Abbotsford dream-pop band The Sylvia Platters just released their new EP, Melt, and it’s an important step for them: it’s the first record they’ve put out since getting the band back together a year ago after some time on hiatus.
“Last summer we played a bunch of shows around BC and kind of honed that and figured out which of the songs that we had been writing really fit together as one thing,” says guitarist/vocalist Nick Ubels. “In February we got together with a friend of ours, who has his own studio; he rents out this farm in Maple Ridge. We went there and spent the better part of a week recording.”
After getting the studio time booked, the members of the band found themselves snowed in once they got there; the recording sessions ended up being heavily disrupted by the storm.
“On the first day we completely lost power for the whole day, so we tried to set everything up more or less in the dark. There are no windows in the studio; we just had iPhones and candles to set up as much as we could,” says Ubels. “We actually had to abandon it and hope that the next day the power would be back, and it did come back, but there was more snow. Every day was really long; it’s a long drive out there and we had to dig our way in and out and all that. In the end, I think we did something that we are very proud of, and I feel like it’s a step forward in a little bit more of a clear direction. I think the EP focuses our sound more and works better as a coherent piece.”
Ubels’ musical taste stretches across a broad and diverse array of genres. And while he takes influence from all these styles, he says that the band’s songs don’t always end up as originally envisioned.
“Sometimes our songs end up fairly different than their initial incarnation,” says Ubels. “The centrepiece of the record, ‘Tangerine,’ is more of an acoustic, almost Neil Young-like ballad, and it turned into this distorted, heavy, fuzzed-out thing that we did. It’s hard to pin down exactly where stuff comes from; sometimes it’ll just be a particular phrase that will set off associations that I will try to massage into something that makes sense to me. I think on this record there is a fair amount of self discovery, which ties into what this record means for us and what it represents.”
The Sylvia Platters
9 pm Friday, July 14
$10, The Copper Owl
copperowl.ca