There’s something so sweet about the The Elwins that listening to them is kind of like eating too much candy and spoiling your dinner. And not feeling bad about it. Sugary melodies wrap around jangly guitars and jaunty drums to create a playful vibe, but there’s a touch of moroseness buried in lead vocalist Matthew Sweeney’s delivery that gives the songs a delicate quality; the type of thing you cherish and return to.
This quartet has been working hard of late, embarking on a tour of Ontario summer camps, preparing for a tour into the southern US and recording their latest album, And I Thank You, in Seattle. We caught up with guitarist/keyboardist Feurd as the band gears up for its album release show this Friday.
How long has the band been together?
The current line-up has been since maybe July of last year, but the band has been playing since probably 2008. There have been different stages I suppose. After May of 2010, that’s kind of when we all got together, making it full time and making it the thing that we were going to do.
You all live together in Keswick together? Yes, we do. The three of us — myself, Travis our drummer and Chris our bass player — we all live together in the same house; and Matt lives, like, a five minute walk down the street from us.
And why Keswick and not a bigger city?
In Keswick, right now, we live with family and it’s very easy on our wallets. And it’s also a beautiful town and a great place where we can spend a lot of time working on different aspects of the band and things like that.
Last summer you guys did a summer camp tour. Could you talk a bit about that?
It was probably the most fun I’ve ever had in my life. We played almost 30 shows at different camps around Ontario. And it’s just amazing playing to kids every day for so long — it’s so heart-warming and they get so enthusiastic and go crazy. We would do dance competitions and stuff like that with the kids, or they’d get a pin and they’d freak out. They’d go totally nuts.
How old were the kids?
I think we played with kids anywhere from six to 19. Anywhere in there, so the shows would definitely range. We had to put on a lot of different kinds of shows.
Was that hard to set up?
It wasn’t the easiest. We’ve never carried so many extension chords in our van before. And we’ve also never carried so much gear in our van either, because at a lot of the camps we would bring and set up our own sound system. So we would bring the sound system from our rehearsal space out to the camp and at the point we were driving around in a mini van. So we would have our drums, a big bass amp, guitar amps, all of our instruments and our sound system. It was cramped.
How long did it take for you to record this album?
It was a pretty long process. We actually did all of the recording at the end of 2010. We recorded it in Seattle in late Oct. to early Nov. of 2010. But even before that, the pre-production process was very long because all the songs came out of this exercise called Song of the Week, where we would all write a song a week and then send it to each other. So at the end of it we had this huge bank of, like, 50 songs that we’d take to producers and show them all, and we brought it down to 14 that we recorded and then 10 on the record. So that was going on for a while. Then we mixed it back in Toronto in later spring — Feb.-March of 2011. So the music’s been done for a while, so we’ve been showing it to people and talking to people about it. Then, finally, we did the artwork just early this year, just at the very start of January. So we’ve actually had it for a while.
So your album release is coming up this week?
Yeah, it’s on Friday. We’ve got the Bicycles and the Meligrove Band. We couldn’t be happier about the lineup. And then some of the guys from Tokyo Police Club are going to be DJing after the bands are done. It’s at the Burroughes Building, which is this really cool loft space at Queen and Bathurst. So it’s up on the sixth floor, and there’s an amazing cityscape and we’re totally doing it all up with lights and sound and everything. It’s going to look really cool. And there will be some special stuff going on.
The Elwins are:
Matt Sweeney – vocals/guitar
Travis Stokl – drums
Feurd – guitar/keyboards
Christopher Shannon – bass
