Not your grandparents’ chamber music
Common Deer, the five-piece ensemble currently held as one of the Toronto music scene’s darlings, recently released their first five-track EP, succinctly titled I.
Comprised of multi-instrumentalists Graham McLaughlin, Sheila Hart, Adam Hart, Liam Farrell, and Connor Farrell, the band blends modern electronic with traditional folk.
Based in Toronto, several of the members have close ties to the Guelph community, having either grown up in Guelph or attended U of G.
While Common Deer isn’t the first band to feature two singers, they are unusual in the sense that Graham McLaughlin and Sheila Hart’s vocals navigate nearly symmetrical tonal ranges. Furthermore, Common Deer is also made up of both friends and family.
In an interview with The Ontarion, Adam Hart spoke about what it’s like engaging in the creative process with a sibling.
“It’s been great sharing this with Sheila,” said Hart.
Like many siblings, the Harts weren’t especially close as children, “But working on this together has definitely made us closer,” he explained. “We aren’t the only siblings in the band, either.”
The brothers Farrell are the second set of siblings in Common Deer. Liam contributes percussion, synth, and samples, while Connor plays bass.
If the two sets of siblings ever generate tension within the band, it doesn’t translate into the music. There is a soothing unity, not only thematically, but also in production quality in all the songs.
In terms of content, the music of I navigates the natural and the modern worlds, as well as the complications that arise from occupying both spaces.
“We were looking at nature, being in your 20s, things like that,” said Hart.
Track number four, “Feather and Bone,” illustrates that tension most effectively as McLaughlin and Hart sing in tandem about existential dread.
“Settle Down,” arguably the most upbeat track of the EP, celebrates the millennial tendency to shirk traditional nuclear family pathways (marriage, picket fence, children—in that order) in favour of choosing a more laissez-faire outlook on life.
While singing, “I’m never gonna settle down,” McLaughlin and Hart’s voices climb in delightful, exultant harmony.
As “orchestral indie,” the members of Common Deer lean into their “untraditional” traditional instruments (cello and violin, among others) to push the boundaries of what the average music listener may construe as modern and classical music. The two, the band argues, are not mutually exclusive.
“It’s cool to build tension out of the ‘contrast,’ but it’s also great to show that these two different things can coexist,” explained Hart.
It isn’t meant to be a gimmick and it never comes off as one either. The use of chamber instruments instead seems to be a natural evolution for the members of Common Deer.
Throughout the five-track EP, producer Laurence Currie’s (Wintersleep, Sloan) guiding hand is quietly audible—each song is almost unbearably neat, almost unpleasantly precise.
Common Deer’s I doesn’t feel like a freshman release, for better and for worse. Perhaps the lack of rawness, of messy passion, is a result of the band’s training in classical music.
The music of I can occasionally feel a little stiff. Similarly, the lyrics are simplistic and occasionally too insistent on rhyme and metre instead of poetry and meaning. Regardless, the virtuosity of the band members comes across in each track.
“Feather and Bone” as well as “Doorway” will certainly resonate with young audiences, and this resonance only bears the potential to grow more powerful in the future.
Photo courtesy of Common Deer.