30.05.2009 - Psychedelica meets The High Dials
Psychedelica catches up with Trevor Anderson from The High Dials (one of the best psychedelic pop bands in existence). Their explosive new album Moon Country is no less than stunning. We strongly recommend this to anyone who loves melodic psychedelia.
The term 'High Dial' is derogatory slang for someone completely off their head/high as a kite. Do you still think the label suits your band or have you mellowed out a bit over the last six or seven years since you formed?
Ha! I had no idea about that slang meaning. Makes a better story than the real way we wound up with the name. We took dial from "London Calling" where he says "London Calling at the top of the dial". We thought "high dials" sounded cooler than "top dials". At the time we were just about to release the first album A New Devotion which had a lot of songs about being powerless, secretly controlled by outside forces, a "machine". The idea of someone at the dials of a master machine controlling things seemed appropriate for the band, and that was always how I thought of the meaning. Still, we were almost "the Copper Beaches" until Little Steven said that name sucked and then responded really positively to "High Dials".
The name is alright. Better than "Hammond Cheese" or "Smooth Herman and the Murmurs" two joke names that came dangerously close to being chosen.
Our music may be mellower than it was in 2003 but it's more intense, especially live. I guess the changes just reflect the psychological changes anybody goes through in 6 years, ups and downs. I predict the next album will be more upbeat, but what the hell do I know about the future? Maybe we'll get into qualudes.
Your music is mainly viewed as psychedelic (probably due to your original endorsement from BJM and association with the scene) but you have much more eclectic influences: indie pop like Super Furry Animals or the Elephant Six, Flaming Lips etc and you toured with Neko Case (whom I love - especially Deep Red Bells - can you call it Americana if Canadian?)
Yeah we're not a pure psych band of course. No label is ever going to fit snugly. It's pop. We're not working within any rules or plan. The canvas is white. As you said, we just have ties to the scene. Obviously we've been really influenced by freakbeat and psych from the 60s- I was quite into the mod subculture when I was younger and that brought me there. But soul, folk music and indie rock have also been important over the years. Any music that has the power to take your mind somewhere else, entrance you could be loosely called psychedelic. It doesn't get more psych than dub for me. And the more ambitious indie bands like the Super Furries, Wilco, the Flaming Lips and recently MGMT have psychedelic moments, but they are pretty varied in style and unpredictable. Those are some of the contemporary bands that inspire me most because they are playful, adventurous and always rooted in solid songwriting. It's about being drunk on sounds and always comes back to the Beatles who did whatever they wanted and have an amazing varied body of work. That's the goal if you're serious about being a good songwriter. But certain things associated with classic psych rock- harmonies, droning, reverb! I think they will always be at the heart of our music in some way, they don't get old. They're like milk and honey.
You can see the diversity in your latest album Moon Country. Each track is totally different in style and sound but you an instantly recognise it as The High Dials. Which do you consider as your best tracks?
I like Killer of Dragons, Invisible Choirs and Angels and Devils. They come closest to what I wanted the songs to be. Our albums always fall short of the perfect form in my head though. For me, the best moment in creation is the first demo, however crude, where you hear the possibilities, where your imagination fills in the blanks and nothing has been overthought. I get very attached to demos like a lot of writers. It's the closest to purity. That's why we tried to keep the original demo from Ireland with all it's hissing and crackling in a lot of the songs, at least as a bed track. Actually, we used a lot of demo tracks on the previous album too for the same reasons.
The last track Space Hobo reminds me of The Stone Roses. It has a distinct early 90s sound but the lyrics are more like Hawkwind! What's the story behind this track (which is one of my favourites)? Does he ever reach his destination?
Space Hobo first came to mind on the road in 2005, touring the last album. I really felt rootless at that time, drifting around with the band in a van with nothing much to return to in Montreal. The image came to mind of a spaceman hitchhiking around the universe because he's lost his home planet, not sure of where he should settle down. So it's literally about roving, having no home, but on a deeper level it's about the loneliness and dislocation after the end of a serious relationship. If you pin everything on a relationshp and then it suddenly ends there's that terrifying lonely feeling of freefalling, not knowing what the future holds, where you'll wind up. There were those emotions in there too. Don't look back to what you had, be brave and drift along till something better comes into view.
I wanted it to sound cold and lonely so I tried to keep the arrangment minimalist, which isn't easy since the band is bursting with ideas. It is very close to the demo arrangement and we kept the original demo vocal. It sounds even more Roses-like live when Robbie plays more guitar. I am a huge Stone Roses fan obviously. So there was a nod to to them for sure, as well as to 2,000 Light Years From Home by the Stones, which I think was also at the back of my mind as inspiration. There could be some Hawkwind, Can and Pink Floyd bubbling up in there too. It's all stewing in the pot.
Our hero in this song is still drifting, sad to report!
There are some fantastic bands coming out of Canada at the moment, I love Caribou from Montreal also. Is Montreal the epicentre for Canadian psychedelia? Something in the water there?
I also love Caribou as do the oher guys in the band. Some magic tunes! Very free and playful, hypnotic, the true spirit of psychedelia, like the other bands I mentioned. You can tell he is drunk on music, the good stuff. Not a Montrealer though. There are lots of other great psychedelic bands in Canada like Black Mountain, Besnard Lakes etc, and Montreal has a long tradition of 60s obsessed garage rock and prog rock in the French scene, so Montreal can be very inspiring.
You recorded Moon Country in both Montreal and Sligo, Ireland? How come you went to Ireland to do half the album? I've been to Sligo, it's pretty remote and austere.
I fell in love with Sligo the county back in 2003. I have some family roots there. Something about the light and shadow, the clouds, the dolmens, the tombs- it's a magic place. The whole west coast of Ireland really. I like austere places a lot- Shetland, Patagonia, Iceland, that's my thing. Moon Country is a reference to that. A place without people, just rolling hills or dunes. The emptiness calms me. It's mystic like the desert I guess. Though Sligo isn't really all that austere. Lots of big rich German houses popping up everywhere actually. And strip malls sadly.
I was lucky in that my uncle has a damp old cottage in the country there where I could set up. I would record all day, sit out in the tall grass watching the bees and swallows with a can of Tennants and then record all night. It was a beautiful few weeks. We had just been on tour with Brian Jonestown in the UK and I had a new laptop. It seemed like a great idea to hole up there for a while and flesh out some song ideas. I got one of those cheap RyanAir flights, borrowed an acoustic off my friend the Mighty Steph in Dublin and went into recluse for a while. Had a drum machine. Just fumbled around with the recording program until I could make decent demos. The electricity in that place was very dirty though, there is a loud hum through all the stuff I recorded. You can hear other stuff like birds and a fire crackling too, in the background. I haven't been back since, sadly. Maybe next time we'll do it real Led Zeppelin style, bring the whole band out and and rent a castle. There's one just up the road there actually.
You seem to travel a lot. In Facebook, you invited people to ome and buy the farmhouse in Cumbria where Withnail and I was filmed to convert it to a pub? I bet you were half-serious. But would you consider moving to the UK? In fact, aren't you part English and support Crystal Palace or Tranmere? It was some lower-league football team.
Yeah, my Dad is English from Preston, so I have lot of family there. Not sure If I would move, quite happy in Montreal. Cumbria is incredible though! I'm over in the UK every couple of years or so. I guess St-Albans are my club, since I've been to loads of games, but they are way own below even the conference league I think. I follow football but don't feel too passionate about any side. I guess Preston North End would be the ones, and I have some history of cheering QPR.
Travel is a hug part of my life and is closely intertwined wih the music. Each inspires and requires the other. I can't imagine sitting still for a year.
Didn't you go travelling round South America for a while? That would be a trip of a lifetime. What were the highlights and low points of that? Will we be hearing panpipes and quenas on the next album?
Yeah, I have been down to South America for a couple of long stays in the last 2 years and now speak Spanish pretty well. I love the music there, both the vintage salsa and cumbia that is popular everywhere and the indigenous music I heard in Ecuador, which features a lot of pan pipes. I bought a charango at a market, which is an 8-stringed instrument like a mandolin, and am learning it. I love the sound. I bargained pretty hard with the old guy at the stall and he gave it to me for a crazy low price because I think he knew it would truly get used. I think there is a good chance some of that influence will show up, how noticeable it will be I'm not sure, but it inspired me. We have also been toying with the idea of doing some songs in Spanish as well. I think that is just as likely. We are not a world music band, but have always incorporated things like tin whistle and harp on the new record, banjo, tablas and of course some sitar which Rishi used to play. That kind of influence is only going to increase I think, but it will always be worked in in subtle ways. I like the openess bands had towards other music traditions in the 60s, it made things way more interesting than the bog standard indie rock of today.
A highlight would be my Christmas Eve jam session with a Uruguayan family in a sleepy beach town after some roast goat and whiskey. A low point would be almost drowning in a dodgy, crowded little ferry in Colombia.
I noticed on the credits of your album that you have Rishi on the album. I thought he'd left to do Elephant Stone? He's getting around a bit - he was on the Black Angels album as well.
Yeah, Rishi played bass on 4 of the tunes. We had begun working on them before he decided to leave. Robbie played the rest.
Have you had much feedback on Moon Country?
It's been very low profile since we put it out ourselves and only in Canada. My mom likes it.
Do you plan to release it in the UK/Europe?
Yes, all part of the master plan.
You have also been to the Middle East recently? I bet that was amazing. Can you summarize you experience, any tips for the novice traveller? I think the middle eastern tribal music is the most psychedelic in the world.
Oman was beautiful, scorching hot. Dubai a science fiction experience, all glass, steel and sand. I didn't experience any music really. I went down to the souk in Dubai during prayer on Friday though and the stores were all closed obviously. I wandered around the narrow empty alleys. The calls to prayer from all the mosques were echoing, richoceting off the walls and it was a trip! There's something about the Hejaz scale, so many semitones, that is really alien to a western soul and kind of terrifying. When you hear 5 melodies like that overlapping in a small confined space it's enough to induce a serious seizure or vision. I survived.
Are we to expect Latin American, Moorish and Arabic influences in your next album?
There's a real potential for disaster there. Like Paul McCartney's reggae. But we'll see. Everything in life is an influence and is going to seep in. The images I get travelling leave a deep impression and always wind up in the lyrics, that's certain.
Finally, what are the plans for the future, any shows forthcoming and recommended bands to look out for you may be touring with?
We're doing a video and making plans to get the album out around the world. But I have tons of new songs so maybe we'll get side-tracked.
