A show review and an interview all in the same week? If we’re not careful, we’ll be pulling into the realm of journalistic respectability soon! Naw, that’ll never happen… Regardless though, we’ve really got an awesome interview for you guys to check out today. Our gracious interviewees this week are none other than Vancouver’s own four-piece band of sweethearts Thee AHs. After racking up a pile of shows, recording a dozen great songs (and with a new album on the way!) if you haven’t heard Davinah, Robotah, Marisah and Veronicah yet, you soon will. So pull up a chair, have a read and get to know one of the nicest and most fun bands in town.

The Aural Kinetic: First off, let’s start with some band introductions. Who comprises Thee AHs, and what instruments do you play?

Thee AHs: Davinah Shell plays guitar, sings backup, and writes most of the songs; Sarah Lowenbot sings and occasionally writes about her love, Leonard Nimoy; Ridley “Veronicah” Qbishop plays the bass guitar, the alto saxophone, and lead guitar, often while rocking out with rat puppets, AND he contributes arrangements; and Mareesah Holmes plays drums. Our original drummer was Ahddie O’Brien, and while Mareesah was in Hong Kong this summer we had Bahnjy from Bad Fate sitting in.

AK: How did you all first meet and when did you first decide to form a band?

TA: It started off when high school friends Sarah and Davinah played their first gig at Lugz, in early 2008. Shortly afterward they recruited Ahddie, and by March 2009 Ridley had joined (after spotting their craigslist ad while searching for his true love). They recorded five tracks with Ahddie before local seductress Mareesah replaced him (because she played a larger kit).

AK: One of the first things a new listener notices is the clever vocal arrangements. Unlike a lot of bands, who tend to bury their voices behind the instrumentation, your voices are fore fronted. Where does this confidence come from?

Davinah: I really like melody and I think lyrics are very important, so I want to make sure they’re heard.

Sarah: I think I’m real great at singing and I just wanna show off.

AK: Several of your songs (Too Young For You and Sour Grapes to name a couple) have a very early doo-wop, jangle-rock kind of sound. What is the appeal of playing this style of music?

Davinah: I believe I’m the second coming of Mary Ann Ganser of the Shangri-Las.

AK:Other than filmmakers Russ Meyer and John Waters, who would you say are your influences, specifically musical? Because when I listen to your music I’m reminded of everything from Belle and Sebastian to Jens Lekman to Julie Doiron…

Ridley: One of the fun things about Thee AHs is that the four of us have completely different tastes in music. Davinah likes all the Amelia Fletcher bands, 70s and 80s punk (Eve Libertine of Crass in particular), all kinds of pop like ye ye and American girl groups (The Tammys are her fave), and other stuff like Jonathan Richman, Stereolab, and Pulp; Sarah likes electro and old singers – her singing is more influenced by male vocalists like Andy Williams and Frank Sinatra; my influences are Andy Rourke from The Smiths, other local bands (like Kidnap Kids!, Bad Fate), and avant-garde saxophonists like Eric Dolphy and Ken Vandermark (although that hasn’t really percolated into Thee AHs…yet); and Mareesah likes various pop, from The Animals to Interpol. She also LUVZ James McAvoy, and wants to kizz’im!

AK: Who doesn’t? Are the majority of the gigs you’ve played local? Have you toured much?

TA: None of us know how to drive…

AK: Judging by the 10 completed songs on your MySpace page, it’s obvious that Thee AHs are a band who get along just fine in front of a microphone. Could you tell us a little bit about your recording history, your releases, and what your recording plans are for the near future?

TA: We have an album coming out soon featuring three drummers and three different recording qualities (recorded in about 12 hours in total). We also have a split cassette with Apollo Ghosts and the Divine Prophet coming out sometime this summer. For the near future we’re just going to try and work on new material.

AK: A year ago, when we were busy interviewing everyone who would say yes, the general sentiment was that finding places to play in Vancouver was the biggest challenge that most bands face. How do you find the current climate, gig-wise? Have you had trouble finding places to play?

TA: We play very sporadically, so lining up gigs isn’t that difficult. However, three of us are still too young to play bars, so that really limits our options. It’s not like we don’t like playing gigs, for chrissake, BUT IT’S HARD SO GIVE US ONE!

AK: Listening to your recordings, one thing we’ve noticed is the way in which you tend to pair your happy/upbeat instrumentals with lyrics that are occasionally less-so. For instance, “I don’t deserve your forgiveness.” (Onion in My Pocket) “I don’t mind if you don’t like me.” (She’s a Tease) and “The world is horrible.” (Found a Friend) What would you say is the effect of this dualism within your songs? Or is it something that’s planned and consciously done?

TA: Davinah intuitively writes upbeat music because that’s what she listens to, but she mainly writes when she’s sad, so it happens by natural process or something.

AK: What are your plans, band-wise, for the rest of the year?

TA: Davinah is going to London to meet/stalk her musical heroes, just for a bit. Sarah is going to Malibu, California to stay with Leonard Nimoy and help with his “photography” and try to get Thee AHs a part in Star Trek II. Ridley is going to jazz school (to find his true love). Mareesah is planning to stay with us all year round. We’re hoping to tour next summer with some of our fave bands like Bad Fate.

Photo courtesy of Thee AHs.

Can you believe it’s been eight months since our last interview? Well that’s just no good, so earlier this week we sent off a couple of fresh ones to some amazing folks we haven’t had a chance to speak to yet. In fact, I don’t think we’ve ever even written about either of them before! Lucky for us, one of those bands got back to us with the quickness and just like that the drought has ended! Let’s have a chat with punk rock superheroines Juvenile Hall.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here at the A-K we’ve got a tiny little list of bands and performers that we decided right from the get-go must be interviewed if we were to consider this project a job well done. Of all he names we brainstormed and came up with in the beginning, right up near the top of the list was local vocalist and photographer Sarah Cordingley.
Read the rest of this entry »

It’s back-to-back awesomeness here at The Aural Kinetic. Two interviews in two days! Normally we’d wait a bit before posting a second one, but we’re talking about Needles//Pins here. You don’t leave something like this in the inbox, dig? In all seriousness though, when talking about the newer bands in the city (bands who have been around for less than a year) you really have to hand it to Needles//Pins. I don’t know if it was a New Year’s Resolution or what, but since January this threesome have formed their band, written a bunch of great songs, and have generally gotten down to business when it comes to recording their music on their own terms. And did we mention they’ve been playing kick ass shows across the city pretty much since their inception? They’re a humble bunch, that’s for sure, and we love ‘em like family. And, like any good family, we think they just might be geniuses.

So here we go! Read the rest of this entry »

Wow! It’s November already!

Well this site has been running for a couple of months now and we’ve done our best to bring you a bit of news, a handful of reviews, and some videos to watch. But what we REALLY love to post is interviews with local musicians! It’s fun for us to come up with the questions and it’s always interesting to see how people respond. Case in point: Today’s interview with Marissa Johnson from Weathered Pines. Since we first heard the ‘Pines a month ago, we’ve become huge fans of the band and we really wanted to find out more about them, so we fired off a series of questions and then crossed our fingers for a response. The quick reply and the illuminating answers we got back from Marissa really made our whole week. So without further ado, here’s the interview! Read the rest of this entry »

Hey everybody! We haven’t posted an interview in a while so we figured we’d send out a couple this week and see who answered. One of the artists we’ve been keeping an eye on is a local fella named Jeff Johnson, or as people probably know him better, ok vancouver ok. While putzing around on people’s MySpace pages, we came across an awesome little song of his called “i get so drunk about songs about love” and were immediately hooked. Anyhoo, a couple of e-mails later and we have a brand new interview for you to check out. We only wish we could have posted Jeff’s responses the way he sent them to us:

Oh! I figured it out! Anyone who would like to read the interview in it’s original colours can click here, here and here for the screenshots. Good lookin’ Jeff! Now here’s the plain ol’ black and white version. Read the rest of this entry »

If we had to draw up a list of the top five local bands we love the most (not possible) Apollo Ghosts would be assured a place of honour. Earlier last month we came across the video they made for Angel Acres, threw a little living-room dance party, and then got down to the business of checking out the rest of their recorded music which, as it turns out, is every bit as surprising, clever, fun and essential as the members of the band themselves. We were fortunate enough to catch Adrian, Amanda and Jay in their downtime and they were gracious enough to answer some of our questions. So once again, check it out! Read the rest of this entry »

And then I fucked it up COMPLETELY.

That’s as good a way as any to start this article, which I can assure you has been in post-production for a very looooooooooong time. Earlier in the year, when we were still known as Three Chords No More, I sat down with Martin Reisle and Brendon Hartley from Maria in the Shower to do our first ever in-person interview. Keep in mind that going in, Maria in the Shower were (and continue to be) one of my favourite bands, local or otherwise. So you could say I was pretty determined not to blow it. However my crappy voice recorder, combined with a super-loud meeting venue, followed by hours of transcribing conversation resulted in eight pages of interview and no real way to approach the article.

What does one include? And what to delete?

Well here we are, months later, and a decision has been made. I’m going to post the interview in it’s entirety. Not because it’s too long (it isn’t) and not because I couldn’t decide on what was important to post. On the contrary, I’m posting the entire thing because it’s a damn good interview. I honestly feel that everything Martin and Brendon said is important in understanding the band. And also I know that as a fan this is exactly the kind of article I would want to read about Maria in the Shower. So without further ado, here it is! Read the rest of this entry »

The most important thing to know about the Vancouver music scene is that it doesn’t just cover one genre of music like a lot of other scenes from the past. Detroit in it’s heyday was predominantly rock ‘n roll. New York cornered the market on North American punk and new wave. Seattle, of course, had grunge. The current independent music renaissance that’s been taking place in Vancouver over the last couple of years, however, has shown a bit of everything. Case in point: Two Cabins. We first saw their name on the bill for the last-ever show at the Cobalt, looked up their MySpace, and were once again astounded that a Vancouver band could so completely tap into a genre of music that we didn’t even know existed in the city. Wanting to know more about the band, we contacted the two bandmates, and they were gracious enough to answer a bunch of questions. Here we go! Read the rest of this entry »

We first caught up with local wunderkinds Twin Crystals at the Rock and Roll is Good for Kids benefit show earlier in the year, and to paraphrase a review I wrote afterwards “the heat of the crowd combined with the dual-synth, brain-melting static hum makes you feel like you’re trapped inside the world’s biggest hairdryer.” It goes without saying that we were totally impressed right out of the gate. Over the last couple of years, Twin Crystals have earned themselves no small amount of praise from fans and media alike, and for good reason. The band continues to record and release material at an astonishing rate, all the while continuing to play regular shows around the local venue circuit. Recently The Aural Kinetic was lucky enough to pull the coat of vocalist/keyboardist Jesse Taylor from the band, so let’s get the this show on the road! Read the rest of this entry »