Spectres new record Presence is out tomorrow, March 15th, via Artoffact Records — get it here. Brian (vocals) sat down with us to answer some questions about Presence, post-punk, and punk community.
Take us back to your childhood—what music did you hear around your home, booming out of the cars in your hood, or your headphones? What four albums have had a major impact on y’all’s creative spirit?
When I was really young my earliest memories of music are my parents listening to 50s rock and roll. My mom loved the Big Bopper, Little Richard and Buddy Holly. I remember she specifically loved the song Chantilly Lace and would often sing it when we drove. When I was slightly older in the late 80’s and early 90’s I have memories of my older cousins listening to 2 Tone Ska, The Cure and some more post punk sounding stuff like Spear of Destiny and The Grapes of Wrath. Of course, bands like The Chameleons and The Smiths have had an impact on our songwriting but I also think loads of New Wave and New Romantic stuff has always influenced me personally. I can definitively say that one of the few albums I have consistently listened to front to back since its release is Oasis – What’s the Story Morning Glory, for whatever that’s worth. Right now I’am almost exclusively listening to OSCOB – praise the sun god and GORE – 荷重の生人.
Give us the science behind the title and artwork of your new album, Presence?
It was just a name we came up with when pitching titles for the record. It was something Zach proposed, I believe the artwork was done by the same artist who also did the artwork for Homefront. We wanted something that looked uniform but also showcased a bit of an evolution from the types of artwork we used previously. I think the artwork represents the feel of the new album well.
If you could put three of your songs from your discography in a time capsule to be opened in 2062, what songs would you put in there, and why?
I think it would probably be Tell Me from Hindsight, Fate from Nostalgia and Real World from the upcoming album. I always wanted Spectres to incorporate more Pop and melancholic inflections as opposed to the more aggressive Post Punk songs and think these songs best represent that. Some of my favorite songs create a feeling of a last dance or a yearning for a past time and I think that Tell Me, Fate, and Real World encapsulate that feeling.
Describe Spectre’s album Presence as a weapon of mass change or a superpower—what impact do you want to see it have on culture or our society?
I don’t want it to have any impact on culture or society. All I have ever wanted to do was create the type of music I would like to listen to and I think that Presence achieves that. Spectres will have had its impact if 20 years from now some kid finds a Spectres record in the used bin at their local record shop and it has an impact on them.
What two historic events or political movements have made an impact on your band?
I always reference a lot of historical events in the lyrics of Spectres songs, at first I just wanted to emulate so many of the bands I loved, who had written the vast majority of their material during the Cold War, It was also coincidentally the name of our first single back in 2007 so I suppose that undeniably had an impact.
Another event that has had a significant impact on my songwriting and the lyrics of a lot of Spectres’ songs was the Canadian recession of the 1980’s combined with the death of the resource industry that followed it in the late 1980’s and 90’s in British Columbia. I spent a lot of my early life living in resource towns on Vancouver Island and saw the impact this had on a lot of my friends and family members. There was always this sense of slow but inevitable collapse with the closure of most of the mills and the general decline of fishing and forestry. Those industries were the lifeblood of most of those towns and the backbone of much of the economy. In my late teens, primarily thanks to Anarcho Punk, I came to realize that those industries were not sustainable and were devastating to the environment, but that didn’t change the fact that their decline had a profound impact on many people’s lives.
What are y’all’s earliest memories when it comes to knowing about the power of frequencies and how has this knowledge impacted the way y’all create?
I am not sure I know the power of frequencies and don’t think it impacts the way I create. I do know that a great song can hit me regardless of the genre, age or recording quality and sometimes something just clicks. I have had this experience with everything from Vapor Wave to Black Metal songs.
Talk to us about these two songs “AM Gold” & “Dominion” what was the creative process like and what emotions provoked you to create these songs?
Am Gold was written by myself and Dominion was written by Adam, our guitar player. Both of the songs were things that we had been working on for a while and have a pretty different feel. I found it really challenging to write the vocal lines for Dominion, it took me forever to come up with something that would work with the song and I decided to try something that was more similar to something I would have sung on earlier Spectres records. I think both both songs have a touch of resentment and anger in their inflection.
Can you break down your creative arc from Presence to Nostalgia?
I think Nostalgia came at a time when Spectres has undergone a lot of changes, our bass player Nathan and guitar player Tyler, who both played on Utopia and earlier records, had just left the band, and Jason and Adam had recently joined. Presence came from a lot of different ideas we had and I think you can hear that different songs were primarily written by different band members.
What is your fondest tour story?
The first time we played Leipzig was amazing, I’ll never forget it. We played a massive warehouse with loads of other bands playing in different adjacent warehouses, it was complete pandemonium. A bunch of crusty punks started this bonfire in the middle of the street and instead of someone calling the police like people would have in North America, loads of people from the local community just came out and drank and carried on. It was fantastic and I’ll never forget it.
