Sep. 11, 2007 - Issue #621: Sex in The City 07
Montréal indie band makes good
As if we haven't used that headline before...
Not so for Alex Hackett. Nope, a couple of years ago the guitarist and vocalist for Montréal-based Kill the Lights found himself jobless in Toronto when he and boyhood friend Yann Geoffroy looked at each other and said, “let’s start a band.”
“I’d always played music,” Hackett says. “I had a couple of bands before that I never really took that seriously—forced myself to get on stage a couple of times.”
But this time would be different.
“The Canadian scene was just starting to bubble, and we were getting pretty excited about what we were hearing locally,” Hackett says. “And it was kind of fortuitous, I guess you could say. Right time, right place, right motivation.”
Hackett and drummer Geoffroy were joined by bassist (and Blue Man) John Dignard in Toronto before guitarist/keyboardist Joe Yarmush and vocalist/keyboardist Steph Hanna joined the ranks and four of the five made for Montréal, where Hackett and Geoffroy lived before.
“We’re trying to convince Dignard to come to Montréal,” Hackett says. “I don’t know if it’s going to work, but hopefully it will.”
Despite the five-hour drive on the 401 between them, the members delivered a fully realized and cohesive debut, last February’s Buffalo of Love, a revamped and reordered vision of the band’s 2005 independent release Winter Asthmatics. Influences on the album ring clearly—you hear tinges of Pavement and Interpol as well as early U2 and New Order—and bears some familiar trappings of indie rock, but the band also pushes past them, the melding of two guitars, bass, keyboards and slamming drums with Hackett and Hanna’s vocals creates the haunting wall of sound that has attracted fans out East and seen Kill the Lights open for a host of prominent indie-rock bands.
It probably goes without saying that Kill the Lights feels blessed that its first foray to points west of Winnipeg is in support of Bedouin Soundclash and k-os—even though the artistic direction of each entity seems disparate.
“We’re not political. It’s definitely something more abstract,” Hackett says. “It’s generally associative or stuff like that. I grew up reading and writing, and I took literature and philosophy in school. And I did a masters—basically I read a little bit too much than would be good for my mental health. I used to be big into poetry; I used to be big into heavy literature, and so that all filters its way into my lyrics. It’s not a particular subject from song to song. It’s more about images and creating a mood or a vibe, as opposed to saying, ‘This is what it’s about.’”
And when you immerse yourself into the driving rhythm and catchy hooks of a track like “Two Sinister Gentlemen,” you’ll find the mood to be infectious, that you want to kill the lights and worship at the altar of the dance floor.
“Music’s kind of like religion, in a sense. I think it’s nourishment. People can’t do without it—I don’t think that it’s an exaggeration to say so,” he says emphatically. “If you look at our culture, and if you look at most cultures throughout history, you’ve always got music and it’s always had an important—if not essential–– role. I don’t know what it is about the human soul that requires music, but I believe that it’s a necessity. I think that can influence people in various ways, but I think that it’s a necessity.” V
Sun, Sep 16 (8 pm)
Kill the Lights
with k-os
Starlite Room, $29.50
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