LUCIDMEDIA

Taking Parlour Steps to Success

Written by Adam A. Donaldson Monday, 05 October 2009 15:36

You don’t have to tell Parlour Steps lead singer and guitarist Caleb Stull that the label “Thought rock” sounds pretentious – he knows. “It sounds pretty pretentious now, so we’re probably going to change that because it kind of gives it a different idea because when you listen to our music its pretty bouncy pop music.”

Still, it’s a label that Stull stands by because he truly believes that he and the other four members of this Vancouver based New Wave rock band are doing something different. And the label does have its uses after all.

“Besides a nifty little label to give to journalists for their articles,” he says with a laugh on the phone from West Coast, “it’s about approaching the lyrics and the subject matter of the songs more as a question; questions about things that interest me at the time, like metaphysical questions. We have the room for the quintessential love songs, but we can also delve into this headier subject matter.”

Heady subject matter was never anything new to Stull or his band, Parlour step began life as the accompanying band for “really overwrought, dramatic, space pop to some underground theatre.” “The plays were existential, sort of experimental, really outside stuff,” recalls Stull. “They did it in basements and converted warehouses, things like that.”

After the loose coalition of actors, directors and playwrights disbanded, Stull changed his focus to making pop songs. He drew inspiration from The Pixies, My Bloody Valentine, and SoundScape as well as 60s Motown and R&B. “Somehow mix that with a Smiths era shuffle and you get us,” adds Stull.

It was a sound developed through a natural, musical evolutionary process, and with the comings and goings of the entire band save Stull, who’s the only member of the band to make the nearly 10 year journey from playing live theatre till today. Aside from Stull, the other members of The Parlour Steps current incarnation have a shared frame of reference.

“The band that we have now is all jazz background,” explains Stull. “They all came from jazz school together and that’s how they know each other, and I’m the uneducated punk of the band.”

The way Stull puts it, his rough edges are smoothed out thanks to the jazz background of the band who helped through improvising and by being diverse enough to tackle different music flavours and augment the sound. Stull’s main focus is the lyrical content that accompanies the music, and trying to find the words that match the bounce and the melody of the music while trying to get the songs to say something.

Currently, Parlour Steps are working on their fifth album, which they hope to release in October. The difference this time? The music will be technologically retro. “We’re tracking it all out on tape,” Stull says proudly. It’s a method the band has experimented with before, but is going full force into now. “We love the sound, and while it’s a bit of a headache getting it done, but man when that sound came out of the speaker. That was ballsy rock right there.”

After the album’s complete it means more touring and going out their making connections, and doing in all on their own; a position comfortable for the band that self-produces all their own albums. “In the year 2000 you can still have that fantasy of being picked up by a major label and having your whole life changing and having everything served to you on a silver platter,” says Stull.

“Since then we’ve kind of come back to Earth and realized that we had to do this on our own. […] Our mission has changed, we toured a lot more and we’ve taken on this self-education that’s pretty important for bands these days and we’re a bit more realistic in terms of what to expect.”

Stull also hopes that the band continues to become tighter musically, and that even after a decade, he can’t think of any other place he’d rather be playing music. “What’s nice about the format was that it was so open to begin with,” he explains. “Pretty much everything I threw at this band was acceptable. That would explain the longevity; I never felt that I had to quit the band in order to try something new.”