Photos: Meg O’Connell
For those of you who may be unaware, July Talk’s Leah Fay will gladly teach you how to insert a tampon. While this informative display may not be that of a series, she was certainly prepared to demonstrate via pantomime for the crowd at Algonquin College during their sold-out-in-pre-sale show on November 27.
This has come to be expected from the five-piece, Toronto-based rock band, who are arguably as well known for the shenanigans that occur during their performances as they are for their music. Past shows have even gone as far to include Fay completely wrap lead singer and guitarist Peter Dreimanis in duct tape mid-song, and Dreimanis accidentally hitting Fay in the face with his guitar and then immediately splitting his own face open in turn. Really, asking fans for their tampons and shoving one up her nose after receiving them is far from unusual behaviour, and could even be considered somewhat conservative.
“We have this rule, ‘never say no to the other person’,” said Dreimanis of the band’s on-stage antics. “ It’s seeing things people are trying to do and just going for it. Leah’s so good at that and she brings so much of that to the show, there’s been so many times when we felt like, I have absolutely no idea what’s coming, and she doesn’t really know either. It’s very rare that we go in [to a show] with something planned and if it is planned, the only reason is because we’ll need something, like fake blood. But really, it’s just about being really present and constantly looking around and assessing the situation and trying to find a way to make it more exciting for yourself and for the people in the room. We don’t take it lightly.”
The high-energy, transcendent, party that is a July Talk show is the answer to any rock fan’s dreams. Their show at Algonquin College’s Observatory was no different. From the moment show opener Eamon McGrath (Dreimanis’s childhood friend) took the stage, to the last song of the night, the venue shook until early hours with the entire crowd dancing and singing along with all that they had. Dreimanis, Fay, and the rest of the band (made up of Josh Warburton on bass, Danny Miles on Drums, and Ian Docherty on guitar) gave their audience everything they needed, and then things they didn’t even know they wanted. It was sexy, aggressive, spontaneous, and beautifully executed.
July Talk’s sound is a balancing act of gritty, in-your-face, unhinged rock and roll, and polished, deliberate melodies. It’s this overlaying theme of extreme contrast that can be found in all aspects of what they do as a band—from music and lyrics, to video and stage presence. July Talk has perfected this presentation of one extreme to another; a perfect example found in their From the Road video series, which documents their trip across North America mid-tour.
The series, filmed and produced by Jared Rabb (whom Dreimanis refers to as the ‘sixth member of July Talk’) was shot all day, every day of the tour and edited in the van on the way to the next show. Hosted on the Culture Collide website, From the Road captures the manic rollercoaster that is July Talk; the chaos and controlled mayhem that is their performances, and the silent down time spent behind the scenes. Shot in black and white (as with the rest of July Talk’s videos and photos) the series allows viewers to get a truly genuine glimpse into the lives of the band.
“These videos are genuinely what our lives are like,” said Dreimanis. “We’ve never really been able to step back and look at it like that, but while he’s editing, you can see the ups and downs and how crazy our lives are—going from screaming and screaming at thousands of people one second, to being silent in a van the next.”
Both Dreimanis and Warburton are filmmakers, with many video credits under their belts (including an Arkells music video) and stress the important role visuals play in July Talk’s presentation. True artists to their core, video ideas are often born as lyrics are being written. With lyrics and videos dependant on the one another, July Talk places emphasis on creating one voice through which they share their story.
“[Jared] is such an expert at creating that back and forth.,” said Dreimanis. “Going forward, we really want to be sure that everything we do involves him and documents what we’re doing. Moving towards the second record, we know that it will be a visual record as much as it is subject for your ears. That’s been a priority of ours form the beginning, because the visual side is so important to us.”
At the time of this interview, July Talk had released the album For Your Bloodshot Eyes, a re-release of the album Guns + Ammunition with three additional songs, were on the last leg of their North American tour (which they embarked on just after coming home from a European tour) and had just released the first two installments of the From the Road video series. To say they’ve been keeping busy is an understatement, and they look forward to a low-key January and the opportunity to get back to writing.
“You can’t write on tour,” said Dreimanis. “We’re trying to learn how to do so on tablets and laptops and stuff just because that’s really the only way, but we write as a five-piece-band, so all of us write collaboratively, and whenever you get really excited about a song idea and you’re on the road, it’s a very frustrating process trying to show the rest of the band. When we come home it just makes a lot of sense for us to just seclude ourselves in a place with no cell phone service, without any contact with the record label or with management, and all that stuff, just to put our heads down and write.“
A familiar process for the band, who in January of this year locked themselves away in a cabin outside of Ottawa to write the three additional songs (Blood+Honey, Uninvited, and Gentleman) for For Your Bloodshot Eyes together. A collaborative effort, each member has a say in the production of the music, from start to finish.
“I don’t think we could make the kind of music that we do without one of the five of us involved,” said Dreimanis. “We all know the base of the band is this conversation between Leah and I. We know that that’s what kind of creates the dynamics and from that point forward it’s about really finding an idea, a hook, and pitch it to the rest of the band and make it live within that July Talk voice. Essentially for us, that means that we need to be creating these conversations that are really, really dynamic and mimic that, sort of, desert swagger, rock and roll. I think we try and find the July Talk in every song [we write] and then Leah and I go away and edit each other’s lyrics, very heavily, and we fuck them up; put them in a blender and make sure that they’re really, really cohesive with each other, we want to write really cohesive material.”
It’s these conversations between Fay and Dreimanis (that play out onstage beautifully, due to the pair’s undeniable chemistry) that keep their listeners and live audience hooked. Aside from their rapport, the sharp contrast between Fay and Dreimanis’s unique voices complement each other well—he, a gravely, Waitsian sound and she, a more delicate and controlled tone that is reminiscent of Emily Haines.
“We try to, kind of, reinvent the duet,” said Dreimanis. “We know how different our voices are and so we just try and use that to our advantage. We really want to write kinetic sounding music- music that’s always pushing forward. We’ve learned that the audience can handle a lot of content being thrown at them. A lot of the time lyrics are really heavily shrouded in mystery so that it rolls off the tongue at the end and so that they can be easily relatable to everybody, and I don’t think we really care about that.
We’re much more interested in being super direct and taking on an issue that we have, personally or in the world, and really taking it head on. It’s like, what is the scariest thing that we don’t want to say to a bunch of people… and that’s probably what the lyrics are going to be. We just push each other to be really, really brave and be the type of characters that we may not even be like, just to make a point.”
Considering themselves to be more of a live band, July Talk test-drives songs freshly written while on the road, inserting it into a tour prior to recording and seeing how receptive their fans are. After careful consideration of the performance and audience reaction, the band will discuss what works, what didn’t, and where to go from there. Habitually cleaning songs during each performance, and consistently bringing something new to each song during live shows, the band prioritizes making every show a new experience.
“We don’t really know what the record actually sounds like anymore, right, the album that we made is so far back in our minds now, I can’t remember the last time I listened to any of those songs,” said Dreimanis. “We’re not trying to replicate the album. So what’s really cool is that what we’re reacting to and the things that make each song stand out to us and become our favourite to play are usually things that are coming strictly out of the live show, not out of the song itself.”
It’s this kind of prioritizing, thinking, and attitude towards performing that has gained July Talk such a large, loyal following in such a short amount of time. Known for fully engaging the crowd-from pulling audience members on stage, to taking time after the show to hang out with fans- from start to finish, July Talk makes it clear that they’re there simply to share their art and have a good time with friends.
“Josh made a good point when we were in Nebraska, in that he just said ‘so much of what we do in music is so fake and contrived’,” said Dreimanis. “The whole industry itself is completely contrived and they put these people on the star system that doesn’t really exist.
Really, everybody’s just friends that are making music in a room and it keeps getting pushed and pulled and made into this thing that it’s not and I think that those times when it’s after a show and you’re meeting the crowd face-to-face and looking them in the whites of their eyes and you’re literally accessing a person-to-person relationship, that’s it. The real thing is when someone comes to our show and they bring a friend who’s never heard of us and they experience the show with us and we have a wicked time and afterwards we all walk out and we all have beers together and we talk. That’s why we wanted to call the EP For Your Bloodshot Eyes, because it allows us to establish this direct human connection, like, ‘this is for YOU guys’, and it’s all about trimming the fat and fake interactions and putting value on the fact that the reason that more people are coming to our shows now than a year ago is because friends are telling friends to come. That’s as organic as it gets. “
