Features

EMILIE CHRISTIE Enlarge Image

These Brothers trust each other...: Darwin Baker, Jesse Matas and Matt Foster (left to right).

Two of the three Crooked Brothers, Matt Foster and Jesse Matas (Darwin Baker is the "elusive Brother"), are sitting in Deseo Bistro’s new digs in South Osborne, discussing their sophomore outing Lawrence, Where’s Your Knife? — and the restaurant couldn’t be a more fitting venue. Hanging on the exposed brick walls are striking works by local visual artist Paul Robles, who also happens to be The Crooked Brothers’ go-to guy for statement-making album art.
   
"I love visual art, but I can’t make what I see in my head happen on paper," Foster says with a laugh. "I’ve known Paul for quite a few years now and I love his art. It’s nice to be able to have a relationship with a piece of art that goes beyond purchasing it.
   
"An album sounds like something, but it also looks like something," he  adds. "And I think both are important."
   
Indeed, Robles’ cut-paper silhouettes, with their juxtaposition of whimsy and darkness, perfectly compliment The Crooked Brothers’ indelible brand of roots-noir/alt-country. And if we’re taking about how an album sounds, Lawrence, Where’s Your Knife? — which will receive its hometown release at the West End Cultural Centre this weekend — ain’t your parents’ folk music.  Growling Tom Waits-ian stompers 17 Horses and Your Love is a Ghost Town exist alongside stripped-down back-porch ballads such as Kansas and Good Man. The whole thing evokes a big Prairie sky, simultaneously beautiful and foreboding.
   
Self-recorded and produced, Lawrence, Where’s Your Knife? has a welcome grit to it; it’s clear its creators weren’t afraid to get their hands dirty.
   
"There were a few things that were important to us," Foster explains. "We wanted to hold on to that DIY aspect of the first record (2009’s awesomely titled Deathbed Pillowtalk). The sound of an album is really important — we were really interested in crafting it ourselves."
   
"And in improving the recording and engineering aspect of it," Matas adds.
   
And so, the trio took its time, holing itself up in a small cabin during a cold Manitoba winter.
   
"I feel like a lot of people will go into the studio and spend a lot of money and a short amount of time," Foster notes. "But it’s way more fun to spend less money and more time."
   
"And to treat it like a piece of art," Matas adds. "It’s different than playing a live show — it’s a different piece of art unto itself."
   
"All three of us really consider a record and performance very different forms of art," Foster agrees. "We really like to pay attention to the sound and minutiae of a record. We were all willing to record it and re-explore it to make it sound how we wanted. All we had was time."
   
Still, immersing yourself in making a record can take a physical toll.
   
"You get cabin fever because you’re so absorbed in something, but the album benefits from it," Foster says with laugh. "You’re living and breathing the album and there’s no distractions. And capturing the sound of the cabin was just as important as capturing the performance."
   
In a way, the cabin itself — with all of its creaks, groans and sighs — became the fourth member of the band. The Crooked Brothers have always liked to have organic sounds on their recordings. While subtle, they add a lot of charm. (The Brothers aren’t alone in their love for natural noise; alt-country darling Neko Case recorded her acclaimed 2009 album Middle Cyclone in a barn, and the end result featured the odd performance by a choir of baby birds and some particularly vocal mating frogs.)
   
"Take a creaky floor — you may not notice it when you hear it, but it adds so much to the overall recording," Matas says. "It makes it more real."
   
And it gives the trio’s hefty subject matter even more weight. On Lawrence, Where’s Your Knife?, these three songwriters lay their hearts bare; this is a record that has not only soaring highs, but also heartbreaking lows.
   
"Something we have as a vision in our band is to not shy away from sad and dark subject matter," Foster says.
   
"And what better time to record than November?" Matas adds with a laugh.
   
"I think it’s taboo to bring up these subjects day to day but, in art, you can approach them honestly," Foster continues. "You can lay it all out on the table. There’s something so inviting about music — you can write a song and really say what you mean."
   
"There’s a lot of people out there who have great voices and don’t say anything," Matas says. "And it’s a shame."
   
Still, Lawrence, Where’s Your Knife? isn’t exactly a funeral dirge, either. It’s often a fun, fast and loose album, the kind that clearly benefitted from its makers’ willingness to experiment.
   
"I like that it doesn’t sound like a folk album," Foster says. "It comes out of the gate pretty fast. It doesn’t sound like a singer/songwriter album, either, which I also really like. You could strip all these songs down to a skeleton and I think they’ll sound just as full."
   
Perhaps the most striking thing about The Crooked Brothers’ latest is their ear for arrangement. All three players are deft multi-instrumentalists, juggling banjo, mandolin, dobro, guitar and harmonica, but these songs are served and strengthened by only the instrumentation they need.
   
"We’ve learned that not everyone needs to be playing all the time," Matas says.
   
Foster puts it another way. "Music is like a good conversation. If it has something good to say, everyone else should be listening."

THE CROOKED BROTHERS CD-RELEASE PARTY
Sept. 23, 8 p.m., West End
Cultural Centre
w/ Fish & Bird