Mystical and magical Montreal pop sophisticates the Luyas recently released their third album, Animator, on Paper Bag Records, and you can stream it here until Nov. 13.
ListenAnimator by the Luyas
Streaming until Nov. 13
Tracklist
Vocalist Jessie Stein is in the van with her band on a tour that brings them to Toronto, Hamilton and Ottawa this week and a hometown show in Montreal on Nov. 13. She’s on the phone talking about Animator and how it was informed by death, both literally and conceptually.
“It’s something I’ve thought about a lot but more so in the last few years because I’ve had various people close to me pass away,” she says. “Obviously it’s something that happens every day to everyone and I think it’s important to bear it in mind because it’s the ultimate perspective and it’s so normal. It’s a weird thing in our culture that we don’t think about until the last minute. It’s always a shock but it’s the only thing that’s absolutely true, that you are gonna die.”
As the Luyas were setting up to record, they got word that a close friend had passed away and the news had a profound and immediate impact on how they interacted for the period captured by Animator.
“I don’t think it’s a morbid record,” Stein clarifies. “It has moments of devastation and light and that’s a good way to represent life. The music that resonates most with me and feels the most potent does that. I think most good art has death, love and mystery in the subtext. So there are songs about a particular death — or a particular life, you might say — but moreover, I think having the uncertainty of death in mind on a regular basis is very healthy. It got into the lyrics and the sounds as well.”
The music the Luyas make is moving and orchestral. Its building pop structures roll on with an impending sense that something intriguing is always coming, or is just around the corner. Stein believes that a musician’s role is exactly that — to manipulate the hearts of listeners, conjuring tension that creates a different storyboard for every set of ears.
So it is that the band’s new record is called Animator, a relatively upbeat title for a recording environment mired in loss and sadness. In fact, Stein says she greeted the shock of her friend’s death by conjuring a fictitious realm where ghosts played through the Luyas.
“It’s this reach-y, impractical and impossible idea that you can allow death to live through your body and, in that way, animate something that can no longer move itself,” she explains. “In that title also is the idea that it’s just tricks; like an animator who makes images move is a magician.”
Having released two records rather quickly (Animator follows February 2011’s Too Beautiful to Work), the Luyas are clearly tapping into some cosmic muse that has kept them prolific and their sound progressive. Stein reveals that the band will head back into the studio in December to record some new songs.
“Our plan is to lead creative lives,” she states simply. “It’s not crazy to make two records a year. The Beatles did it. I want it all to be good and not create art pollution but I want to work when I’m inspired.”
JWTo hear the full conversation, you have two options. You can download an MP3 if you right-click and “Save target as.” Or to stream it, press play.
See the Luyas on tour in Ontario this week, and Montreal next week.
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