Artist Spotlight - Intensive Care

(Image courtesy of Intensive Care)

Ten years ago you could not persuade me to listen to a raw, unpolished sound. I expected perfection in a recording and the remastering and over production put into an album needed to lack flaw and distortion. As far as concerts, I did not agree with 'jamming out' and straying from the concentrated radio hit. Every note and voice inflection had to be identical to the final recording on an album or I went home an unhappy concert goer.

Fast forward to today and I cannot get enough raw 'organic' sound. Demos, live recordings and small venues submissive to imperfection and intimacy between an artist and their fans is pleasure to my soul. This is where the real magic happens; this is where music still lives. 

With this in mind, I have been brought a sound that encompasses the intimacy I enjoy with raw talent behind it.  I was approached by Intensive Care, a Montreal based band making their way through the ranks on nothing but their love and spirituality towards communicating through their music.

This synthesis of musicians found themselves uniting through music even in the most intense of situations. Their Western and Eastern hemispheres collide with cultural differences making their music and lyrical content real and honest. 

Intensive Care will be performing in Pittsburgh next Friday and to gain a closer understanding of their background, music, and other influences they agreed to perform an interview via email. Take a look:

Band Members:

Philippe M – Piano, synths, vocals
Nadim M – Guitar
Derek Koziol – Bass
Evan Tighe – Drums

How did you come up with the name, Intensive Care?

Derek: In the band's infancy we were struggling to come up with a meaningful band name that we liked, and then in a fortunate turn of events I had a brain hemorrhage. While I think the name was initially proposed in a joking manner as I was still in recovery, there was something about it we liked, and it stuck. To me it represents conflict and the location in which this conflict is dealt with and resolved, be the outcome desired or undesired.

What initially brought all of you together as a band? 

Phil: I was fresh out of finance studies, and I strongly felt like I had to escape that world. I was drawn to the arts, and enrolled in film school. Shortly after that, it became clear that music was a better path to explore for me so I formed a band with a couple friends, but it didn’t work out. Nadim came to our only show (in a basement) and asked me if I wanted to jam. And that’s pretty much how it started. We then looked for other musicians in university jazz combos where Nadim was playing, got Derek and Jon on board and started writing tunes together. Last year, Jon left the band to pursue his studies and was replaced by Evan.

Corporations usually operate from the foundation of a mission statement. If your band has a mission statement how would you describe it? In other words what do the members of your band believe to be the purpose of the music you create?

Phil:  We don’t have a mission statement per se. There is no grand purpose to the music we are making, but we tend to create music that aims at taking people outside of their listening comfort zone. This comes mainly from the fact that we believe strongly in making music that we like as a group and we just happen to enjoy more complex pop music. We’re not too worried about reactions on the outside: we figured if all of us can agree on something, it must be universal enough given how different we are from each other.

Nadim: Perhaps the most important purpose of our music is to move people. I feel like our goal is to share feelings, thoughts and concerns amongst each other (the band) and amongst our listeners. I believe that the world is filled with bright, good intentioned people who feel same discontentment with modern life as we do; I sense a universal dissatisfaction all around. Since music is a powerful communication tool, I believe that our goal is to use it as a weapon to scream out loud on the top of our lungs: We are not alone, we’re all together in this and we all feel the same.

On your group’s bio, you mentioned the synthesis of multiple cultural backgrounds from various band members that results in the creation of your music. Do you find that music, more-so than any other art-form, helps cultivate this type of unification amongst people of different backgrounds or do you feel that art in general often serves as a nexus for this sort of interaction?

Derek: There are other art forms that allow for just as much teamwork and cultural collaboration as music, so I wouldn't say music is alone in that respect. But where music is unique is that it can, at times, be the most abstract art form. There's an implicit mystery between what we hear and how it makes us feel, and mostly through centuries of trial and error did we begin formalizing an approach to harness that power. While our thoughts and opinions are things that we discuss and try to convey through our lyrics, music, and engagement with the public, I think they existed in the music even before we ever discussed or wrote the band's first lyrics. Musical creation allows us to first discover our feelings, and then through discussion and introspection we're able to understand them.

Phil: Rock Music is very interesting in that sense because it’s truly a universal language. Being of multiple cultural backgrounds, we often find each other lacking words to express ourselves, to resolve conflicts, and we often misinterpret each other. When we play, all this goes away and we just switch to a whole other mode of discussion. Musically, our differences are more manageable and malleable. We are learning a new language together, and getting better at it together. So naturally we start developing kinships and a strong common base on which we each build our individual styles. This is one of the greater joys of being in a band: collectively trying to figure out the complexities and subtleties of playing music, to better communicate with each other and with our audience.

Your band is based on Montreal Canada. What, if any, are the differences between the American rock scene and the Canadian rock scene, in your opinion?

Phil: In Montreal’s rock scene there’s a very healthy competition between bands. We’re not fighting for the spotlight. There’s a great sense of community to varying degrees, and bands feed from each other. In our case, we have very high respect for bands in our scene, we follow their work very closely and get inspired by them big time, but we don’t get really close though because we are quite intimidated sometimes. It’s a tricky thing to approach your inspirations as buddies.

Derek:  Having grown up in Massachusetts, the impression I get from the American scene is that it's immensely diverse. There are so many musical nexuses that foster very unique sounds. The New York sound is distinct from the Portland sound that is distinct from the Austin sound, etc. It's very cool to be able to hear common traits that link bands from one specific area. This exists in Canada too, but if I were to generalize, there are fewer distinct musical centers – Montréal, Toronto, Vancouver, etc. – and there's a lot more in common between bands from these different cities. In a way what's cool is this allows us to talk about the "Canadian sound", whereas the "American sound" is so diverse that the term is almost meaningless.

Coming from Montreal, are any of the lyrics of your songs ever performed in French?

Phil: I write lyrics in English, despite French being my first language. People always ask me why, and I have no answer for it. If you push me, I might try to figure it out and say that maybe French makes me feel a bit too vulnerable, since it’s the language I think in. I also really like English as the language of rock. It needs to be universal. If only more people spoke Esperanto!

The studio in which you recorded, Fairytales from the Island, houses recording equipment used to record parts of the album, Physical Graffiti. In recording your album there, did you feel the "spirit" of Led Zeppelin or do you feel any influence from bands such as Led Zeppelin, the Stones, etc in your music, or do your influences derive from more obscure rock and roll bands?

Nadim:  I don’t specifically feel the spirit of Led Zeppelin at Breakglass but I do feel a sort of timelessness there. There’s a nice contrast of old meets new that makes us feel like we’re making music in modern times that is in continuum with what the pioneers have started decades ago. Jace Lasek who recorded and produced the record is also an interesting character, sometimes we feel like he stopped ageing in 1975 until he pulls out his iphone to play scrabble with us. In terms of influences however I’d say that ours are derived largely from movies, comic books and novels. Musically tough, we’re influenced by very diverse genres that go from jazz to rock, Arabic, French singer songwriters and classical music; in general music that is very soulful.

Derek: While I don't think the Neve Console itself had any influence on our mindset when recording Fairytales, it was interesting to record that album onto tape rather than straight to digital. That gave us a limitation of how many instrument tracks we could have per song, and pressured us to get our performances correct the first time through. We find that good art often arises when the artist is faced with limitations. So while I wouldn't say we were directly influenced by former rock gods during the recording, I think by using some of the same equipment and facing some of the same limitations, our music was influenced in the same way that theirs was.

Your music has a Brit-band feel on certain tracks. Do you find English artists are an influence to you?

Nadim: Yes, definitely. Phil and I grew up in Beirut Lebanon and during our teenage years we were more exposed to British music than we were to American music. In the 90’s Lebanese kids were hooked on MTV Europe which broadcasted tons Brit-pop as well as a few big American bands like Nirvana, NIN, Rage Against the Machine, Red Hot Chili Peppers etc. When I compare my knowledge of American bands with Derek’s who is from Massachusetts, I realize how little I know of 90’s American rock.

What is the process by which your music comes to be? Has that process changed throughout your five years of working together? If so, in what ways has it changed?

Phil: At first, we used to write music individually and bring it to the band. This is how fairytales was written. It soon became clear that we wanted to collaborate from the inception of the song so we started to create songs out of jams, or sometimes out of tiny fragments of ideas that someone would propose. This new process allowed us to create music that was more felt, and definitely more consensual. It is a better reflection of us as a group.

This is a 2 part question: If you could open for one band (still performing together or not), which band would it be? Part 2: If you could have one band open for you, who would it be?

Phil: Part 1 I’d love to open for Blur. That just entered the realm of the “possible” as they seem to be slowly reforming. Otherwise, I’d love to open for The Besnard Lakes, which have been a true inspiration to us. Part2 I’d also love it if Radiohead could open for us one day. J

Derek: as far as opening for us goes, I once saw Paul McCartney perform in Boston, and rather than having an opening band he had an opening circus act! We're definitely into expanding the possibilities of what a show can be; we had a magician open for our first album release concert.

In comparing your first release with your latest EP, I find that Fairytales from the Island has a bit more subtlety to it. It seems to have somewhat of a softer, more refined feel. What has caused your music to evolve into a harder, more alternative feel?

 
Phil: When we wrote fairytales, there was a lot of attention to detail. We wanted to prove that we could write intricate songs that were multi-layered without ever going overboard. I think we really created a beautiful album, and I’m still very proud of it. When we started playing the songs live, an unexpected raw energy came out, and we found ourselves simplifying the songs, and making them more visceral. It happened very naturally, and that signalled to us that the band’s live character was more along those lines. The more we played, the more the identity of the band shaped. With the new album, we wanted to capture that on record, and we asked our producer to help us achieve that raw sound. So we recorded the album in a manner that was as close to our live sound as possible: we used our own equipment, sang on a standard live mic, and tried not to layer the songs to the point that we couldn’t perform them live. That said, you’ll find that some songs on the new album resemble Fairytales a bit more than what the EP is showcasing.

Nadim: In addition, even though there was a strong sense of urgency behind most songs on Fairytales, it was tamed by the fact that the songs were structurally more complex, we had to subtly go from one part to the next and didn’t have enough “songspace” to let out that urgency we felt (even live).  With the newer material however, we set out to make songs that are more focused around an idea or two so there’s more room for raw feelings and emotions to come out.

Intensive Care will be performing at Howlers Coyote Café in Bloomfield, PA on Friday March 2, 2012. Doors open at 8PM, tickets $5

(Image courtesy of Intensive Care)

Their new EP, It Takes Time, released on February 7 and is available on their website along with their first album, Fairytales from the Island.