Dark yet dynamic Montreal duo Blue Hawaii’s sophomore effort is Untogether, and it finds Raphaelle Standell-Preston (Braids) and Alex Cowan (Agor) writing somber, electronically infused pop music about distance and isolation. Untogether is available March 5 via Arbutus Records but is streaming here for one week. Listen to it and read a Q&A with Cowan below.
ListenUntogether by Blue Hawaii
Streaming until March 12
Tracklist
(Courtesy of Arbutus Records)
From what I gather, Untogether was recorded quite differently than (2010’s) Blooming Summer. Can you talk about how the process of making both distinguishes these two LPs?
Blooming Summer celebrated us coming together – a carefree and rose-coloured feeling. There were no expectations, just this feeling, and the music reflects this. Tones are much warmer, generated from organic sources such as guitar, samples from our months-long journey through Central America, major feeling chords, simple songwriting and poppy lines. Untogether, however, represents the feeling that arises after time passes – one's ambitions and self-consciousness creep back into this rose-coloured paradise, and slowly life begins to rebuild itself around your changing desires.
It's this shift from group to individual that we tried to capture in the record – in our own relationship, in the artistic community in Montreal, in the ways that people spend increasingly more time in an online rather than real world. It's a beautiful kind of togetherness because it indeed exists, but is somehow broken at the same time. This is captured in our recording process – we were often apart, and spent many nights separately working on the recordings. We would often tear apart songs and start anew –saving one vocal melody or beat, reworking it into our new ideal of what we think the track should be. Unlike Blooming Summer, it resulted in this kind of edited, cold and fragile record, which perfectly captures the time we find ourselves in now.
Your first record was billed as being about "new love," while Untogether implies separation and does come across as colder. What role does love play in these new songs?
We kind of answer this above, but I would say love is present here in the sense of trust as safety undercurrent. Times can get bleak, but there's usually some kind of hope. This is something we were conscious to edit back into the early cuts of the tracks, which were pretty sad-sounding – often going back to change a certain part from minor to major, or a tone from dark to light.
There seems to be a resurgent interest in bridging pop song templates with electronic music, particularly in Montreal these days. What is it about this meeting ground that appeals to you?
We'd actually like to revisit pop again when we get back to writing new stuff. We feel like with Untogether we kind of purposely restrained from that, trying not to drop a simple consistent beat or a catchy, repeated vocal part. But I know what you mean; it feels like so much new music is electronic in some regard. It's probably due in part to the omnipresence of computers in our lives, but also because you can shape any kind of environment you want with software. The cool part about coming from the place that we do is that we are used to songwriting. Hence these crossover-type bands. Head over to Europe and notice this amazing respect for genres of purely electronic music.
Now that this LP is done and you have some tour dates coming up, what comes next for Blue Hawaii? Any other recording plans or collabs in the works?
We'll get a chance to record some more later this year. Our live set has become way more energetic and dance-y than the album, so maybe we'll try and capture some of that. Super excited to travel a bit. Braids have an album coming out and so we'll also take some time off.
See Blue Hawaii on tour across North America in the coming months.
Follow Vish Khanna on Twitter: @vishkhanna
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