[kj] Sam Roberts talks about working with Youth @ El Mirador

[Rheinhold Squeegee]

http://www.torontosun.com/2014/02/05/sam-roberts-gets-his-dance-shoes-on-for-lo-fantasy


                
                
                    
                

                

                    























    
    
    
        
        

        

        
        
        
        

        

        
        
    
























    
    
        
    





    
        
    
    
    



    
    
        
            
                
    

                    
                    
                    
                        
                            
                        
                    

                    

                    
                    
            

                
                
                    
                

                

                    























    
    
    
        
        

        

        
        
        
        

        

        
        
    
























    
    
        
    





    
        
    
    
    



    
    
        
            
                
    

                    
                    
                    
                        
                            
                        
                    

                    

                    
                    
            
                
                    
                

                
                    Sam Roberts gets his dance shoes on for Lo-Fantasy
                
		
	


        
                    

                    
                    

                    
                    

                    
                    

                    
                    
                        
                    
                    
                        

                    
                    
                        
                        
                        
                            
                                
                                    
                                    

                                    
                                    

                                    
                                    

                                    
                                    

                                    
                                    

                                    
                                    
                                        
                                        
                                            
                                        
                                        
                                    
                                

                                 
                                    
                        
                            
                            

                                        

                                        
                                        

                                        
                                        
                                        









	
	
		
	


	
		
	


	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	As they were putting the finishing touches on their latest disc, 
Lo-Fantasy, Montreal rockers the Sam Roberts Band found themselves in 
the perfect place.

It turns out the house/techno remixes of Lo-Fantasy’s songs were put 
together at Spain’s El Mirador, The Hobbit-like studios of the album’s 
British producer Youth (a.k.a. Martin Glover, founding member of 
post-punk act Killing Joke).

“He’s got this place - it’s incredible - but only he would do this,” 
 said Roberts, 39, who plays record release parties at Toronto’s 
Adelaide Hall and Montreal’s Lion D’or on Feb. 13 and 15, respectively.

“I would do it if I had the courage to do it but he actually does 
this without thinking. He built his home, his studio, based on drawings 
of Rivendell and parts of Hobbiton, parts of the Shire, from the Lord of
 the Rings. It was literally a Hobbit hole. It had a circular door that 
sort of slid in, it was all in this big mound with grass growing on the 
top.”

The eponymous lead singer and bandmate Dave Nugent had to drive up a winding road into the mountains to get there.

“We get to this place and it’s hard to imagine what you’re looking 
at. All of the orchards sort of fall away down this cliffside. There 
were no elves or hobbits. I was the only hobbit there. But it was a 
vibe. ... It was my dream come true. I spent my entire teenage years up 
to my eyeballs in Lord of the Rings. I spent more time in Middle Earth 
than I did here, that’s for sure. I’m a nerd.”

We caught up with Roberts in a downtown private-members Toronto club 
recently to talk about collaborating with the legendary Youth on the 
band’s fifth studio release.

Had Youth heard of Sam Roberts Band when he got your demos?

No, not at all, not from a hole in the wall. This was completely 
blank slate he was literally just reacting to the music in front of him.

And what was it about Youth that you liked?

(Producing The Verve’s) Urban Hymns that, for me, stood out. I mean 
he made a lot of good records, Crowded House records too. And the fact 
that he played in Killing Joke. The fact that he also plays the bass in a
 band with Paul McCartney. If you play bass in a band with Paul 
McCartney then there’s got to be something good going on.

His group of peers must have figured too given your Stone Roses-like breakthrough song Brother Down over a decade ago?

He grew involved in the music that is basically why we started a 
band, anywhere from Joy Division to the Happy Mondays to Primal Scream 
to Stone Roses and he was there and he was in the mix for that so he got
 those references right away. There was a very sort of electronic slant 
to this thing and that’s nothing new. That’s just coming back to what 
(our music) was doing before we made a few rock and roll records and got
 some songs on the radio. I would sit around making house music on my 
four-track at home. And that’s what I was into. So he had a real 
understanding of the full palette and could bring it together. And I 
think they’ve been buried in previous records and allowed to come out 
and shine brighter here.

What was that first meeting with him like?

He came to Montreal in the dead of winter (in February 2013) and just
 turned the band on its ear. He’s tough in a Zen like way, which is the 
toughest of all. It’s like Kung Fu, like a Shaolin Monk, the toughest 
people in the world. But he’s disarmingly relaxed. He never shouts. He 
was devastatingly direct.

Did he enjoy Canada in the winter?

It’s February. It’s the shi--iest possible conditions. We don’t need a
 polar vortex for it to be like this (sub-zero temperatures) in 
Montreal. So he comes and he’s like, ‘What is this Godforsaken place?’ 
He’s smoking his first cigarette of which he smokes a lot and he’s like,
 ‘This isn’t going to work!’ So half of the problem was figuring out how
 he could smoke in his hotel room and get away with it. I became a 
MacGyver. We tampered with his smoke detector. Anyways, it was very 
illegal. He takes great offence to his rights as a smoker being 
infringed upon.

I read that you knew you were on the right path if you got him dancing?

It would start slowly with the toe tap. But then it got into a full 
rainbird dance, it was quite an elaborate thing. And he really got into 
it. And that drove us forward. We knew that if we didn’t get him dancing
 then we probably had to rethink what we were doing.

Would you make another record with him?

It was musically, very, very challenging for our band not used to 
thinking on our feet. You play a show, you play the same songs a 
thousand times, and you do it by muscle memory and here we are actually 
training ourselves to interpret on the spot, on the fly. So then he came
 back in May, he went off and toured with Killing Joke, then we 
reconvened in a studio about five minutes away from where I live. I rode
 my bike in the mornings. And we’d just say, ‘Today, this is the song 
we’re doing.’ We set up live off the floor and we just recorded.

And you did it all in 12 days? Why the rush?

He was going to record the Dalai Lama. I’m not kidding you. That’s 
what he was going to do. He was going to do some recording with Tibetan 
Monks in Nepal or wherever it was.

Lo-Fantasy will be released Tuesday, Feb. 11.

Sam Roberts Band 2014 Canadian tour dates:

FEB 13 ADELAIDE HALL TORONTO

FEB15 LION D’OR MONTREAL

MAR 1 IMPERIAL DE QUEBEC QUEBEC CITY

APR 11 THE STUBBORN MULE SARNIA, ONT

APR 12 HAMILTON PLACE STUDIO HAMILTON, ONT

AUG 8-10 SQUAMISH MUSIC FESTIVAL SQUAMISH, BC

 		 	   		  
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