JULY 2009 - VUE WEEKLY - FEATURE

In a new column, Vue Weekly speaks to artists about a specific set of songs collected together as an album. This week, Bruce Peninsula's singer/guitarist Neil Haverty discusses the band's 2009 Polaris Prize-nominated A Mountain Is a Mouth.

VUE WEEKLY: Geography appears to play a large part in the band, from the name of the group to the album title to the lyrics to the incorporation of running water in the music of "Steamroller." Is that grounding in the surrounding world something that you're conscious of, or has it developed naturally and subtly?

NEIL HAVERTY: We are all intrigued by the idea of regional eccentricities, especially in music and art. But also in jargon or behaviour or terrain or lifestyle. The fact is that a person's surroundings will have some hand in everything that person does. At the very least, it plays the witness. That's an endless bounty, as far as songwriting is concerned, wouldn't you say?

There's a certain weight in that kind of imagery that's hard to find elsewhere. Some sturdy, hefty quality we like. There are a lot of different ways to explain the size or reach of how we feel, but it's really tough to argue with a flood or a fire or a mountain range. Or a peninsula, for that matter. It paints the picture immediately.

VW: There's a real feeling of unity between the album's tracks. Was there a sense that the band was creating an album as opposed to a collection of individual songs?

NH: It was definitely the plan to create one body, rather than just a collection of songs, but mostly that's just the logical conclusion of a year or two spent crafting a live show. We have always been mindful of the fact that we're there to entertain people—for 30, 45, 60 minutes at a time.

We take the flow and sequence into consideration every time we play, so obviously the end recorded product should reflect that.

That said, we made decisions about the record that we wouldn't normally decide about the live show. We didn't have to end the record with a banger, for example. In a live show, we wouldn't put two slow songs at the end.

VW: Recording for A Mountain is a Mouth began in June 2007 and carried on for a year. How much of that was steady recording versus weekends?

NH: Very little was done on consecutive days. We had a couple of bursts of productivity throughout that year but it was mostly a piecemeal schedule. Whenever we could get a group together or anytime somebody had a spare afternoon to add some of their parts, we'd find a place to record and make it happen in the time we had.

It's taken us a while to get a handle on how to coordinate this band in a truly efficient way—we still haven't really figured it out—so it took more than a year to get everything we wanted to hear on to the record.

In the end, 15 musicians contributed to it. That's a big group of people, with their own lives and projects to consider, so we kinda just used whatever time was on offer and came out the other side with this beast of a record.

VW: It was recorded over that time in a number of different locations. Why not just hole up in one spot for the duration? What was the advantage of doing it in different spots?

NH: Next time I think we're all looking forward to spending a solid chunk of time in one location. Some of the recording locations for AMIAM were chosen very deliberately—we chose St. George the Martyr because we knew the vocals would shine there and we finagled our way into the basement of the University because we knew there were lots of great instruments stashed there—but most of the other places we recorded in were chosen based solely on what was cheap and available to us.

We even halted recording for a couple months to help our engineer Leon build a studio. Actually, the studio, at least partly, was built in reaction to how much we had to move around to get the project done. That's why our band spent so much time putting up drywall, anyway. We needed a home base for the final stages of our record, so we just plain built it.

VW: The record is a dense work, with many layers that weave in and out and over and under each other. Was it a difficult project to work on in the studio?

NH: Recording wasn't difficult. It was time consuming, sure, but recording was the fun part. We knew that each song implied a lot of different melodies and rhythms and we wanted to identify and highlight as many of those as we could.

It got difficult in the mixing stage, though. We had no limits when we were tracking, but then that made a huge pile of music to sort through when it came time to mix. When we were mixing, we were pulling out our hair and sort of decided that next time we'd impose some boundaries.

It was a glorious privilege we allowed ourselves—no new part was ever denied—but the same rules won't apply when we go to do it again. It was just too much stuff to sift through.

VW: The music sounds incredibly organic, with shouts and claps alongside the instruments, but those are tempered with an angelic choir that appears throughout. How much of the sound of the finished record was planned in advance, and how much was the result of studio experimentation?

NH: The extra textures and finishing colours were created in the studio, but the fundamental characteristics of the songs were there from the beginning. Thick vocal melody and strong rhythmic momentum are two songwriting qualities that we'll always rely on. Those are the touchstones we always head towards first.

If you start from there, not much changes once you start decorating it with overdubs. The aesthetics morph a bit—things sound a little cooler or weirder—but the essence of a song should remain intact with or without those embellishments.

VW: How do the multiple layers of the record translate to the stage? Is there an attempt to recreate the studio sounds or do you come at the live performance as something completely different?

NH: We generally feel that the live performance and recorded work should be judged on their own merits. There are things that can't be captured live but can be explored on record, and vice versa. The record presents a very steady-handed and calculated version of the songs. A live show is a lot more unpredictable and unhinged. Anything can happen in the heat of the moment.

We love that duality. It makes playing music twice as fun. Enjoyable in two very different ways. We wouldn't have it any other way.

JULY 2009 - SKOPE MAGAZINE - REVIEW

Gather around the campfire, take a few swigs from the bottle of ambiguous alcohol, start banging worn-down pots and sing loudly, regardless of your vocal training. Never mind the strange resonance lurking in the darkness and forget about what you think you saw. If this sounds like your kind of night, then the debut LP from Bruce Peninsula, “A Mountain Is A Mouth” will bring this vibe to your speakers with all the emotional haunting that comes along with it.

The eerie mish-mash of sounds that comprise “A Mountain Is A Mouth,” all have one thing in common: a lack of restraint. From the drunken howl that keeps that the clap-a-long of “Satisfied” afloat to the punch-up, crawling in and out Zep-inspired guitar on “Shutters” (That aforementioned howl has evolved into a beautiful, spiritual pitch) Bruce Peninsula hold nothing back. Of course, how could you with your band being formed by eleven members. The limitless tendencies on “A Mountain Is A Moth” are a daring move for a debut; but they pay off.

When the record begins to tread water on throughout the opening half of the acoustic lullaby “Weave Myself A Dress,” it’s easy to assume that “AMIAM” has peaked early. But as the track awakes to something of a rousing call to a heavenly place, complemented by delicately layered vocals, one thing becomes way obvious. Trying to contain the fury of “AMIAM” is a futile process. Give up and give in. Like every good campfire, there’s something for everyone.

JULY 2009 - NATIONAL POST - FEATURE

It's a little more than a week since Bruce Peninsula found itself on the Polaris Music Prize's Long List for their debut album A Mountain is a Mouth when we reach guitarist Matt Cully by phone. Shortly after the announcement that the Toronto-based band made the first round of finalists for the Canadian music honour, Cully's bandmate Neil Haverty blogged on their website: "It makes us feel proud and it makes us feel funny." As for Cully's take, he says he's just "very glad" about it. Any "funny" business is "probably all of our sort of natural humbleness or modesty when it comes to this."

The "this" he's referring to would be buzz -- something the indie collective has experienced for a two-year stretch now. Their music -- an experimental blend of '70s prog-rock and American spirituals, buoyed by the rough-hewn jubilance of an up to 11-piece choir -- has the national media (see Globe and Mail, Exclaim!, National Post) salivating. The annual critics' poll in Toronto's Eye Weekly named them "Destined for Success" two years running. All of this was long before they released an album (their first came out in February), and primarily built off of their reputation for shows in Toronto and Southern Ontario.

"I guess at the very beginning when we were just starting out, the attention we got was good in that it kept us on our toes and let us know we were on some sort of right path when it came to connecting to an audience. And it helped us to follow intuition," says Cully, who formed the band with friends Haverty and Misha Bower in 2006. A few shows later, the trio had amassed a band of friends -- including drummer Steve McKay, bassist Andrew Barker, and a revolving cast of Toronto musicians such as Katie Stelmanis and Ohbijou's Casey Mecija -- to make up a roaring choir.

In and around Toronto, Cully says the band "can inflate to 11 people," though on tour, like their upcoming first-ever trip west of the actual Bruce Peninsula, they pare down to a tight seven (Cully, Bower, Haverty, McKay, Barker, Kari Peddle and Daniela Gesundheit).

Good press has been helpful for sustaining Bruce Peninsula's morale so far, but when it comes to positive reinforcement, the most helpful cheering section is the band itself.

"You have that many people, it's like you're playing to your own audience, because there's so many," Cully laughs. "So if everyone's there and excited, and you're playing them a new song -- 'let's learn it everybody!' -- and everyone's really excited about it, well, that's the best feedback you could ever get for taking it to the public."

Haverty's blustery pitchman cadence takes the lead on the bulk of the album's tracks (though Bower is also prominently featured; her earnest warble on the reflective "Weave Myself a Dress" is one of the stand-outs). But every last member contributes vocally in some respect, and it's that blasting chorus of voices that becomes the real centerpiece of much of their work.

"The idea of the choir being an integral part of Bruce Peninsula, or Bruce Peninsula as a band itself, was really not at the forefront at the beginning. It was more like, 'hey, we're playing music and it's fun,'" Cully explains.

"I was never in a band before, nor did I really sing," says Cully, who also works as an event organizer around Toronto. "I'd participated in choirs when I was in public school, things like that," he chuckles. During the band's inception, Cully says he'd become fascinated with old recordings of American folk music, especially those in the call-and-response tradition.

"When I started to listen to the old recordings of folk music it seemed like that [choir singing] was a big part of it. It was the participatory aspect of the songs they were singing. It was often everyone's involved, everyone's singing regardless of quality of voice. And that gave that sound a very unique and rough-around-the-edges flavour."

"I think that we tried to capture that amalgamation of different voices rammed into one sound or one choir."

The result shouldn't be mistaken with roots music -- and Cully says the band's even made a point of immersing themselves in more contemporary influences as they turn out new material, some of which they plan to workshop on their western tour. But even if their sound doesn't remind you of any other band or genre, it should recall an all-out celebration.

"Prior to being in Bruce Peninsula, our group of friends would get together and sing, or just improvise music, basically," he says. "It was sort of our style of partying or something, really. ... We'd go downstairs and drum and sing and yell and play guitars.

"It's funny, we don't really do that anymore because we're in Bruce Peninsula now."

Maybe it just means that he's having fun all the time.

"Yeah," he agrees. "Fun in public."

JULY 2009 - EDMONTON JOURNAL - FEATURE

Bruce Peninsula is one of Ontario's oldest gems--a sprawling section of forests, lakes and limestones cliffs northwest of Toronto.

It's also the name of one of Ontario's newest treasures--a group of up to 15 musicians with a penchant for sprawling old-time gospel/roots arrangements. The band's first album, A Mountain is a Mouth, stars Neil Haverty's bluesy rasp, honed by cigarettes and backed by a ghostly choir, conjuring images of southern tent revivals of the 1930s.

In today's climate of mounting job losses, it's no wonder more and more listeners are turning to Bruce Peninsula for salvation--or sheer escape. The band is touring with only seven musicians as it makes its first trek across Canada, including tonight's stop at the Brixx Bar and Grill.

A Mountain is a Mouth was one of 40 albums long-listed for the Polaris Music Prize, which is judged by journalists and broadcasters. While it didn't make the short list of 10 finalists, Haverty says earning any Polaris recognition was a minor miracle. With so many musicians in the band, Bruce Peninsula needed more than a year-- and several studios--to finish its epic.

"We didn't know what we were setting out to make when we started to make the record," he admits. "So the idea of us being one of 40 records... I wouldn't put us up that high. It's very flattering and our parents are all very proud of us. It legitimizes us a little bit."

Bruce Peninsula offers Haverty his own salvation of sorts. He used to play guitar in a technical math-rock band, where precision was valued over passion. "I came from a background of wanting to be super rehearsed--you played the same thing over and over again for four hours until you got it right. With this band, because of our schedules, we have never been allowed that kind of practice and it's really unpredictable. Personally speaking, I've developed as a musician because I've had to sort of wing it sometimes.

"There have been some shows where honestly, a new member has been introduced and certain other members haven't even met until they get onstage. You never know what's going to happen but I think that's a testament to the musicians that we surround ourselves with. We haven't had any train wrecks."

Haverty says his bandmates are always thinking of downsizing--in terms of musical scope and personnel-- though their next effort is a 15-minute suite inspired by minimalist composers Steve Reich and Philip Glass.

"With the first record, we wanted to make a very loud statement. In subsequent recordings, we can branch out a little bit, go in different directions. We're definitely a band that doesn't want to rest on our laurels.... We want to make drastically different records."

Whether Haverty's gruff vocals will undergo drastic change is yet to be seen--he recently kicked his nicotine habit.

"When I quit, I was really worried I was going to lose this voice, but it's been a few months now and I seem to still possess it."

JANUARY 2009 - KW RECORD - REVIEW

Most rock bands, when they add a choir in the studio, do so when they want to get their gospel on, or convey a sense of something much larger than themselves. But when the rock band incorporates the choir into everything they do—on stage and off, and to the maximal effect heard here—the result feels less like some kind of spiritual graft than it does genuine uplift and magic.

Bruce Peninsula are a Toronto group whose membership swells to 12 whenever possible: a core rock quartet plus two percussionists and five choir members, with each element put to full use in each song atop often thundering percussion. There's a large debt to call-and-response traditional music from Aboriginal and African-American sources, far removed from polite Christian folk songs. Bruce Peninsula dig deep in the earth to craft something that sounds remarkably raw, fresh and new—not an easy task in a crowded field of modern folk artists aiming to juxtapose traditional and modern approaches.

Since their inception a few short years ago, Bruce Peninsula quickly built a reputation as one of Toronto's best live bands—a mixed blessing, as the studio is an entirely different setting. And yet they easily rise to the challenge, with the help of engineer Leon Taheny (Final Fantasy), managing to both capture their live energy and craft a recording with subtleties and intricacies that creates its own environment entirely. A Mountain is a Mouth may well be a Torontonian time capsule album, riding that city's continuing creative renaissance with a collective spirit that is at once triumphant, humble and joyful.