MONTREAL - Near the tail end of my conversation with the Luyas? Jessie Stein and Pietro Amato at Caf? Sardine in Mile End, the two bandmates, in the middle of explaining how an entire year of their lives can seemingly disappear in an instant when recording an album, suddenly became distracted and started giggling uncontrollably.
After inspecting my teeth and confirming there were no lodged chunks of mint and bourbon doughnut to be found, they clued me in to what was so amusing: the caf? was coincidentally playing their 2007 debut, Faker Death, on the speaker system. The quaint album, written mere months after the band formed, sounds a lifetime away from their latest, the groovy Animator.
?All my former emotions are ganging up on me,? said vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Stein while listening attentively to her younger self?s coos. She then nudged her long-time musical foil. ?I wrote this song (Dumb Blood) when I just got back to Montreal.?
?I remember,? responded Amato, the rare rock ?n? roll French horn player, also taken aback by the caf??s unlikely soundtrack selection.
?I was crying in my bathroom,? continued Stein.
?I remember,? Amato repeated, this time with a slight sigh.
While the duo can look back on Faker Death ? which has largely become a forgotten footnote in their catalogue ? with a laugh, the inspiration that fuelled Animator is far closer to their hearts than the subjects covered in their earlier work.
Only a few hours into their first day of recording in February, the group, which also features drummer Bucky Wheaton, bass synth player Mathieu Charbonneau and guesting Arcade Fire violinist Sarah Neufeld, received a devastating phone call: a long-time friend of the band had passed away. They decided to continue working on the album, feeling their friend would have preferred it that way, but now their compositions were driven by a new sense of focus: a desire to pay tribute to their friend and capture the powerful, primal emotions associated with loss.
?All the best songs in the world are about love and death, and those are very elemental, human things,? Stein said. ?In the last few years, the music that?s really spoken to me has dealt with basic rhythms you fall into. There?s a repetitiveness to life, but then there are these random events that shake you.?
The music that best reflected this chaos amid a backdrop of consistency, according to the group, was the Brazilian psychedelia they would listen to while on tour. It?s admittedly not the first style of music one might associate with the artful Luyas, who ? in addition to Amato?s French horn, distorted to sound like everything from a guitar to a seagull ? will add flugelhorns and analog synths to their unorthodox, collaborative concoctions.
?I don?t think our album sounds like Brazilian psychedelic music,? Amato clarified. ?With that style of music, there are a lot of wacky things happening sound-wise, but there?s always this real groove element to that music, so that?s where the influence came in.?
Their new-found devotion to rhythm can also be attributed to a change of drummer, from the unconventional Stefan Schneider to the more grounded Wheaton. And Charbonneau assumed a more prominent role on Animator, whereas their previous album, 2011?s Too Beautiful to Work, was mostly devoid of bass lines.
?We wanted to make a record that seduces you, and holds you the way you want to be held,? said Stein, before elaborating: ?Sometimes you?ll listen to an album that?s erratic. It?s experimental and brilliant, but it?s an intellectual experience. Then sometimes you put on (Neil Young?s) After the Gold Rush and you just feel it in your body. Suddenly it?s your imagination going and it?s not about someone else?s work of art.?
Animator is released on Tuesday, Oct. 16. The Luyas perform Nov. 13 at Cabaret Mile End, 5240 Parc Ave. Tickets cost $15. Call 514-790-1245 or visit www.admission.com.
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