Montreal is a town that is beautiful, active, fun, rich… and a very strange atmosphere for musicians to wade through, depending on their philosophies. Leave is a band that has felt some of that peculiar pressure in its hometown. Being an English-lyric band in a proudly Francophone region has left them with little room to grow without taking leave of Montreal itself.

The first thing keyboardist/vocalist Mathew Lacourse snidely remarked as he, his bandmate and drummer Patrick Dion, and myself settled into a bustling coffee shop near Le Petit Café Campus, where they’d play later in the evening, was, “What scene?” Dion was quick to counteract him, that indeed there is a scene, but that it’s simply a different one from what Leave (which also includes singer/guitarist Jérémie Marcotte and bassist Benjamin Smith, whom we’d left left at the venue after soundcheck) fits into. “There’s a scene, there’s some bands. But it’s extremely hard, especially if you’re playing in English like us. Because you have to go outside of Montreal to get seen, to really get noticed,” he explains. “A+R places, basically don’t come to Montreal.” Lacourse adds that you have to go to Toronto to get the industry nipping at your heels.

Well now I’m interested in what the big hoopla is between the different sectors of bands, and I get Lacourse to elaborate. “There's some great bands [in Montreal] but the problem is I think, there is the French media and the English media and they don’t want to go to play in each other’s ground. I mean we’ve tried to do some interviews in French media, and they don’t want an English indie band from the city.” Dion continues, “As soon as we… as soon as you say, ‘oh we play English compositions,’ they go, ‘oh sorry, we don’t do English bands.’”

“Yeah, ‘call the BBC. Call the CBC or…’ They don’t answer us,” says Lacourse.

With such a tough road to face, it’s a marvel anyone in the city ever does anything in English. But due to their musical influences and to stay true to their sound, they just don’t figure that French would be a viable choice for their songwriting. Dion begins, “Well the kind of music that we are influenced by… we’re just crazy about, especially Brit music, British music. You know the mentality, and all the scenes, and all the bands, like way over in the 50’s and 60’s… and to just get back on it, they have so much huge culture over there…” Following an early trend, Lacourse seems to finish the thought partway through. “Our music, we’re not songwriting in French anyways I think ‘cause the influence is English. So that’s why we write in English.” Dion, however, was not finished. “I’m proud to speak French, real proud, but music-wise, I prefer English. British music, it gets to my heart gets to my gut, gets to my brain…French songs, they’re good, they have some good art but like… they don’t have that edge that British music has.”

Lacourse interjects that it’s easier to write in English just simply for the structure of the language, but Dion is still in the middle of his thoughts. “They have some really great bands that just… over the years like, well of course the Beatles, even more recent like Radiohead, Oasis, Coldplay, they’re like huge and massive and everybody knows them. And they’re all British. They really have a huge artistic soul that they need to do good music, but their good music also carries a message, a social meaning. And that’s what really differentiates them.”

“Rock and roll is English anyway. I don’t think you can do good songs, or good rock and roll songs in French. It doesn’t sound right,” states Lacourse.

Even in their fairly short history span, one of their best moments came playing a show in Toronto in May of 2004. It was the band’s first out-of-town gig, playing in front of a fully-English audience, and they definitely picked up on the difference. While the enthusiasm level of the crowds in Toronto left something to be desired, they still sold some CDs and gathered a warm reception. Leave played with a pair of bands, Sunriser and the 68’s, who they felt much more at home alongside than most bands they’d played with before. “…they were so incredible. I mean we don’t have a lot of bands like this in Montreal at all who are Brit-rocky, really cool guys, cool music,” said Lacourse. Dion mentioned that those two were probably better than three-quarters of the bands in Montreal. They were overjoyed at playing on a bill with other bands that prominently feature keyboards, and at having a sound engineer who wasn’t afraid to put those keyboards front and centre.

Playing in Toronto came about from a whirlwind connection frenzy the band engaged in some months ago. Lacourse says, “We wanted to play with bigger bands. That was our plan for this year. We wanted to play with bands that maybe are signed or will be signed or are known through the scene in Canada. So I searched the web and I found like ten bands that I really like, like Sunriser, Brighton from Montreal… and we sent out loads of emails.” From their responses from those bands, they arranged to swap opening slots for each other in each other’s cities.

They continue to discuss the laid-back crowd in Toronto, which is a side-effect of the seen-it-all big city it seems. Dion says with a laugh, “Sunriser ended the show and the lead singer said, ‘well this is our last song and…’ They had an encore of maybe two songs, two to three songs. And when they stopped just before the encore, everybody was applauding and well, being happy and everything but it wasn’t wild you know. And then so the band goes off stage and people were kinda like… well I don’t want to say lame, but pretty mellow and, ‘well okay now let’s bring on the encore…’ They weren’t really happy. They were great people, they were really nice, but we expected… when we’re in Montreal, we’re a small band and we just go out and, they want an encore, they really show it you know, ‘woooo encore!’ You know? And then after the gig, the guys from Sunriser went… haha… they’re like having drinks, ‘man the crowd was wild tonight.’ We’re like, ‘okay...’ Both of them laugh about this, and Lacourse mentions that he notices the same thing with bands at all levels. A Toronto-area DJ was taken aback by the insane reaction from the Montreal audience towards Muse when they stopped by earlier this year, even though they hadn’t had any radio promotion.

That brings up the topic of the radio in Montreal. Lacourse claims there is no real rock radio in the city. The closest they have is CHOM FM, which mainly sticks to old rock. They put in an effort to promote indie bands, but don’t view it as a big priority. “So we don’t get much attention for good rock music here…” According to Dion, the only rock radio station that played more current music, like Coldplay, shut down sometime in January. “Muse came over here, and they did a sold out show, an amazing show, and the media was like, ‘Muse? Who the hell is Muse?’ you know, they’re really strange. And the day after, Muse did not get one song on the radio before they came, and the day after, they were playing Muse. And we were like, ‘Man, come on wake up.’ Really weird.”

Not that the radio might even be much of a help for them. Lacourse doesn’t feel the radio does much good for indie bands at all, even at a university level. “But here in Montreal again it’s tough. Because all the universities, like Montreal University, they speak French. And they have good college radio station but it’s… so much of our music, it’s really tough to get airplay or get attention from the public.” Dion elaborates, “People over here, they really like jazz music and world music and stuff like that. You have French, you have English, you have the Latin community and stuff like that. So people are just not that hooked up on indie bands, indie English bands so I think that’s not a healthy thing but…”

The art and creativity is of utmost importance though. They even have a section on their website that discusses the philosophy of art and how it applies to music. The guys feel music in general is on an upswing for interesting music. “In 2000 I mean there’s the rock and roll explosion with so much great bands coming like the Strokes and the Hives, the Vines, and after that I mean, now a lot of bands from Montreal, they’re going to Toronto to make it big. Before the year 2000 it was a lot more dead than it is now. [Between ’97 and ‘00] Rock and roll was dead!,” exclaims Lacourse. Dion counters, “Well I wouldn’t say dead, but it was having a hard time. And then you had the early and middle 90’s that were just really great.” They agree that it’s tough to wade through the pop music and people who do it for the wrong reasons, just to even get a speck of recognition. “We like it enough to say that we’d like to make good music going somewhere, not just being, like you were saying, for the fame of it and everything,” says Lacourse.

Dion seems to take the whole situation with a grain of salt. “I think it’s hard but with some A+R or some manager that wants a band to go with, uh, they’re gonna go and listen and go to venues that are playing some bands. Or if they just want some artist, they’ll just do some shitty contest band. They’ll pick their artists and they’ll mold the artist that they want. You know, they won’t go in the street, they won’t go to venues, so yes it’s hard. But if A+R’s really want good bands, I think they’ll go for it. And if they want to create something new like with these groups, shit like that, well they’ll do it on their own in the studio.” Lacourse gripes about music reality shows like Canadian Idol for a moment. “They sell millions of records and people are… not even buying this stuff you know. It’s just because all the record labels are uh, buying up the CD. And after that like in one day they sold like three hundred thousand CDs. And it’s not even true. It’s just what they say. And after that people will hear that in the media and they’ll go to buy the record and they’ll think this is good music.”

We opened up a can of worms here folks. Dion continues, “That’s sad! That the average person who doesn’t have really any knowledge about music is just thrown all these pop artists and just doesn’t get the chance to hear some really good bands and now they think, well this is good music because it sounds like Celine Dion, or it’s not good.” Lacourse casts a sidelong glance at his drummer (no relation) and states huffily, “Hey, I like Celine Dion.”

They both laugh, and Dion goes on, “So that’s what’s hard. All the real bands really have to, I think they have to work harder. Like, ‘hey listen to my band, we’re not known, but I think it’s good material.’ And people are like, ‘welllll I dunno, I really like the Canadian Idol winner and bla bla bla.’ They just don’t get the chance to… well just listen to it! And come back to me a week after. And then they come back and say, ‘hey it’s not bad.’ I told you so.” And it all comes back to that media issue again. Major media outlets and retail in the city are owned by QuebecArts, a media monolith that controls what CDs get put on the shelves and what bands get put in the papers. It comes to the ‘well, it’s in the paper/on the radio etc, so it must be good…’ mentality. Lacourse says, “It’s a big thing, they control everything. In Quebec if you want to make it big you have to… there are certain people that are so important here, that if you don’t pass through those people, you don’t make it.” Frustrating indeed, when these companies are in place and harbouring so much power that they can pretty well tell everyone what they’re supposed to like.

The guys value the fans they have, but Dion says with a chuckle, “…we have a fan base but if the band, if Leave is no more tomorrow, nobody’s gonna cry.” Lacourse adds, “Maybe some of our friends.” However, Dion continues by reiterating that, while they do have their crop of fans in the city, that they will have to go away from Montreal to ‘make it.’ Lacourse takes a well-known and current case for us. “If you take The Stills for example, they were not really popular here before they went to the UK, and after that they came back and were pretty famous…You have to go somewhere else and come back afterwards. They say, ‘ah they’re from Montreal but, are they popular there or there?’ So…I think that Sam Roberts is the same thing. He went to Toronto to um, to be able to... You won’t get signed in Montreal if you’re an English band playing rock and roll music.” Dion goes on, “It’s really weird. Like The Stills, they got signed in New York and then they come back, they do a gig over here in Montreal, they have a sold out show, but the sold out show’s maybe, what, 700? The Cabaret… most Quebecers just don’t know The Stills… they have a great record that sells really well, they toured in the States, the UK, and English Canada, and they came over here once and they did a sold out show, but it wasn’t like 3000 would sell or anything.” Lacourse finishes by adding, “I don’t think they would have sold out if they had stayed in Montreal, they wouldn’t be there where they are at the moment because the media does not help us as much.”

Leave is working hard on their own to tunnel up through all that though and get themselves noticed through good ol’ hard work and common sense. The band’s EP, with four songs and the live video, was sold (and sold out!) mostly through shows and the website. The new version will be even shorter though, with good reason. Lacourse mentions that they’re going to take one song off of it. “We think it’s too much. A lot of A+R’s after two songs, they have a good idea of the band. If they want to hear more, they call, or go on the website and check. But I think with three songs, that’s enough. And if you put a song that is good, but not as good as the other three, then that will hurt because they are looking for great songs.” They haven’t had the best luck with labels and reps yet, mostly again attributed to geographics. They did get a call from Sony Canada though. Dion describes it for us. “No they haven’t [seen us play yet], no no. It’s really weird. We sent out a press kit with a demo, I don’t know, maybe five months ago, to Sony Canada in Toronto. We didn’t get any news, absolutely nothing. And then we got news from Universal and BMG and all the other ones, saying well we’re not interested and bla bla bla. And then there’s this one A+R guy from Sony who I think was on our contact mailing list, or something. Anyway, the guy didn’t get a demo, didn’t get a record, anything. And one day he just sent an email saying, ‘can I get a demo?’ It was like, where in the hell did he hear about us? It was like completely out of nowhere. So we sent it out.”

Lacourse brings up that they’ve also had The Agency Group looking in their direction while in Toronto. A rep from there went to see Leave play in Toronto, and liked them enough to sit down and write them some email about the music. So already, with one gig in Toronto, they had a high-profile agency, and an indie label (Attack Records) swing by to check them out. “Just from one show. We got these two guys to come. It’s like in Montreal, they just won’t come. So that was pretty great,” says Dion.

The band members draw from their diverse musical backgrounds to help push their songs to a new level. Dion has orchestral experience, and Lacourse is versed in jazz, for example. “I like to explore some kind of, different kinds of music, basically jazz and rock, I think jazz is the base and I think you have to pass through jazz to be able to play good rock and roll music and bring rock and roll a step further,” he says. “Just putting in notes, like sometimes I just make a Duke Ellington pass on the piano and they won’t know, like the public won’t notice… also I find it’s more fun to me.” It’s all about dynamics, he explains. There’s a difference between a band that will just play their instruments the same way for an entire set, and one that will shake it up a bit now and then. Dion says, “Right in the middle of the song they’re gonna go smooth, and right at the end they’re gonna blow you away because before they played soft.” While Dion enjoys the creative process involved in songwriting, Lacourse sees invaluable merit in the live show, just to pull the band solidly together. “Keeps the band tight. And it’s all about this… in the studio, it’s easy to lose this. Just try too much stuff and you’re not focused enough on the songs. If you play live you have to make it tight, so I like to play live a lot.”

The group is quite self-contained, keeping a hold at present on much of their business affairs, promotion, and artwork, in addition to the songwriting. Dion also holds the title of graphic designer and webmaster for the band, a responsibility he enjoys and will continue to take care of until they start picking up and playing further gigs outside of Montreal. The importance of the website as a promotional tool and as a first impression is well-understood. “It’s really awesome. Just with the website, it’s so much easier telling someone who you don’t know, who’s a complete [stranger] and you go to them and say, ‘listen, I have a band, they’re really good, come and see us tonight.’ And he’s going, ‘well I don’t know you, I don’t know your band.’ And if you just go up to that same person and say, ‘listen, I have a band, and I’ll give you a card, a business card, just go check our website. We’re playing in less than two weeks.’ Now the guy has a flyer, has a card, he’ll just go on the website, when he wants, with who he wants, and he’ll listen to everything, see the lyrics, and hear the songs, check our website. And then he’ll just by himself go, ‘okay, do I like the band? Do I really wanna go to the show or not?’… If you have a crappy website, and you don’t have some Mp3’s, who wants go and pay, I don’t know, maybe five, ten bucks, and go see that band? Well of course not. It looks crappy on the screen, imagine on stage.”

They also get to keep track of who visits the site, and what features they tend to be drawn to the most. One of the features on Leave’s website is live footage. They also had a video portion on their sold-out EP (which will be re-pressed with newer live footage), and were going to filming the show that evening. “It is really important because there is so much difference between how our reception… what we think we did on the stage, and the public point of view. So basically that’s why we have to watch videotapes of us playing live… it really helps… We look for the energy and everything because sometimes we think, ‘oh my God it was an energetic show,' and everything, and we look at the tape and it’s so boring,” said Lacourse.

Regarding the internet, Leave feels that downloading songs, many of which they plain-out make available on their website, helps them greatly. But Dion explains that as soon as a band is signed, all that changes. “…You have somebody somewhere who’s writing the songs, who’s creating something, he has to get the recognition for what he’s doing. I don’t care if it’s playing, I don’t care if it’s writing, I don’t care if it’s anything else. He has to get recognition.” Lacourse brings up another danger of internet downloads. “Records should be seen as a whole. I mean each song should affect the other one after and I don’t think you can really get track four from the CD and … it’s all about the album and concept. And I don’t mean that every album I like has a concept but I’m sure that songs are influencing each one on the CD, and we lost this mentality with the digital era. Even the CD now we can skip tracks so easily. For us, with vinyl it was so much fun.” Dion grumbles away in the background about skipping tracks as Lacourse goes on, “We wanted to make a record, once we thought about it, with two tracks. Just like the old vinyl.” Six songs on each track, “Side A” and “Side B”. Nice.

Lacourse keeps describing the joys of the full-length CD. “People now who are buying a CD, I mean, just for once they should stop and listen to the whole albums from the first song to the last one. And afterwards they’ll be able to say if it was a good CD or not. But not just stick some songs here and there. That’s the problem with the internet, because they’re downloading songs and judging a band from a mixed track or… just one piece of music and they should be taking the whole thing.” Dion has something to say about that. “I think with things like uh, Sgt. Pepper['s Lonely Hearts Club Band] or Dark Side of the Moon, OK Computer, what made these albums so good was, well of course the music, the songs, but you can’t listen to like Dark Side… from song number three. You just can’t. And I think all these great albums, you just can’t do that. You should start at the first one and just let it go. You know, like the third song was meant to be there. Why? Oh I don’t know, because it was a hard rockin’ song and the one just before was really smooth. So when you come to the third song, it’s gonna sound so much louder because the one before was really smooth you know. It can’t just be put in there ‘cause, ‘well I think it looked good on the third song.’ No, because it was meant to be.”

To curtail everything, I let them have some free rein to tell us something they maybe never really get asked about. They take the opportunity to define Leave for us. Lacourse begins, “I think that we play Brit rock music, but actually we are not quite sure if we want to be in the Brit rock pool because I think that we have our own sound. Like I said, we take influences from jazz music and sometimes classical music.” Dion mentions the keys being prominent is a big separation for them. Lacourse continues, “[We put the keys] way up front. And they… it’s not like Coldplay either because a lot of people assume that our songs are a bit like Coldplay.” I mention that Leave is much peppier-sounding that Coldplay’s twinkling, triumphant, loving melancholia. Dion agrees and elaborates, “We’re a bit rockier because of the guitar. I think Jim [Marcotte] goes well into the big solos. He likes them, we like them.”

They then go on to explain how they write songs, citing that art section on the website again. Dion begins, “The thing about Leave is mainly… nice, well-played music is not only just music or making songs. The songs have meaning, like the lyrics in the music were not just put there because it looked good. They have meaning. Go and take a look at the lyrics. It says something. Listen to the songs several times.” Lacourse says that Dion writes his lyrics, makes his statement first, and afterwards, the music is created to suit. Dion keeps going with, “I really love to write but I can’t play guitar. I didn’t ever start playing guitar. So… I can’t make up chords, basically. So that’s it. And for [Lacourse], well, it’s the exact opposite.” Lacourse adds, “I think it makes the songs two times better if you work this way because the music has to be unique and you will be inspired by the lyrics, so it’s two strong things, passions, together.”

Dion finds that a lot of bands will just chuck the lyrics aside to be worked on as an afterthought. “‘Ah well it’s good having good lyrics but it’s not that important.’ And each time [I hear someone say that] I say, ‘listen – “Imagine” wouldn’t be “Imagine” without these lyrics.’ If you have good songs and you have good lyrics, that’s not gonna be a good song. It’s gonna be a great song.”

Elsewhere

By Andy Scheffler
Photos : Andy Scheffler
Published : August 10, 2004.