Tangiers
Sayce’s answer usually depends on the situation. For the old guy at the truck stop he might offer the stock answer of “The Clash,” or “You know The Rolling Stones at all?” while more elaborate definitions are reserved for encounters with younger folks in bars. “If it’s some kid, like a girl or something, I guess you’d say that we sound kind of like...um...semi-brainy poppy punk rock that’s sort of introspective in some way, but by the time I got to that part of the sentence, she would have lost her attention completely.”
Sayce
isn’t far off with such loose definitions. Last October,
Tangiers released their third proper LP, The Family Myth, a smart
and subtly humorous collection of jagged, tense pop, featuring
twelve rolling, hook-laden, off-kilter melodies, jangly guitars
that alternately rip and sparkle, and a rhythm section that is
no-apologies bombast—if Sayce’s art student was mixing
anything, he was pushing the drums and bass way up in the mix,
provoking a dub-like atmosphere. The story of Tangiers begins in downtown Toronto, where Sayce grew up, the son of two librarians. He met Reichmann as a teen, playing in numerous bands together—“basically goofy kind of fun bands ‘til we were in our 20s, and then I guess it was just natural,” he says. “I mean, we have a pretty close-knit group of friends, we all sort of play in bands together. Although, our drummer Jon, he’s not from Toronto, he’s from Kingston, which is a college town about three hours from Toronto.” McCann also comes by way of Guided By Voices, the band he drummed for during a two-year stint following the departure of Jim MacPherson. McCann coincidentally replaced Tangiers’s original drummer after the group’s debut, Hot New Spirits in 2003. He was joined by Deverell in time for the follow-up, Never Bring You Pleasure, released in 2004.
He
stops to dwell on this. “It’s awful. A few weeks ago,
we did this tour—we did all the college towns in Ontario,
which are all really good, and we went up to Montréal —that
was great. Ottawa’s really good. But then you’ve got
to drive to a place called Sudbury and then to another place called
Thunder Bay, and these cities are tiny—they’re like
nickel mining towns, and the drives are between 8 and 14 hours,
basically. And to get from Thunder Bay to Winnipeg is another
10 hours. And Winnipeg is like, you know, the first sign of civilization—you
know, when you’re coming from Toronto or Montréal.
So, it’s rough, but by the time you get to Vancouver it’s
totally worth it because Vancouver is an amazing place to play
shows. And Calgary and Edmonton are the two other cities, and
they’re pretty good as well.” Sayce seems to be warming
up to the notion of another Canadian jaunt as the memory of the
band’s first tour comes back to him. “It’s good
to just sort of pile into a van with your friends, drive across
a really beautiful-looking country, and sort of see how the other
half of Canadian people live.” And
the other reason? “Our Canadian label who put out our first
two records, really wanted us to tour a lot. And, uh, I just finished
college last May, so I couldn’t really get into the van
and tour that much. I mean, we did Canada once in 2003, at the
end of 2003, on our first record because we got to open for Frank
Black.” It
hasn’t helped matters that the band’s native press
seems at odds with the American outfits who liken Tangiers to
bands like XTC, Richard Hell & The Voidoids, or even The Zombies,
having inaccurately pegged them for a northern version of a certain
trendy art-rock band from New York City. “Canadian publications
have a totally different take on what we sound like. Canadian
publications think we sound like The Strokes,” says a bemused
Sayce. “I don’t think it sounds like that at all.
Like, how could you come up with The Strokes?!” So
with minimal touring and little fanfare, Tangiers have stayed
pretty much under the radar to this point, churning out their
manic pop records, old-school style: one a year. There are benefits
to such situations, beyond just having creative control: unlike
said New York City band, Sayce and co. haven’t had to confront
the notion of re-inventing themselves after every single record
merely to the behest of an ever-fickle public, nor have they fallen
under intense media scrutiny. In other words, it’s afforded
them a natural state of progression. Their
recent signing to Frenchkiss Records should alter that situation
slightly. They got the call from the small label in late 2004
and were invited down to New York to record with Chris Zane, who
thus far has guided efforts by both Calla and Ambulance Ltd. For
the first time the band found themselves in the plush confines
of a high-end recording studio—“like a really pro-ish
downtown Manhattan studio, that somehow Frenchkiss hooked up on
a really good deal,” explains Sayce. No doubt, the signing
to an American label will improve things in the recognition department,
yet the artistic direction of the band seems firmly in the hands
of its members. Zane added his touch to the recordings, but proved
hardly overbearing, and ideas for future recordings reek of self-motivation,
not label influence. “I think it’s probably about
time to write something that’s a bit slower,” admits
Sayce. “I think we’re gonna go pick up some acoustic
guitars and write some quiet stuff first and see if we can focus
on melodies before we just basically get to a studio and spazz
out. It’s hard for us. Being in a studio is exciting. We
generally start flipping out after about 20 minutes, and then
make records like what we’ve made.” Touring,
though is definitely on the minds of those in the band, as they
try to get “the ball rolling in the U.S.” The new-ness
of it all is not lost on Sayce. “It’s weird,”
he explains, “because, you know, we’re from Canada
and we haven’t had an American label before. We haven’t
had an American booking agent. We haven’t had American anything
basically. Like, all we did was go to New York and play a few
shows, and we got lucky ‘cause some of the Frenchkiss guys
were out and they were like, ‘Oh, let’s put out your
record.’” An
official website is even in the works. Initial attempts according
to Sayce were deemed “whack,” and fell by the wayside.
“It just didn’t really work out, so then we left the
tour dates up. French Kiss [was] like, ‘Where’s your
website?’ And I was kind of like, ‘Oh, we’re
working on it, we’re working on it.’ I mean, it’s
still pretty indie rock. You know, like nobody has a lot of money
to be throwing around. I guess if there was money for a website
it would probably go to something else first rather than a website,
you know?” Fortunately,
the band’s number one priority is writing great songs, though
art direction might be considered a close second. Reichmann, a
gifted artist in his own right—he designed friends’s
hip hop record covers in high school—has to this point been
in charge of sleeve design, infusing at times a cut-and-paste
method with a post-modern touch, rendering some rather striking
images in the process. The Family Myth cover features
a side profile of an illustrated skull underneath what appears
to be the bottom portion of a chandelier. Inside, is a photo of
Sayce and Reichmann on a sofa, the former clutching an axe, the
latter on the telephone. Sayce reasons the emphasis in this department:
“It’d be such an easy cop-out to be like, ‘Oh,
that looks acceptable—let’s let the music speak for
itself,’ but, if you have the chance to do something totally
cool—if somebody is going to print thousands of copies of
this thing, you should make it look as good as you can.” As
the principle songwriters, Sayce and Reichmann have proven a potent
pair—their songs at once spontaneous and tuneful. Though
their work overall would qualify as a collaboration, as it stands
now, whoever writes the music to a particular song, also handles
the lyrics. “Whoever’s original idea the song was
will write the lyrics because that person usually has an idea
of where they want the song to go,” elaborates Sayce. Yet
there are exceptions: “If Josh comes up with a guitar part
that just takes the song further along the path that I want it
to go on I’m gonna say, ‘Josh, it’s awesome.
Keep that, it’s wicked.’” Compliments such as
this are freely flowing when the situation calls for it, but on
the other hand, Sayce admits to being apprehensive about critiquing
Reichmann too closely. “Every time you step on someone’s
toes, you stifle them creatively.” Still, he admits to being
“somewhat competitive” with his friend. Up until the new album, the relationship had yielded some intriguing looks at classic subjects (i.e. girls). “It’s difficult to escape writing about women, you know?,” says Sayce. “It’s unfortunate, but if you’re a dude in his twenties you kind of have to focus on that. But for some reason Josh and I tend to focus on a darker side of relationships, and how things can go wrong in relationships, and some people might not pick up on it but there’s a self-deprecating humor that sort of floats around. We’re trying to be really dark, [but] we’re also trying to be a little bit funny, you know?” You could cite “I Don’t Love You,” from Never Bring You Pleasure as a prime example. Sample lyrics: “Hey now, you never loved me anyhow/What you loved was that abstract idea that you had someone/I don’t need these kisses for Christmas/What I want is a knife, a fork, a bottle cork, ‘cause it’s over now.” Dark, yet funny.
This
sort of approach could be emblematic of the overall intent behind
The Family Myth, which Sayce calls “a very Toronto
record.” As Sayce explains it, Toronto is entirely made
up of immigrants. “Because Canada has a really lax sort
of immigration policy, and Toronto being the biggest city, everybody
you know’s parents is from somewhere else. Like, my parents
are from England. Josh’s parents are from the U.S. It’s
kind of like America, but it’s a more recent sort of exodus
to Toronto. And, also in Canada, there’s not really much
of a Canadian identity really. So, people tend to hang onto their
cultures a little stronger. So, basically, something that runs
through the record is that young people in Toronto have this sort
of identity crisis going on. And because of that, you have all
of these different manifestations of that. I mean, you have these
Anglophiles sort of running through the streets of Toronto dressed
up like 1960s mods, and they go to these mod nights and dance
to The Rolling Stones, and all this English music, and speak in
English accents, and it’s kind of weird.” Sayce likens
it all to a form of romanticism, which many of the songs tend
to mock. “There are all these people that have been creating
these sort of myths—people are creating new cultural identities
for themselves, because there is no Canadian identity, necessarily.
So, sometimes you’ll meet people, and they’ll have
sort of made up this entire really strange history for themselves.
They’ll be sort of overcompensating for not having this
Canadian culture, so it’s about this sort of big mish-mash
of Canadian cultural identities—young people trying to work
through them trying to find out who they are.” With Sayce sounding like such an anti-romantic, you would think The Family Myth to be as such. “Oh, but it’s also totally romantic at the same time,” he points out. “Because we’re Canadian, we can’t escape it. That’s why we had to make fun of ourselves. It’s the weirdest mix. But, at the same time, without romance we wouldn’t have anything to sing about.”
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