The Watchmen's Great Leap
Winnipeg band looks back and moves forward with new release
author unknown
MapleMusic.com
'Fast Forward,' one half of Slomotion , the latest album from The Watchmen, might sound like a remarkable departure. Loud, electronically drenched beats, distorted mics almost mask lead singer Danny Greaves' distinctive voice and there is not a live drum to be found. It would be easy to think this was a different band altogether.
But that's not how guitarist Joey Serlin sees it.
"Now that people are starting to hear Slomotion for the first time they're starting to realize how different it is. But for us, it evolved so gradually," explains Serlin, on the phone from his home in Winnipeg.
"We just started using some of these programming tools a while back, so for us the growth was natural. But now we're hearing this response and I think it's really interesting to hear others say it sounds different."
Slomotion is a double-disc that carries the listener through The Watchmen's past and into the band's present. Disc one 'Rewind' is a collection of eight songs pulled from their four previous albums. Rather than tack the odd original at the end of that disc, band and label decided to release a second one: 'Fast Forward.' The latter is an unusual experiment in electronica and rock unlike anything The Watchmen have done before.
"When you have four players who've been playing together for ten years and then one quarter of that team leaves the band, that really is going to change the sound," he says gently, almost out of respect to drummer Sammy Kohn, who left the band between 1998's Silent Radar and Slomotion. The Watchmen will tour with a drummer but for all intents and purposes Kohn has yet to be replaced.
"We've been listening to bands that utilize these sounds, these loops for over ten years, so it's not so unusual. Some people will find it different. From the band's perspective it doesn't seem so unusual," he adds, citing Bjork, Massive Attack and Tricky as early inspirations. Experimenting with keyboards is how Serlin and bassist Ken Tizzard started to adjust the brand of rock and roll that had moved 300,000 CDs for The Watchmen. (Greaves has played piano on all Watchmen releases.)
"If you have an idea in your head, you can do it," gushes Serlin. "It's very difficult to describe ... but if you have a guitar sound in your head, you can make it happen. Let's put it into painting terms ... if you have a blue sound in your head or a red sound in your head. You can do it. Your imagination is your only limitation."
"For us the growth was natural. But now we're hearing this response and I think it's really interesting to hear others say it sounds different" - Joey Serlin of The Watchmen
After years in Toronto, Serlin and his wife moved back to their home in Winnipeg, ("I love Toronto but I need a lot of space.") Greaves and Tizzard remained in Ontario, in and around Toronto, where the two perform as Audio Playground High + Wide an electronica-based side project. After the dust settled from Kohn's departure the trio got back to writing. They started trading tunes and lyrics back and forth over the Internet, adding and building songs from their respective domains. If it sounds impersonal, Serlin says it wasn't at all.
"I find it refreshing. A lot of songs before were just the four of us writing in a room, looking at each other and that can be pretty daunting. We all tend to like to control situations so this gives us a lot more autonomy. The songs are a lot more focused. You can do it without trying to write your part and have someone force you into a different direction. There's no compromise."
'Fast Forward' marked the first time the band recorded without live drums and did so straight to disc (rather than tape). Serlin says the writing process was particularly furious while band members waited for their producers of choice, Rhys Fulber and DJ Iain, to come available.
"There are only nine songs on this record because we've never recorded with such detail before," he says of the tight 36.5 minute 'Fast Forward.'
"You can hear every song and hear a great new thing each time."
That detail would have been impossible if members didn't have home studio technologies. And Serlin is pretty confidant that the next Watchmen record won't take as long to release, not that anyone is unhappy with how long Slomotion took to put out.
"We always felt the next best song was right around the corner, just waiting to burst out," he says. "A song like 'Absolutely Anytime' came from me being in Winnipeg and having my house to myself and just going through one massive writing session. We were waiting for a producer. Those songs wouldn't have been around otherwise."