New name, new sound, new style
Toronto band Future PEERS’ new self-titled album was far from a cut-and-paste effort. Released in December 2016, the album was a few years in the making.
After performing under the name Boys Who Say No for the better part of a decade, the band decided it was time to rebrand with a new sound and a new style.
Luke Correia-Damude, Michael Lobel, and Antonio Naranjo teamed up with Guelph’s own William Culbert—who had been filling in for their previous drummer—and embarked on a residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity to learn from industry mentors like Kevin Drew of Broken Social Scene and producer Shawn Everett.
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In an interview with The Ontarion, Culbert explained that the number one thing the band took away from their time in Banff was their relationship with Everett, who encouraged them to come down to Los Angeles to record the album with him.
“Shawn is like a mad scientist genius,” said Culbert, explaining that the use of technology on the record was a bit of a learning curve.
With a background playing in local jazz-fusion bands like Thunderbird and Versa, Culbert explained he was never much of an “equipment guy” before joining Future PEERS, which embraces more of a synth-pop sound and makes use of multiple triggers and effects.
Culbert revealed that on the song “Ex-Teens,” “The snare drum sound is massive and sounds like the end of the world, but it’s played on a little toy snare drum with two pens.”
Overall, the album has a very polished electronic sound, melding elements of modern indie rock and ’80s new wave, but there is a bit of a disconnect between how the band sounds on the record and how the band sounds live.
Future PEERS made a stop in Guelph at Silence on Dec. 10 as part of their album release tour supported by Versa and Hamilton’s Billy Moon.
Sporting a semi-androgynous look, the band broke out a few of their new tunes in a cloud of simulated fog and tin foil sculptures, fully grasping onto their new futuristic aesthetic. Contrary to their recordings, the band sounded much less restrained and—thanks to singer Correia-Damude straining his voice the night before—a little rougher around the edges.
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Culbert explained that when the band returned from L.A. and started to play the songs live, they tried to emulate the exact sounds from the record, but were finding the response from the audience to be a little tepid.
“We were playing shows and people were saying, ‘It’s really tight, but the energy isn’t really there,’ so we backed off a bit from trying to do them perfectly like the record and made them a little bit rowdier.”
As a result, the band sounded a little more Against Me! and a little less MGMT, all the while maintaining dance-y rhythms and sing-along choruses that might have been better suited to a festival stage than the intimate setting at Silence.
“In Future PEERS, there’s definitely an attempt to write songs that will reach a broad audience,” said Culbert, explaining that, although the band is currently planning to tour outside of Canada, an invitation to play a summer music festival on home turf would not go amiss.