54-40 formed in 1981, and have released 13 full-length albums and compilations including a total of 15 charting singles. We’re also obligated to say that they’re known for their song “I Go Blind,” which Hootie & The Blowfish covered in 1996. We did not ask them any questions about “I Go Blind” or spiny inflating fish. We did ask them about their newest album, Lost in the City.
Framed by its titular song’s narrative of modern dissociation, Lost in the City is about our strange now and how fast it moves. It also coincides with the band’s 30 year anniversary. We caught up with singer Neil Osborne and bassist Brad Merritt to talk about where the band is now.
Before the recording of 2005’s Yes to Everything longtime guitarist Phil Comparelli departed for a hiatus. Seeking a temporary replacement, the band turned to CanRock veteran Dave Genn, whose tastefully restrained, precise guitar style arguably made the Matthew Good Band’s Beautiful Midnight the controversial singer’s masterwork.
“Dave actually came up to us the other day and said, ‘I’ve now been with you guys longer than I was with Matthew Good,’” Osborne says. “We were in a place where we were like, let’s just make a record and see what happens, which became Yes to Everything, centered around the idea of being open to anything new.”
The result was a rough, riff-heavy record filled with renewed energy. “On Yes to Everything, Dave was incredibly self-conscious of not wanting to influence the sound, of just wanting to make a 54-40 record to the best of his ability,” Merritt adds. “And he’s gotten far more comfortable since. It doesn’t happen overnight — you can’t replace those years.”
54-40 followed up Yes to Everything with Northern Soul, a lushly-recorded, folk-inspired outing with heavy, direct social commentary and eclectic instrumentation. “Dave and I added a lot of textures to that one,” Neil acknowledges. “Northern Soul was really him and I…” Tripping? “Yeah, tripping.”
“On this one, I kept turning to Dave and saying, ‘This is it, man. I think we’ve got it.’ That took three records.”
Lost in the City is as distinct from the band’s previous three records as it is from the rest of their catalogue. It’s a stripped down answer to Northern Soul’s lustre, with a driving forward propulsion that seems to echo the record’s backdrop of modern overstimulation. But the band doesn’t necessarily set out for these one-to-one similes of style and substance.
“It’s not as obvious as that, but we’re always looking for resonances,” says Osborne. “I remember when we did a record with Garth Richardson, who was just obsessed, obsessed, with tuning. But then I started hearing the music from his perspective. When the bass is tuned perfectly with the piano note, the sound becomes this much bigger resonance; if it’s even a little bit off, then it just is what it is.”
“I think there’s a skill we’ve developed, in terms of relating to where Neil is at lyrically,” adds Merritt. “We’ll talk about what we’re doing, and have a good idea, but once you start doing the thing it takes on a life of its own. You always have to be open to new information.”
And to old information. Neil’s lyrical “framework” for the album, as he puts it, draws on the mystic tradition of blues music. “In this case the goodie bag that I gave myself to work within was keeping it rooted in blues-based statements. I don’t know why or how, but I was listening to a blues song, or looking up the lyrics, and I just immediately went, ‘Wow, that is a cool line — that could be used today in a lot of different contexts.’”
The final product blurs the boundaries between personal and political, past and future; the disconnection of intimacy and the disconnection of urban life. Urban alienation is not specific to our modern age: think of the classic, tragic story of blues hero Blind Willie Johnson, dying alone in the razed ruins of his home.
Put more generically: everything old is new again. In our fast-moving now — where the unstoppable flow of information has decimated the music industry — 54-40 find themselves in a very familiar place. Says Merritt: “The change has been profound… We came from a culture where you did things yourself: the punk, post-punk Vancouver music scene where you made your own records, pressed them and sold them in stores … now there are only four major labels, and they don’t sign very many artists, and when they do they want your publishing, your merchandise, your house revenue. So we’ve gone back to the same model we started with. You just upload the record on your website, put it on iTunes and Amazon, and people can buy the CD, pick songs, whichever.”
You can stream the entirety of Lost in the City at the band’s website, and catch them performing on Thursday, Nov. 10, at the Virgin Mobile Mod Club.
