. I produced the album, so for me it was a case of almost constant work from start to finish, setting up schedules, working out arrangements, money, troubleshooting... etc. And a bulk of the work, on which Simon [Larochette] and I spent countless hours in that 8-month period, was made up of editing files and doing some preliminary mixing, in advance of passing files back to Andy and thereafter to Joao Carvalho (who mastered the album). Aside from album recording details, there was also the task of figuring out manufacturing... that was a whole other mountain of work. It all feels like a blur now... not sure if I'm fully (or even partially) recovered yet.

If O&AL's sound was an animal, what animal would it be?

Stravinsky's Firebird.

Congratulations on being nominated for a CBC Radio 3 Bucky Award for Best Vocals! Which vocalists do you admire? Which influence you? Which artist, living or dead, would you sing a duet with if you could?

Vocalists whom I admire, so many for so many different reasons: Julie London, Marlene Dietrich, Jeff Tweedy, Gillian Welch, Loretta Lynn, Kim Deal, Kim Gordon, Chan Marshall, Otis Redding, Elmore James, Billie Holiday, all the Dirty Projectors crew, Annie Clark (St. Vincent), Julie Doiron, Simone Fornow ($100), Roy Orbison, Patsy Cline, and um, obviously the Beatles. I'm sure I'm missing a tonne. As for a duet, I've been saying this for years, but I'd love to sing a song with Jeff Tweedy (living) and Gram Parsons (dead).

Photo by Rob Nelson.

You can read my review of And Now We Sing on Sticky Magazine.

Check out this fantastic video of Olenka, Sara Froese (violin) and Paterson Hodgson (cello) playing "No Coins" from And Now We Sing for www.southersouls.ca

OLENKA AND THE AUTUMN LOVERS - No Coins from Mitch Fillion (southernsouls.ca) on Vimeo.

My Tour of City Lights Bookshop

Tucked in a three-story former antique store in downtown London, Ontario is City Lights Bookshop, the city's shopping destination for an "incredibly eclectic" variety of used books, music and video, kitsch memorabilia and other printed materials. The bookshop provides their patrons with a wide variety of literature on almost every imaginable subject, in addition to rare first editions, pop memorabilia and books signed by the author. Customers looking for a first edition Jack Kerouac novel, a children's book written and illustrated by H.G. Wells, or a Jackie Chan pop album will not leave the store empty-handed.

"There's a little saying about City Lights, that it has had every book at some point in time, but only one copy," manager Tyler Smith laughs. "I think that's a good way to describe this place."

The store started from humble beginnings as a table in the back of a downtown antique shop. It was the project of the young Marc Emery, now well-known as the "Prince of Pot," an international figurehead for cannabis advocacy and a founding member of the Marijuana Party of Canada. In 1975, Emery dropped out of high school, bought the bookstore and moved into a small apartment in the back of the building.

"I developed all my formative political techniques through this bookshop. I learned to hector the public into submission at this bookshop. And I certainly had a whole lot of fun." Emery smiles at the camera during a return to the store in 2008 while owner Teresa Tarasewicz films. Emery passed on City Lights to Tarasewicz and another former employee Jim Capel in 1992 when his wanderlust drew him away from the hometown anchor. "I adore the smell of this place," Emery remembers aloud, "which I've carried around the world with me since."

But well before his "high"ness began rabble-rousing on international platforms, he cultivated his political tenacity in the bookstore. Emery's own Cannabis Culture magazine was first published in City Lights' basement and sold in the shop. He tackled municipal regulations by refusing to close on a Sunday when it was against the law to remain open. After being fined by the city, he sold t-shirts in the shop that read, "I'm a criminal browser. I shopped at City Lights on a Sunday."

Tarasewicz was a film student at Western when she was hired by Emery as a window dresser. "At the time, it was very hard to find parking downtown, and people wouldn't come downtown to shop because of how much it cost," Tarasewizc remembers. "It was the holidays, so we made a display of Santa's sleigh being towed. It got a lot of attention!"

Though City Lights' window displays have always gotten attention thanks to Tarasewizc and her employee's fun attitude and creative flair. A Christmas, Halloween and Pride Week display always have an annual slot, but otherwise the City Lights team get creative and cheeky when dressing their window. It is, after all, the customers' first taste of all that City Lights offers. And I don't just mean books. As Tarasewicz says, "we like to have the atmosphere of visible fun."

This fun atmosphere attracts all sorts of clientele, from rare book collectors to armchair fiction lovers. Even a few famous patrons have walked through City Lights' door, including Leslie Feist ("She loved us!") and a couple members of Sonic Youth. Actor Crispin Glover had once come in looking for books on his only two topics of interest: "Volcanoes and diseased eyeballs!" Tarasewizc laughs. "And we had books on both of those subjects!"

It is really no wonder that the word on City Lights bookshop has extended far past their London regulars, especially when they treat their regulars so well. The bookshop's employees are far better than any surly old clerk you'll find in other used bookstores. Walk through the door and within seconds you'll be greeted by smiling faces and offers of help. The staff has been known to tear apart entire bookshelves and displays just to find a single book for a patron, and their database-like knowledge of their stock rivals big-box bookshops and online stores. The difference is it is all in their heads. "At City Lights there is no question too trivial, no book unimportant," Smith tells me.

But even during my visit, the store's old cash register breaks down. Smith manages to get it working again within a few moments fortunately, but it leaves behind a shadow of a doubt. Can an old-fashioned bookshop like City Lights stand its ground in the digital age? Will this old flame be snuffed out by the likes of Amazon.com or Indigo books? "You know, we have to ask ourselves, are we done?" Tarasewizc says. "It is something we worry about in this digital age. Maybe we should turn this into a museum instead."

But leave it to the City Lights staff to keep the mood light and the atmosphere fun. In the face of the digital takeover, Smith and Tarasewizc accredits the shop's perseverance to the staff's "physical love of books". "Is that a hard cover, or are you just happy to see me?" Tarasewicz laughs. "Yeah, now remove your dust jacket. Slowly," Smith joins in. At the end of the day, the City Lights staff is satisfied with their old fashioned cataloguing and customer to clerk relations. As Tarasewicz tells me, "we just like to see the books go to a good home."

Talking with Caribou

"Music is an emotional thing," Daniel Snaith, the man behind the mammal, explains from a 416 area code. "It's being intuitive and getting an emotional response. That's why I love music and I'm pretty sure that's why everyone loves music." He and the performing members of Caribou had played their first North American tour date the night before in Toronto, where 10 years earlier Snaith had attended the University of Toronto as a student in mathematics.

Many would think that because of his academic life or the way his albums sound that the sole songwriter and musician behind Caribou would approach music-making analytically—like a math equation. "I can see why people would imagine that's the way I would do things, because I have kind of a mathematic personality, but those kind of things aren't what I use to make music at all."

Though he may keep his analytical and creative hemispheres distinct, it begs the question of whether or not Caribou would be as celebrated in his community if his albums lacked that mathematical structure.

Following the national acclaim over his 2008 Polaris Music Prize winner Andorra, Caribou's latest release, Swim, was undoubtedly one of the most highly anticipated albums of the new decade. Snaith's newest effort offers a response to the present-day fixation with music that makes you move—Swim's fluid energy will do just that.

The album's sonic liquidness contrasts with the techno tendency to have a progression that's rigidly formulaic. The fluid melodies combined with the structural ebb and flow evokes Snaith's own creative balance between aesthetic and mathematic structure. Its layers of syrupy synth, propulsive bass and explosive percussion call for total dance-floor domination, a turnaround style departing from Andorra's psych-pop charm.

"The exciting thing for me in the last couple years has been lots of young dance music producers. Like, a lot of club culture, which informed this new album of mine," the London, Ontario-born and London, England-dwelling Snaith says about what inspired and fixated him throughout the time of Swim's conception.

Snaith moved to the United Kingdom in 2001 to attend Imperial College London for his PhD. The last decade spent in the UK's hotbed of music and culture exposed Snaith to volumes of new styles. "Bands are always coming through town. There's always things going on," Snaith says of his new stomping grounds. Delving into the city's dance scene, both on the dance floor and overlooking it as a DJ, gave way to his new songwriting style.

"I was making dance music just to DJ with for the fun of it because I was excited about dance music," Snaith recalls. "What happened inevitably was the Caribou stuff ended up being more danceable, the dance music ended up being more Caribou-like and [Swim] just ended up somewhere in the middle."

While dancing influenced its energy, Swim's unique sound and concept was born of an entirely different sort of movement. Snaith wrote and recorded the album while learning to swim.

"I actually had a pool growing up in Dundas, [Ontario], but I never had swimming lessons," Snaith remembers. "I could swim. But barely. I was terrible at it." After getting swimming lessons as a Christmas gift two years ago from his wife, Snaith started from scratch. "Over the course of that year I learned to swim and became kind of obsessed by it. I was thinking about music that sounded totally liquid."

While Swim doesn't have much of a narrative, at least not a vocal one, Snaith calls it the first album he's made that has an "aesthetic concept".

"Conceptually I was thinking about what sounds would behave like if they were made out of fluid and if they washed around like a fluid. But also that idea that things sound different when you're underwater rather than listening to it through the air."

Many of the songs on Swim evoke images and feelings of submerged sublimity. "Sun" brings to mind the innocence and excitement of going under to escape the unadulterated heat of the day, unsure of whether it's water or sunlight melting around you. "Bowls" has a controlled chaos like treading water in indefinitely deep water, sort of like Radiohead's Kid A, and "Hannibal" and "Lalibela" move confidently through the sonic tides, finally mastering the movements. The album opener and single "Odessa", however, is the most frantic track; it's a frightened struggle, thrashing around with your chin just barely above the water, limbs slapping against the surface and demanding buoyancy.

"‘Odessa' was a happy accident in a way," Snaith recalls of the songwriting process. "I didn't think much of it. I went for a swim and came back in the afternoon and listened back to it and was surprised by how immediate it was and how well it worked."

While the single doesn't necessarily evoke the fluidity that the rest of Swim does, it opens the album on dancing feet. "It's a really erect, exclamatory statement about the kind of dance music influence on the album."

Following the lush and psychedelic "Melody Day", the single from 2008's Andorra, "Odessa" certainly was erect and exclamatory. "Melody Day" is accessible and hugely popular, and was a large factor in nabbing the Polaris Music Prize for Andorra the year of its release. The cash prize of $20,000 is awarded each year to an outstanding Canadian album from a short list of nominees. Even after being shortlisted, Snaith greatly underestimated his chances at winning the coveted award. "I never even considered [winning]! I came over to Toronto but I didn't even think of asking my wife to come along," Snaith laughs. "In retrospect, maybe I should have taken it a bit more seriously."

Snaith recalls the experience of winning the award as "extremely surreal". "I've always thought of my music as an individual pursuit, and if people are interested in it than that's great to be recognized in that way, as a part of a community of Canadian musicians," he says. While some of the prize money went towards recording and mixing Swim, Snaith also donated a portion of his winnings to Ecojustice and the Steven Lewis Foundation.

To achieve even half the things Dan Snaith has accomplished would be a dream come true for most people. A hugely talented, award-winning musician and mathematics PhD—he's not only able, but adept in both areas. Would he ever retire from making albums and - like his father, sister and grandfather, all math teachers—put that PhD to use? He answers without hesitation: "I don't want to do anything with [the PhD]. I did it because I enjoyed it at the time. If I never use it again, it's not a regret. I'm happy that I did it for the sake of doing it."

Making music through Caribou is Snaith's main focus these days. "It's always what I've wanted to do the most. And I'm ecstatic that I'm getting to do it!"

While those who can't, teach, those who can, do. Caribou's Daniel Snaith is an influence and an inspiration to countless musicians, both Canadian and not, and a trailblazer for unique and visionary styles in psych-pop, indie and electronica. Sometimes it is better to lead by example than to show them the way.