It was great, except for… I always drink coffee before shows and before recording sessions to get that little boost, I don’t drink coffee otherwise. So yesterday I had my usual coffee, but it was really weak, didn’t do anything, so I had another one but it was super strong and I was up all night until we took the road to get here at around 7, so I’m a little bit weirded out right now…(laughs)
Parlovr is now signed to Toronto-based Dine Alone Records, are you planning on moving there?
No, we love to play Toronto because it’s near and there are just so many people there, but we are still very much Montrealers, and most of the time we work with Montrealers too. Our good friend Martin Horn who runs Digital Birds Studio has produced everything we did here in Montreal. C’est un réalisateur extraordinaire (N.D.G accent)! He loves to experiment with all kinds of weird sounds, we have a lot of fun.
How long have you been playing together as Parlovr?
About three years now. The guys were working on songs for a year before I joined. I was having a bagel at Fairmount Bagel and Alex (Cooper) just passed by and said, “Hey you, you play drums, do you wanna play with us?”. I said yes. The first year we put out a record, next the EP and now we’re about to release our second album, hopefully soon.
How soon?
I don’t even know. Now that we’ve invested a lot of time and production into it, it becomes a bigger deal. We want to promote it right, and we want to do it justice too because we believe in this album. It was not something that we just walked in the studio for a week and did. The first album took us about a month and it was great, we believed in it, but this album we did over four months so we just try to line up everything for it to make sense.
Have you tried out some of the new material live?
Tonight we played three new songs right in the middle of the set, you could tell because those girls who were singing all along didn’t know them. They just kind of watched us, hopefully they liked it. (laughs)
How is it to have people showing that much passion for your music?
I love seeing that, I try not to stare too much, but I get such a good feeling from people who obviously listen to the records and know the songs.
There’s a great deal of surprises and creativity in the way your songs are built, I know you studied music at Concordia, what have you learned there that is important in your music?
One of the things I’ve learned, almost the main thing for playing rock and roll, is that if a part repeats twice, you got to do something different. You have to create some kind of progression and movement that reinvents the song all the time. I think a lot of people don’t realize that, but they feel it.
You guys are often refered to as an indie-pop band, how would you define your music?
I would say we’re a rock and roll band, but If you call us pop, we don’t get offended. The Beatles were a pop band, but people still loved their music a great deal. The Beach Boys, The Kinks and such, were also pop bands and the music was great..
Okay, so finally, why the famous “V” ?
It was before I joined, they were Parlour with a “U” and then we went with the “V” ’cause there was a bunch of other bands called “Parlour” with a “U”. Now people bring it the way they want and we’re fine with that. ParloVr… Parleur… Parlover, which we mostly get in Quebec but it’s totally fine.
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Parlovr’s new album should be coming out soon. You can always catch the EP on iTunes.
Visit Parlovr’s Myspace
By Felix Brooklyn
