We take care to make sure everyone gets represented properly. Do you feel you have to manage a certain vocal balance as you’re working through the mixes? You also have a number of different people singing harmonies together on each track. So that wasn’t as much, “Hey, let’s put a nyckelharpa on here” as it was, “Hey, what does this thing sound like?” And then you set up a microphone, go nuts on it, find the best moments, and keep them. If you whack it in the right way, you can create a dulcimer kind of sound. It has 16 strings and you only play four of them, and all the other ones resonate underneath. It also has all these “sympathetic” strings. You bow it like a violin and it has buttons that you play, so it’s almost like a violin with frets. It’s kind of like a hurdy gurdy, but it doesn’t have a crank. The nyckelharpa is a Swedish instrument I’d never heard of before. It is instinct, but it’s also a sense of exploration. Is it instinct for you in terms of what instrument you’ll play for any given song? Do you get a vibe like, “OK, I’m going to pick up the nyckelharpa for this one”? I guess I have to read the credits myself! The air spray thing (makes spraying noise) - it’s something that actually sounded like an ’80s drum-machine snare-drum sound, so we had to record it. Not only do you play electric guitar on Hug of Thunder, you’re also listed as playing “air spray percussion.” Uh, what is that, exactly? I have to ask you about something in the credits for the title track. The biggest problem we have is having too many ideas - which I think is a nice problem to have. Well, it is a bit of a challenge to get to all of the ideas into songs like that. So Victim Lover is the one with Amy and Kevin singing together, right? A good example is the vocal blend on a song like Victim Lover, where it makes me feel like I’m right there with you all in the studio while it was being recorded.Ĭharles Spearin: I have to remember that song title, because we had working titles for the songs while we were working on them, and then we had to come up with proper titles at the end of it (laughs). You have to start pulling it back a little bit.”ĭigital Trends called Spearin in his native Canada not long before BSS headed out on tour to discuss how having many instrumental options around you in the studio leads to inspiration, how Feist got the honor of naming the album, and why format shifts always breed nostalgia.ĭigital Trends: I like how you used the phrase “leaving space” to refer to the sound of BSS mixes, many of which you helped engineer for this album. “We’re piling more and more ideas into the songs, and then we have to go in and selectively remove certain things to make more space.
“Often, we end up having too many ideas, even when we’re holding back,” Spearin admitted. That said, the BSS creative team has to be mindful of coming up with too many parts for too many cooks, so to speak.
We keep it in the back of our minds where we say, ‘OK, Evan Cranley is going to come in and record on this one, so we need to leave some space in there so he can pour his own ideas into it.’” “When we’re writing a song, we try not to crowd it with our own ideas. “As a band, we’re used to leaving space for other musicians,” Spearin told Digital Trends. This fact not lost on BSS multi-instrumentalist Charles Spearin. No fewer than 18 players - including mainstays Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning, along with alt-rock icon Leslie Feist, who last performed on a BSS record more than a decade ago - contributed to Hug’s rich sonic tapestry. Take the band’s first new album in seven years: the oh-so-aptly named Hug of Thunder, out now on Arts & Crafts in various formats. If anything, the perennially supercool Canadian collective is a harmonious family that reconvenes every few years to make beautiful music together - and the more of them who join in on the process, the merrier. I happen to think Broken Social Scene has one of the most ironic names in modern rock. People are listening to more records because something’s missing from the endless catalog of MP3s.”
“Vinyl came back because there’s a quality to it that’s really satisfying.
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