The Barr Brothers are not your average band.
The folky Montreal quartet is in Toronto tonight (with the addition of an apparently wicked pedal steel player) on the heels of the release of their incredible new album, Sleeping Operator, opening up for Bahamas at the Danforth Music Hall. It's the band's big sophomore album, the follow-up to heir self-titled debut released in 2011 to much acclaim and a Juno Award nomination for Adult Alternative Album of the Year. And, according to Andrew Barr, the whole recording process came with a bit of added pressure and a whopping 40 songs.
“Basically we hadn’t recorded a single song in three years so there was just this giant built up of material,” says Andrew Barr, drummer, on the phone from Edinburgh, Scotland amidst the band’s tour of the United Kingdom. “We didn’t really want to choose from the get go. We just let it all out, recorded everything. I’m not sure that was a wise idea, we kind of opened the flood gates.”
After getting everything down on tape, they set to work crafting a complete album, something that worked together from beginning to end. Originally, the band toyed with the idea of basing the album on the cult classic Jim Henson movie The Dark Crystal, then it got really weird.
“That was just Brad’s idea,” says Barr, of his brother and one of the band’s co-founders and chief songwriter and vocalist. “It’s one of our favourite movies. A lot of time when we’re mixing, and things are close to getting done, we turn on imagery, planetary videos or whatever and sometimes that helps us take it outside the music to see if it’s a good soundtrack of the moment."
The band certainly has a reputation for dropping a few dreamscapes when called upon, and Sleeping Operators is no different. Another technique that may have helped the band achieved optimal interplanetary groove was a trick borrowed from Salvador Dali.
“We were doing a bit of experiment with just, when you’re spending long days in the studio, you’re napping on the floor and getting up and doing takes, and sometimes when you first get up that’s some of the best stuff,” Barr explains. “So we did that old Salvador Dali trick where you sleep with a screw in your hand, and it will fall on a plate when you fall asleep and your hand opens, and it just puts you in a different head space. For Brad, a lot of songs exist in that kind of space, dreamlike, with lyrics open to interpretation. It creates a different world.”
The band was formed in Montreal after the brothers Barr headed back to Quebec from their native United States, as legend has it, in search of a much-revered waitress that Andrew had met while playing a gig in Montreal in a building that happened to catch on fire. Oh the passion. The boys added the magical Sarah Page on harp shortly thereafter followed by Andres Vial. In addition to crafting beautiful music that defies description, The Barr Brothers have earned kudos for their energetic and engaging live shows.
“We’re keeping the show really dynamic,” says Barr. “There will always be a fair amount of quiet moments, where you have to lean forward to hear what’s going on. We’re keeping that alive, but we also want to see how big we can be too with this ensemble.”
Check out the beautiful song “Come in the Water” from Sleeping Operators below. The band hits the stage at 8pm, followed by Bahamas.
