Are you one of those bands that doesn’t play in your own hometown?
Yeah, we’re kind of like that.
This is Jessie Stein speaking to me over a dying iPhone from Montreal, where the Luyas are about to start their tour with Julian Lynch at PLANT. Tonight, their tour will bring them to Allston’s Great Scott where the Luyas will back up Lynch and where he in turn will sit in with them on bass-clarinet and guitar. Also joining is one of my personal Boston favorites, excellent solo performer Animal Hospital; a perfect fit for this bill if there ever was one.
Although they are from Montreal, Stein admits readily that they hardly play there. When asked what’s going on in the local scene, she is not exactly sure (in fairness, she has lived the last 6-months in Brooklyn). “What’s cool in Montreal?” she asks her friends. “The Luyas!” pipes-up Wisconsin-native Julian Lynch. It’s a reposte to which Stein laughs, “he’s not even from here!”
But, do you really even need to be from anywhere anymore if you’re a band? Last month, Pitchfork ran a review of the new album by the Minks, whom they referred to (nauseatingly) as ‘Boston indie-pop stylists.’ Yet, I’m not exactly sure that anybody in Boston knows who these guys are; or, more importantly (considering that Captured Tracks signed them and Pitchfork loves them), if local cred even matters anymore. Has it for years?
On the other hand, you’ve got Caspian–the biggest band to ever come out of Beverly, MA. Caspian rose to the top of a post-rock scene that doesn’t even really exist in Boston anymore and were playing swanky places like the Paradise years ago. Minks might have NEVER played a real local show here. But for a band like Caspian, getting out (while technically not leaving, as far as I know) was a means of survival.
And although Caspian notably played at last month’s Boston Calling festival (a noteworthy accomplishment, considering that their songs can fluctuate from math beats and streams of articulated feedback to folky, yet ionized, alt-tunings mid-measure–i.e. not an obvious fit for the pop-heavy festival), Boston might not see them a whole lot until 2014 or so. But hey, can’t tours of Europe wait?
Frankly, Stein’s Luyas sound too busy touring, recording and collaborating to be hob-nobbing in the Montreal scene. “We have facebook and twitter and that shit, but I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about our demographic. Really the main way that we try to reach people is by making music that we think is compelling, and I don’t really think that’s as old-fashioned as it might sound. I think it’s the only thing that might possibly work.”
Did they start out in local bands? Yes. Do they all have local side-projects? Yes, most of them do. Do they still have local connections? Absolutely. The members of the Luyas have played with (or play with) Arcade Fire, Bell Orchestre, and Timber Timbre–as well as a long list of lesser known Montreal bands that most of us have never heard of (but maybe should). In short, members have the Luyas have been a part of “pretty much any [Montreal] band over the age of 28.”
According to Stein, the downbeat, dub-inflected, ‘world-pop’ sextet has toured the U.S. 7 times and is content playing anywhere imaginable, from festivals to basements. “We’ve never played a supermarket.”
So, why don’t the Luyas hardly ever play where they live? The short answer is, thanks to things like that iphone dying in her hand, technology has really made it possible for bands like Stein’s Luyas exist anywhere, without the support of a local scene. For some acts, playing month after month in local clubs as a means to an end doesn’t pay the career dividends that reaching out into the beyond does.
Take Julian Lynch for example–the rainforest downpours and bullfrog croaks of the twee, yet somber chamber-pop on his new record Lines aren’t going to be the toast of the town week after week in Madison, WI. Jessie Stein heard one of his records, started emailing the guy, met up with him at a show, and proceeded to set up a tour with him–where they would collaborate and improvise together on stage–all from the conveniences of an iPhone.
“We are just getting to know him now. He’s a really bright, quick musician,” says Stein. And it’s not so much a matter of their sounds being similar that makes them a likely fit, but rather a sympathy in their gently progressive musical values. “I don’t know if we have the same DNA,” says Lynch. “But when you want to mate with someone, you don’t want to have the same DNA as them, but you have to like their DNA.”
And thus enters the new-age of online music dating.
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-Jonathan Donaldson
boston nova 