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All eyes upon them
Local quartet riding the strength of their major label debut
John Kendle
Rusty Matyas and Matt Peters have latched onto a theme, and now
they’re working it over.
“It’s just weird,
making records these days,” muses Peters over a beer at
Bar Italia. “Back in the ’60s, a progression or growth
in a band’s sound was just seen as being so natural. The
Beatles put out an album every six months for seven years.
“From Please Please Me to Rubber Soul there’s four
albums in between and then there’s Revolver in 1966, which
is perhaps the best-ever ’60s rock ’n’ roll
record. And then they go to Sgt. Pepper and on to the White Album,
which were again totally different. They were able to do that
— but nowadays you can’t document the natural progression
of people moving from one sound to another because you’ve
got to wait three years to put out an album.”
As his tall, red-headed bandmate warms to the topic, Matyas nods
his head. As the singers and songwriters in Winnipeg-based quartet
The Waking Eyes, the pair have had to endure the speculation and
scepticism of hometown fans who initially perceived their band
as a pseudo-psychedelic pop/rock outfit drenched in the outlandish
arrangements of late-period Beatles and the pomp and circumstance
of early Queen.
Certainly that was the sound the original version of The Eyes
embraced when the band released its first full-length album, Combing
the Clouds, in 2002. At the time, the album was seen as a direct
descendent of Peters’ first band, The Pets, whose Love and
War was similarly an acid-soaked popfest.
But The Waking Eyes have changed in the past two-and-a-half years,
which is the point Peters and Matyas are making as they chat about
the imminent release of Video Sound, their second album and their
first release for major label Warner Music Canada.
This version of the Eyes is slimmed-down and has become more of
a hard-edged, guitar-based garage-rock outfit. The melodic swells
of the past are still much in evidence — especially on songs
such as On a Train and Headlights — but this is a recording
which has been distilled to its essence.
And as far as Peters and Matyas are concerned, that essence remains
unchanged — but the group has changed how it achieves its
musical aims.
“I think you can almost trace it back
to when Myron (Schulz, a former Pet and founding Eye) left the
band,” Peters explains. “Rusty and I decided to bring
a song to the band called Pass it On. That song and Watch Your
Money — which Steve (drummer Senkiw) had written and which
we used to play with The Pets, funnily enough — were sort
of the first indications of songs that we wanted to do. Songs
that we could play without 15 people onstage and practising for
hours. We wanted to do something that we could do live and do
well live.
“So we just started writing songs that way.
We honestly just wanted to do something that was rock ’n’
roll.”
If so, then Matyas, Peters and Senkiw have succeeded. Produced
by Arnold Lanni, the band’s debut is the kind of organic,
real-sounding album that many listeners will be surprised to hear
comes from the same camp that is responsible for the sonic output
of bands such as Our Lady Peace and Finger 11 — groups not
exactly considered cool on the fickle Canadian scene.
Peters and Matyas admit they shared similar doubts when first
dealing with Lanni and his brother Rob, who co-manages the group
through Coalition Entertainment. But The Eyes fears were assuaged
within a few minutes of meeting producer Arnold.
“As
soon as we played him a song and he started singing a part, we
knew he was the guy,” Matyas asserts. “He’s
all about music.”
The Eyes boys were initially introduced to the Lannis by a New
York entertainment lawyer who first heard of them through eccentric
rock guru Kim Fowley, a ’60s and ’70s producer (he
created The Runaways) who happened across the group one night
in Los Angeles.
“It’s a very long story,”
Peters warns.
“But basically, we were down in L.A.
playing the International Pop Overthrow festival and we were at
a club called The Knitting Factory. We decided to go out the back
door instead of the front and this guy, Kim Fowley, asked us if
we were in a band. He hadn’t even seen us, he just asked
us for a tape and said he’d phone us to tell us if we were
any good.”
Fowley did indeed call, and a 15-hour ‘trip’ to the
producer’s home in Redlands, Calif., ensued.
“He
was phoning all these people, the editor of Mojo, people at Rolling
Stone, and then holding up the phone and making us play,”
Matyas says.
“We’d get on the phone and people
would say to us: ‘Isn’t Kim Fowley the most fucked-up
individual you’ve ever met?’”
After delicately extricating themselves from that situation, the
Eyes chalked up the Fowley meeting to experience until Rob Lanni
called up, saying he had heard of the band through a lawyer friend
who had allegedly spoken to Fowley.
“My friend told
me to get these guys to send some music to me,” Lanni recalls.
“And when I heard it I thought it had a great British feel,
recalling the Kinks, the Hollies’ harmonies, even some old
Guess Who. I phoned them, I was startled how young they were and
we started working almost right away.”
The Waking Eyes hooked up with Lanni and partner Eric Lawrence
just as Coalition Entertainment, was discussing setting up a small
imprint with Warner Canada.
“We had them do some demos,
we finally played it for Arnold and we agreed that we wanted to
do it. But the last thing we wanted to do was turn them into a
Finger 11 or Our Lady Peace. We just wanted to enhance what they
already had,” Lanni says.
Which is precisely what Arnold Lanni has done.
Matyas and Peters recall the sessions for Video Sound, which took
place a year ago, as both exacting and exhausting but they’re
more than pleased with the results.
Now they simply want to get out on the road with new bassist Joey
Penner and play as many shows as possible.
“It seems
like it’s all been building up to this point. From way back
when I was in The Pets,” Peters says. “All the groundwork
we’ve done, from refining our songwriting to making contacts
— it has all been about doing this. It’s been a four-
or five-year process to get here, but it’s finally happening.
“And even now we’re only at the beginning of the beginning
of the beginning.”
That said, Matyas and Peters add that they have about 120 new
songs in the can and are bursting to put out even more of their
music.
At that rate, who knows what they’ll be up to in a couple
of years. For now, though, their sound is Video Sound.
For more info see our our What’s
Up entertainment listings. |
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