No Band is an Island
Aaargh! Records and Self Righteous Records guide Victoria’s musical utopia
By David Ravensbergen

With the recent election of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Canada’s shaky sense of identity has once again been called into question. Just as the image of Canada as a voice of reason in an often irrational international community was starting to gain momentum, we elected to dip our toes in the murky waters of social conservatism. Polluters continue to flout the Kyoto Accord, and our soldiers in Afghanistan are keeping it real, but it remains to be seen if they can keep the peace. In short, Canadians everywhere are waking up to the fact that we may not actually be as cool as we had thought.

While politically we don’t measure up to our own idealistic imaginations, we can take solace in the growing strength of independent music in Canada. If we are to be a nation in decline, at least we can go out in style with Black Mountain’s “Faulty Times” providing the soundtrack. The Vancouver band is only one example of a recent swathe of Canadian artists storming across the internet and into the hearts of listeners the world over. Beginning with the opening salvo of Broken Social Scene’s widely acclaimed 2002 album You Forgot It in People, Canadian indie releases from bands like Arcade Fire and Wolf Parade have lent our insecure nation some musical clout.

But the flash in the pan success of a couple bands from Montreal is by no means the definitive story. While it is tempting to defer to iconic cities like New York or Montreal as the arbiters of good taste, paying too much attention to status serves only to stifle creativity. In the early years of the decade, Toronto musician Jonny Dovercourt decided it was time to combat his city’s inferiority complex and embrace the diversity and talent of the local music community. Dovercourt devised the term “Torontopia” as an impetus for a healthier music scene, one concerned more with fostering unity than competing for scraps from the press table. Stopping short of declaring Toronto as an actual utopia, the basic idea was to recognize the city as a hotbed of artistic possibility. As Carl Wilson of the Globe and Mail describes it, Torontopia was meant as a rallying cry, a declaration of shared intent “which had to do with doing it here, doing it now, and doing it with whoever else felt the same way.”

Despite the success of Dovercourt’s weekly concert series Wavelength and the rapid growth of Three Gut Records, the concept of Torontopia has recently fallen into disrepute. As bands like Broken Social Scene, The Hidden Cameras and Death From Above 1979 flourish in the media spotlight, the scene’s grassroots ethic is inevitably diffused. What started out as an experiment in openness has begun to devolve into another indie clique, as sprawling guest lists and incessant hype rob the scene of its spontaneity. In a sense, the outside world’s recognition of Toronto’s thriving music culture has undermined the potential of the utopian drive. Yet the term remains useful as an approach to making music, and suggests the possibility of developing a creative commons in any city, at any time. In Victoria, labels like Self Righteous Records and Aaargh! Records are working hard to will that possibility into being.

When I first think of music in Victoria, I envision an enclave of our forgotten hippie past, with a few former Greenpeace activists or grizzled draft dodgers strumming Neil Young covers at a local open mic. Of course that picture is wildly inaccurate, and can be quickly dispelled with the mere mention of Hot Hot Heat, NoMeansNo, Chet and Frog Eyes, names dripping with contemporary relevance. But with the proximity of Vancouver and its own list of prominent music-makers, Victoria often gets overlooked. If Vancouver is the terminal city then Victoria is what lies beyond, an addendum to the story of mainland-focused West Coast culture. For those accustomed to judging a city’s musical worth by its reputation, such relative obscurity must seem unfortunate. But for Joey MacDonald of Aaargh! Records, working below the radar has its benefits. “I think when one separates oneself from any pressing urgency as far as musical popularity is concerned, one can easily realize that Victoria is as good a place as any to develop musically and creatively, if not an exceptional place,” says MacDonald. “It’s almost for the better that there are fewer distractions such as the prospect of temporary success at the hands of Canadian indie buzz bullshit.”

Aaargh! came into being on February 3rd of this year as a creature of necessity. While his label’s name suggests the frustration inherent in the music industry, MacDonald insists that the inspiration stems from a tattoo on his lip, done in true punk style with a safety pin and Indian ink. Wanting to maintain the DIY sensibility of punk rock but dissatisfied with Victoria’s legions of apathetic “drunk punk devotees”, MacDonald and company realized that if they wanted to see the quality of local music improve, they would have to do something about it themselves. What initially began as a loose collection of artists intent on making their music heard has developed into a full-fledged label, albeit one concerned with making silk screens, buttons and posters as much as putting out records. “The things we find ourselves most able and pressed to devote ourselves to are things that we need but can’t find, and therefore need to produce ourselves,” explains MacDonald.

What truly distinguishes Aaargh! from other independent imprints is the amount of life force invested in each recording. While most labels tend to consider their albums as “manifest objects,” commodities which disguise the love and labour that went into their production, Aaargh! is concerned with the creation process as much as the finished product. “Whether it was our initial intention or not, the albums we’ve dealt with and produced have been so tightly interwoven with the lives of those who’ve made and recorded them that it’s almost frightening,” says MacDonald. This personal obsession extends from recording all the way through to album packaging. On the Aaargh! Annual Year One compilation, the clothbound cover and ornate illustrations provide a lovely complement to the diverse selections contained within. The disc begins with the menacing, off-kilter accordion jam “Blue Witchery” by Run Chico Run, and wraps up with “Aloha!” by Himalayan Bear, a Canadian take on ukuleles and the Polynesian state of mind. The genre-hopping in between thwarts any attempt to pinpoint a single Victoria aesthetic, although MacDonald hints that it all might just boil down to “the sound of resigned punk rockers turning to Neil Young for spiritual and musical guidance.” Maybe I was right after all.

Conceived around the same time as Aaargh!, Self Righteous Records represents the flip side of the DIY picture: the warm sense of satisfaction to be gained from making music without corporate supervision. Or perhaps the name is an ironic reference to the holier-than-thou hipness of indie labels enamoured of their own independence. Presented with my grasping interpretations, label head Jesse Ladret admits some interest, but claims he just chose the name because it sounded cool. As a graphic designer, show promoter, and editor of Brand X Media, an online arts and music magazine, the dilettante Ladret has good reason to feel self righteous. Together with producer Myke Hall, Ladret founded the label as a common sense response to his existing connections with the local scene. Citing six degrees of Kevin Bacon, Ladret fondly describes Victoria’s music culture as incestuous, a feature that allows for a good deal of cross-promotion and cooperation between labels and bands. On Cavalcade of the Scars, Self Righteous’ latest compilation, the familial love shines through: Chet’s Ryan Beattie sings backup on a David P. Smith track, Lily Fawn of Hank and Lily plays as a member of Meatdraw, and Joey MacDonald’s band Away, Ri’o! lends the haggard beauty of “Song Birds”.

Although Ladret sees collaboration as an essential component of Victoria’s music culture, he prefers a more traditional label to the idea of an artist-run collective. Looking to the Torontopian model, collectives run the risk of becoming bloated cliques as their popularity increases. “I’d like to think that the bands and the label itself don’t really want to be a part of some sort of elitist, scenester entity, and if we did, it’d be embarrassing to us and those around us,” explains Ladret. Self Righteous’ response to the problems of the mainstream music economy relies more on the records themselves than any kind of alternative business structure. “I think people creating any sort of art just for the sake of creating it is a fundamentally subversive act,” says Ladret. While Aaargh! clearly promotes a similar sentiment, they also try to make their politics more explicit by donating 8.5% of the net worth of all label materials to charities that promote sustainability and animal rights. “That aside, I think oddly enough we all had younger days where we were avidly into productive punk rock and peace punk/anarchist activities, which has had a strong effect on our pop sensibilities,” reveals MacDonald.

Aaargh!’s belief in the power of pop radiates from the upcoming Himalayan Bear album Lo Lonesome Island, a side project of Ryan Beattie. The gentle island sway of Hawaiian tropicalia manages to trump its own ironic tendencies, thanks largely to the elegance and honesty of Beattie’s voice. The disc’s distinct island temperament sings of seclusion and resigned hopes, but the beauty of the sparkling ocean is ever-present around the lonely edges. On the Self Righteous side, loneliness prevails as David Chenery prepares a new album of subversive country with the help of the Lonesome Valley Singers. Recording on the bottom of an island in Canada’s westernmost reaches seems to have made loneliness something of a leitmotif in Victoria’s music. With Chenery, the lament of solitude stems from his removed status as an entirely unique musician, combining equal parts drunken whimsy and myopic visions of the apocalypse. “I figure anybody who spends equal amounts of time fawning over an old Deicide album as they do with Iris Dement LPs is basically going to come out of the trance with a pretty weird vision of the music making process,” says Ladret, trying to summarize Chenery’s sound. The upcoming album promises a greater range of instrumentation, with horns, violin and pedal steel guitar adorning songs of empathy and desolation.

To borrow a concept from Situationist Hakim Bey, Victoria is poised to become a Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ), a city where established musical conventions are being challenged by groups of uninhibited musicians. Bey believes that the revolutionary potential of everyday life can be awakened once people realize their ability to create outside of the imperatives of top-down culture. With the lawdogs at the Legislative Assembly in town, Victoria won’t ever be quite as free as the hash-hawking anarchists in Christiania, a semi-permanent Danish TAZ, but the potential is there. With bands like Himalayan Bear and David Chenery and the Lonesome Valley Singers set to release albums in the coming weeks, Victopia can’t be far off.