What makes a cool car cool? Graham Wright, vocalist/guitarist of Toronto-based rock band Girlfriend Material, is getting to the bottom of that question while challenging normative rock and roll tropes with his band’s unconventional social media presence.
“I’m always fascinated by the way that rock and roll came of age when cars were the status symbol and the symbol of freedom in a way less connected America, and also the world,” says Wright. “Rock is so, unfortunately, inherently conservative in aesthetics and ideology. Cars are still in music, it’s still a genre of song you can write about—it’s a car song, and everyone gets it.”
Cars in music have been around since the invention of rock and roll, but the cars plastered on Girlfriend Material’s social media accounts don’t fit the stereotype of “cool.” Almost every day Wright posts an image of a car parked somewhere on the streets of Toronto. Many of the cars are covered in rust, dirt, or snow, depending on the time of year.
“There’s an element of very, very light political subversion to be like, ‘Look at all these boxy-ass cars from the early 1990s, they’re cool,’” says Wright.
The name of the band’s debut album, Cool Car, came from a spontaneous thought Wright had while working on the album, but it’s only one example of the music industry standards he’s questioning.
“When they invented this music and all the tropes and all the shorthand that you’d use, like ‘Baby, baby’ or whatever skips a sentence to communicate an emotion, [that’s] very handy, but you’re also like, ‘Hmm, the ’50s, not a great time for opinions, culture, and society,’” says Wright. “How much of that is baked into the traditions that we’re following up on? You can never really untangle it all but I find that so interesting to try and wrangle with.”
After the success of his previous band, Tokyo Police Club, Wright re-evaluated his relationship with music. He played in Tokyo Police Club for 10 years; near the end of that band’s run, the business side of running a successful band outweighed the music side and it felt like work.
“If you take the music out of the job of being in a band it’s kind of a crappy job; it’s just that the music is so good that it easily makes everything else worth it,” says Wright. “You really have to remember what the focus is supposed to be on.”
The experience of being in a successful touring band gave Wright confidence to change gears with his current project in the way he writes and does music business. Girlfriend Material is intimate and casual, and developed from the intention of putting the fun back into his music.
“I try not to be totally off the cuff with Girlfriend Material,” he says, “but consciously, especially at the beginning, I had been thinking too much about music; now I’m not going to think at all.”
Wright’s new perspective of the industry also led him to change the boundaries of how a band is supposed to promote their work. He says creating a body of work and something bigger to look back on in the long term has more impact.
“I could tell the promotion was working when people started showing up saying, ‘This car isn’t even remotely cool, what’s wrong with you?’” says Wright. “I was like, ‘Ah, here we go!’”
Girlfriend Material
7 pm Tuesday, January 28
$12, Lucky Bar
luckybar.ca