2011 Highlights: The Barr Brothers

I’ve had my fill of lists, so there won’t be any “Best Of 2011″ here this year. Instead–given time–I’ll post some pieces I did on my favourite artists of the year. First up is the story running in the current issue of Penguin Eggs on Montreal’s The Barr Brothers, whose self-titled debut album would probably top my best-of-the-year list…if I was doing one.

How has it transpired that a pair of siblings from Rhode Island has become the talk of the Montreal music scene? Credit a freak twist of fate. Brad and Andrew Barr trekked north of the border in 2003 with their band The Slip only to have their gig in Montreal nearly end in disaster when the club caught fire. However, when standing on the street waiting for the fire department to put it out, Andrew met the woman who—after a year of dogged pursuit—became his wife.

Part of that arrangement specified Andrew moving to Montreal, and Brad needed little convincing to follow since neither was willing to break the musical bond they’d shared their entire lives. Cut to 2011 and the Barr Brothers, as they are now formally known as a band, have put out a stunning self-titled debut album that combines their gritty folk and blues roots with the fearless experimentation that has become the hallmark of the Montreal scene over the past decade.

Although the brothers handled the lion’s share of the instrumentation and production on their own, the album’s distinct Montreal traits are unmistakable. Several tracks were polished up in the studio by Arcade Fire cohort Howard Bilerman and the Besnard Lakes’ Jace Lasek, yet the Barrs’ secret weapon is Sarah Pagé, who was asked to join the band after the brothers heard her practicing the harp in a neighbouring apartment. That is, the traditional harp, not the harmonica. It all adds up to a sound that careens effortlessly between the fragility of Nick Drake to a down-and-dirty assault, à la the Black Keys, and Andrew—whose chief duties are percussion—is thrilled to finally have it exposed to wider audiences after years of honing.

“It sort of feels like freshman year in college right now,” he says on the phone while navigating the tour van near Seattle. “One night we’ll be in a dive bar, and the next in a theatre. It’s kind of these constant new experiences, and it’s really cool. The band has a fair amount of experimentation built into it, so we’re definitely learning how to adapt the songs dynamically to any situation. We’re finding that it’s all about giving up control a little bit and just feeding off the energy of the room.”

That process of discovery has never really stopped for the Barrs since the new band was hatched, and Andrew admits that they had no clear idea how their album would turn out when they began recording. “When Brad and I moved to Montreal, we didn’t really know anybody and all we wanted was a space in order to write and practice. We found a little room in this building near Mount Royal and slowly started meeting this great community of musicians.

“Brad was writing a lot of songs that reflected this big life change we were both experiencing of being uprooted in your thirties, and we would invite people over just to see what they could add. Through that we got to become good friends with Sarah and our bass player Miles Perkin and organist Andrès Vial. So there was never really an idea that we were making a record until some other friends asked us to do a short tour and we threw together ten songs that we thought best represented what we’d been doing over the past two or three years.”

As noted, that period only represented the latest stage of the Barr Brothers’ musical evolution, one that was essentially ingrained at birth from their father, a dentist from Providence who for a brief time got to live out his rock and roll fantasies with his sons. “Our dad was always buying us instruments,” Andrew says. “Our first band was actually with him, playing AC/DC and ZZ Top covers. Our dad’s older brother, Ted Barr, was this sort of blues musician/Beat poet as well, and that had a huge influence on all of us. Growing up in suburban America, that was just one of the most exciting things to do as a kid. Then Brad and I went to Berklee College in Boston and we formed The Slip and toured around for about eight or nine years. It’s fair to say that music is in our blood.”

The Slip did achieve some notable success, releasing a half-dozen albums, appearing at Bonnaroo and on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, along with doing a month-long stint opening for My Morning Jacket. Yet, The Slip’s indie rock approach is almost non-existent with the Barr Brothers, and Andrew admits that the timing couldn’t have been better for their quest for new musical inspiration to coincide with starting new lives in Montreal.

“We certainly felt that there was something fresh and exciting happening in the city from the moment we got there seven years ago,” he says. “I didn’t quite realize the rebirth that was actually going on, but pretty soon it was clear that the eyes of the rock and roll world were on the city. I guess overall there was a sense that it was actually viable to be an artist, and there are still so many young bands there carrying on that spirit.”

Although the Barr Brothers’ debut album seems to have firmly sealed their bond with Montreal, that was perhaps accomplished as soon as they wrote one of its standout tracks, “Cloud,” a tribute to the late Lhasa de Sela, an artist whose diversity perhaps more than anyone personified Montreal’s place, not only within Canada’s musical culture, but on a global scale as well.

“Sarah was close friends with Lhasa, and when Lhasa was looking to put together a new band, she actually got Sarah, Brad and I involved,” Andrew says. “She was a very special person and had a huge influence on us. Brad had written the song before she died, just kind of as a lullaby to put himself to sleep, but afterward we felt it was appropriate to dedicate it to her as a tribute to how she could create such simple things that still had tremendous depth. I guess if there’s anything that we want our music to reflect now, it’s precisely that.”

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