Sweet and Salty

Salteens navigate through pop music dichotomies with the same approach they employ to interact with their everyday lives. But if music is reflective, more often than not it’s because of the realization that music comes from the everyday.

The Vancouver-based indie pop ten-piece band released their third full-length album, Grey Eyes, on Oct. 12, and the album was born out of thoughtful contemplation, not an impatient desire to write, record, release, and tour, merely for the selfish fulfillment of performing.

Grey Eyes is the band’s first LP in seven years, and to principle songwriter Scott Walker, it was all about finding the right moment (as opposed to passively waiting). “For a long time, too many things were conspiring against us, whether it be love, work, family, friendships, what have you. But eventually, everything that was going on in our lives we realized ended up really informing the album.” Life creates music, and music contextualizes life. To Salteens, navigating really means more of a balancing act.

The new album is a simple meditation on being positioned between the past and the future. Walker cathartically constructs Grey Eyes as a work that is harboured in the experiences of his past but for the purposes to help him map out days to come, and not just for him.

“I think the lie we’re all taught to believe throughout our youth is that society will take care of us, or that we can just passively live out our lives in the belief that everything will all fall into place someday so to speak,” Walker professed. “But everyone has to have responsibility for their actions, and the truth about life that too many of us learn too late is that you really have to live it actively.”

This balancing act is a critical aspect of Grey Eyes. Even though the album is didactic on the surface, it is cleansed of any politics. It is melancholic yet upbeat and hopeful. Sonically, it is both broody and cheerfully optimistic.

Drawing on failed relationships, death, and illness — indeed, a wide array of various elements that constitute the transition from young adulthood into mature adulthood — Walker’s outlet became Grey Eyes. The album feels despondent at its start, but it foreshadows the firm stance to move forward. Grey Eyes begins with destinations, but ends with arrivals. Over a soft piano, the album’s closer “Don’t Break My Heart” laments about being left alone, but the now wiser Walker says no matter, because he won’t be back.

“I’m always happily surprised how what I write always comes out as a coherent thought,” he said in regards to the album’s flow. “Because to me, the writing process is too fleeting and situational to plan out any sort of cohesiveness.” But an ephemeral outlook on his life through music is, in a way, ironically representative of his attitude to be more active in life. If what dictates life is fleeting, then reflective music is in turn naturally fleeting itself.

The sounds that emanate through Grey Eyes are pop on paper, but only in an indiscriminate way. In other words, you can’t really explain why it’s pop. The songs will either be identifiable through their radio-friendly, modern indie pop melodies or through their eclectic roots that resemble the likes of The Smiths, Bob Dylan, and even Queen (yes, “You Stayed Up With the Lights On” has a Freddie Mercury homage by way of a more modern sound, like The Format). But the classic pop inspirations are contextualized, either through grandiose orchestral-like sounds that, importantly, often come up at unexpected yet welcoming moments, or through sweeping key changes, the playful interaction between instruments, and the varied yet complementing shifts in atmosphere.

“I get really excited when I listen to music that I really like, and if it sparks something in me then it will likely stick around in the back of my mind, so that the music I write will resemble it in a way,” confessed Walker. “But then, of course, by the time I finish writing a song, I’ve made it into something that is completely my own.”

The songwriting process, too, starts off in the past, but ends looking somewhere quite different.

The Sound of Settling In

I began my afternoon adventure with Inlet Sound as the captivated spectator of a bedroom practice session. Preparing for a show at the Casbah in Hamilton for Sep. 26, the five-piece indie folk group made effective use of the cramped quarters, completely undeterred by protruding furniture and low ceilings. The intimacy was perfect, however. The energy signalled a rebirth in the band, and it emanated in each and every song.

It started off as a slow 2010 for the group. Vocalist and guitarist Michael Wexler and keyboardist Sean Hardy had been performing as a duo under Inlet Sound since early 2009, and began making a lot of headway across the province. But school and travel gradually impeded the built momentum, despite the release of a full-length self-titled album this past January.

“When the album was first released, promotion was tough to come by, and it had been a while since we were even able to play a show,” says Hardy. “But things really started opening up in the summer, and it felt like a new beginning for both the band and the album.”

Contacted by A&R reps from both Sony and Universal to play a large show show at Toronto’s Mod Club in August, the two seized the opportunity. Quickly added to the line-up was violinist and mandolinist Steven Gore, guitarist Ian Russell, and percussionist Matt Cramp to augment the band’s now more nuanced sound.

“It was definitely a turning point for us,” says Hardy of the show invitation. “It presented us the opportunity to really recreate our band, and now we can make great sounds that Mike and I wouldn’t have been able to do before.”

After the practice session, the group made a trip down to Cootes Paradise, instruments in hand, to play some songs and shoot some promotional videos and photos. In between the photo snapping and video recording, they played some songs for the pleasantly surprised passersby on the various bridges and paths of the nature preserve. The interactions between the guys certainly indicated a newfound energy within the band.

“Having Steven, Ian, and Matt in the band now really makes a lot of sense for us,” says Wexler. “It really falls in line with the philosophy that Sean and I had from the outset. We chose the band name for a reason: an inlet is a narrow place where rivers or creeks will meet. The idea of convergence has always been at the centre of our music.”

What each new member now brings to the table is distinct, yet the band is progressing as an organic whole. “It’s a funny thing,” Hardy remarks as we make a steep climb up a forestry hill in Cootes. “We each bring something different to the music now, but at the same time, we all like the unified direction we’re heading in.”

The members’ mix of styles and backgrounds really feeds off of the equally diverse album, and to Hardy, the correlation is both welcoming and fulfilling. “For us, there is as much of an importance and emphasis on the creative process itself as there is on the music or the message that we can impart.

“In regards to the album, I’ve honestly tried on many occasions to pin down some sort of concrete theme to it, but I don’t think there is one. To label it with a theme just wouldn’t feel right.”

The intimate experience with people that day at Cootes was an extension of the band’s overarching goal to make their music an interactive and personal endeavour, particularly in the environment out of which the band was born.

“It can certainly be a stressful balancing act sometimes. We’re all students who come from different places and have different backgrounds and varying priorities and obligations,” says Wexler on the conflicting interrelation between the band’s increasing popularity and their commitments as students. “But, simply put, if you love something enough, then you have to do it—there’s no compromise.”