Growing up an oboe-playing soprano in a small town B.C., it’s easy to imagine exotic, glittering London, England, as the promised land. Rachel Zeffira thought it was, and though she currently makes her home there, the first time she tried to make the move, at just 17 years old, an over-zealous border agent detained and deported her, sparking a chain of events that have ultimately lead to Zeffira’s new reality: a life in rock ’n’ roll.
Well, OK, she’s more ethereal chamber pop than crunchy guitar-driven chaos. Zeffira’s journey from aspiring opera star to indie breakout is a story almost Dickensian in its convoluted happenstance. Luckily, her debut solo album, The Deserters, reflects every anecdote and influence, sonically illustrating a landscape that is uniquely Zeffira: dreamy, ambitious and layered. The young singer-songwriter spoke with CBC Music over the phone from London about this strange new world.
LISTENThe Deserters by Rachel Zeffira
Album stream to March 12, 2013
Tracklist
You’ve gone from the dust-up in London where you got deported and then returned, inventing a fake resume for a job teaching French even though you didn’t really know French, to starting the band Cat’s Eyes with Faris Badwan of the Horrors, to a small write-up in the New York Times a few weeks ago for your debut album. How does it feel?
[Laughs.] Very unexpected, I guess. I mean, as unexpected as it seems to you. I never really make plans in life, so I never know what’s coming next, really.
Being from Canada and going somewhere else to make your dreams come true seems very exotic. Did it feel scary or liberating to think about making that move?
It's almost like a defect in my brain. I don't ever have expectations, good or bad. [After working in London], I moved to Italy. I literally went to the train station and bought a ticket and was like, 'Hmmm, where should I go? Verona!' And I didn't even have a place to stay that night [laughs]. And then I auditioned for the school once I was there for a couple days and I went in with my oboe – I didn't really have any sort of expectations in my head except for delusional things, maybe.
I think it was a bit of a shock when I came back to London after the deportation. I wasn't doing any music or anything I thought I would be doing. You know, I thought I would be on stage somewhere. I just had dreams and thought it was just going to happen [laughs]. I think I suffered from delusions of grandeur. I really thought, I'll go to London and then I'll be singing at the Royal Opera House within a week.
You met Faris Badwin and formed the pop duo Cat’s Eyes and now you have a solo pop album. Did you ever foresee a future like this?
[Laughs.] I still don't see that, but I definitely never, ever in my wildest dreams thought I'd be doing pop music or indie music at all. I had all sorts of weird ideas of my even winning Olympic medals in speed walking. I really thought I had a chance to be a speed walking champion, when I was 15. But it never crossed my mind that I would do pop music or indie rock. And it's weird, now that I'm doing it, it feels like it's what I should be doing, but I never would have thought of that. Ever.
So Faris hasn’t lead you astray?
[Music]'s been more fulfilling, actually, because before I wasn't writing at all. I wrote songs just for fun, but I didn't think anyone would ever hear. It just hadn't crossed my mind that I could write songs and people would ever hear them. So that's what Faris did. And he convinced me to sing again, because at that point I was thinking I wasn't going to do opera or really sing ever again. It just took someone who I respected, and looked up to, to even think it might be worth thinking about. It definitely wouldn't have happened without Faris.
Did you intend to make a solo album or is that another happy accident?
I think the solo album happened because – I mean, we didn't intend on making a Cat's Eyes album, that was by accident, too. It was just a fun hobby that got out of control and we started recording and I started spending a lot of money on it and it was just weird. Faris is a bit like that, too. We don't talk about things, we just do them and then it's done.
So the solo album, I think what happened with Cat's Eyes and this whole new world, I was able to write music and I just felt like I'd won the lottery. I couldn't stop writing songs, I loved doing it so much. I could record my oboe if I wanted to, I can write any type of song I want, and just the creative freedom, so even throughout Cat's Eyes, I was writing solo songs for fun, so the album sort of happened that way. Once Cat's Eyes was on break, because the Horrors were on tour, I've been writing songs on my own and recording them, so that's how the album happened
The Deserters has this epic, otherworldly quality which is pretty extraordinary. How has this sound morphed from all of these influences?
It really starts with – I always think I'm just going to write a couple songs, like, singing and the piano, and then it just grows on its own and the song kinda dictates what's going to happen. I think from the very beginning, sitting at the piano and doing chords and singing over them, and then making the demo at home, and playing my oboe on the demo, and adding the strings, and then I'll go into the studio and add even more stuff, and then I'll go to Abbey Road and pay for an orchestra [laughs] and then a tuba player –
it just grows on its own and it sort of takes over from me.
I think, as it happens, it is just everyone and everything I've ever met in my life just kind of – God, it's really hard to put into words. Like, your resources, and just dipping into your resources, whatever they are: memory, or skills with instruments or ideas from other people. My resources got bigger as I've gone along, and more varied.
Follow Andrea Warner on Twitter: @_AndreaWarner
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