The Meligrove Band goes way back. I mean, when these Mississauga natives first came together in 1997, people still bought albums — in, like, stores made of bricks and mortar and other weird corporeal stuff. Their name and their music are well known and well loved in the Toronto rock scene, yet due to a combination of bad coincidences they’ve never managed to penetrate the mainstream market.
It’s a shame, too, because their glittery pop-rock is a honed and lethal concoction: gut-level hooks balanced carefully with sonic experimentation. As bassist Mike Small observed in our brief e-mail exchange, the "dominant press narrative" paints Meligrove as a casualty of post-Internet major label restructuring, clawing its way back from the brink after V2, the Virgin subsidiary that signed them in 2005, crumbled to dust.
Mike himself spins a different yarn. The Meligrove Band he describes is less dramatic, not as sexy but even more likable: just a bunch of guys with a genuine love of music, doing what they’ve always done. You can mosey down memory lane — or lose your Meligrove virginity — tonight at the Horseshoe Tavern. You can also stream both of their most recent albums in their entirety at meligroveband.com. If you dig them, you might even, um, buy them.
It’s barely an exaggeration to say that every die-hard rock music fan in Toronto knows and loves the Meligrove Band. You guys got a raw deal from V2 in 2005 and just about disintegrated, and now you’re back. How’s the response to your new album Shimmering Lights been?
Really? Thanks! Our V2 deal was pretty sweet in 2005 actually. Around summer 2006 it started turning weird. The U.K. side of it got ridiculous kinda fast. The label went down in early ’07. Anyway, we didn’t really almost disintegrate, I think. We just got busy with other stuff for a while. We always at least figured we’d make another record. Though this seems to have been the dominant press narrative about Shimmering Lights (in Canada anyway): we’ve had near-breakups between all four of our albums. Anyway, music writers, bloggers, etc. seemed pretty into Shimmering Lights. We had some great reviews in the U.S. and U.K. especially. And Germany. Germans seem to like our band a lot.
There’s a documentary? How did that come about, and where can I get it?
It’s true. The director (Brendan McCarney) sent us a pitch in early 2010, and it seemed interesting and fun. Aside from being available for interviews and providing tour footage, we haven’t been involved in it. I think Jay [Nunes, guitarist]’s designing the DVD package though. It’s supposed to come out later this year. The trailer makes it look like some kind of tragedy, but I feel like most of what Brendan shot was gold comedy. You’d have to ask him if you want to know more.
There’s a National Post article that makes it seem like you’ve dramatically overhauled your sound, which doesn’t seem true. Shimmering Lights does seem more rock-oriented than previous Meligrove releases, though. Not more aggressive, but more … help me out here?
More awesome, obviously. Smarter and sexier, too. A surefire hit. The album of the year. It’ll make you throw out all your David Bowie tapes.
I grew up in Mississauga, where everybody my age remembers seeing you guys play at Masonic Lodge, knowing you’d go on to do big things. When I think about that and listen to songs like "Bones Attack!!" I start feeling pretty sappy. Regardless of commercial ups and downs, are you guys aware of the very real impact you’ve had on your fans?
Only when people tell us directly. Otherwise, like most bands, we’re blind to any impact we might have had on anyone. Once at a show in London, an older guy told us he was a philosophy professor and that our lyrics are quoted in a book he’s writing. Though now that I’m typing this out, it sounds like maybe we were being pranked there. Another time, Googling my own band, I found a Planets Conspire review someone wrote as a letter to his deceased wife, about how it was helping him cope. That was pretty heavy. Oh, and a friend in Winnipeg named her cat Meligrove. But she’s our friend. That’s different.
Okay, so, what’s next? You guys are … you guys are staying together, right?
If we want. Probably. It’s fun to rock out. We’re making up new songs right now.
Meligrove Band, Horseshoe Tavern, August 11.
