By Michael Elves
Myths are generally written-on-papyrus old; or passed-down-from-your-ancestors old. The notion of myths being modern seems paradoxical, but for Winnipeg band Les Jupes, and principal songwriter Mike Petkau Falk, myth-making is ever present; “I do feel that sometimes we don’t acknowledge the myths that we do have in our lives right now, the ones that our society has created on the one hand, but then also that we don’t purposefully create myths – that the notion of the parable or the notion of stories that also teach is not something that’s on the forefront of modern society’s consciousness really.”
And while Les Jupes’ debut album is entitled Modern Myths, Petkau Falk admits this stab at allegorical writing is “nothing so bold as ‘I’m going to write the modern myth for the modern age,’ these are stories about people dealing with their lives in this age and some of the things that we get hung up on are the thing that are most present in this time.”Dealing with life is front-and-centre in the songs on Modern Myths, and Petkau Falk explains that much of the grist for the mill came from his own life and attempts to ‘deal.’
“There’s a lot of stuff on the record about trying to get over yourself and do what you’ve gotta do to be a better person… It reflects what I was going through personally at the time and I’ve always written as a way to process what’s going on in my life.”
It took five long years for the album to gel into the unified, beguiling whole that it is, but things really took shape when the bulk of the songs were written three years ago and Petkau Falk had the opportunity to reflect on the material he’d created: “Songs just come out and I feel like the middle man – I can know when they’re done, but say a year later I can look back and say ‘oh there’s four songs here that all have the same emotion around them or the same purpose behind them.’” He notes that the song “How Do You Keep This All In Line?” which was written while living in Montreal four years ago may seem like an anomalous “angry beast” on the album, but it found a place on Modern Myths because “it poses the question that a bunch of the other songs try to answer.”
One answer for Petkau Falk, found within the lyrics to “One Solemn Oath,” is to “embrace your demons / and your art.” “That lyric is about becoming comfortable with yourself and becoming comfortable with who you are,” Petkau Falk relates, adding “I’ve always been one who feels that it’s important to acknowledge that there is a dark side to all of us, that we have to find a balance, to acknowledge the ghosts in the closet; personally the things that I’ve fucked up, the relationships that I’ve messed up and instead of ignoring it try to deal with it and move on.”
It’s a cathartic process – as the recording of Modern Myths proved to be also. Petkau Falk has a well-earned reputation as a great recordist and engineer, but instead of handling these duties for Les Jupes he enlisted the help of Marcus Paquin (Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs) to produce and engineer the record while he focused on playing the music. [Meanwhile, not on the record, Les Jupes’ ranks have since been filled out by David Schellenberg (The Playing Cards) and Kelly Beaton (All Of Your Friends) and drummer Adam Klassen]. Petkau Falk notes that he “wanted to be able to free my mind of the technical worries for as much of the record as I could because when you’re doing the technical recording and the creative playing that it’s hard to separate the two halves of the brain and it’s really hard to worry about compressors and mics and all the technical parts of getting a good take but then also make sure that you’re in the right headspace, that you’re playing well… having Marcus allowed me to do that.”
Paquin also challenged Petkau Falk’s conception of the songs he had written; “Marcus really prodded an attention to detail and a level of perfection musically that I hadn’t sought before. Like the ending to “How Do You Keep This All In Line?” there’s a whole bunch of arpeggiated guitar parts happening there… I would never have done that on my own – I would have just played it how I played it and that’s the way it would have been, but with Marcus all of a sudden that section had a whole new life to it.”
Back to the album’s title and why there are only two songs explicitly called ‘myths’ on the record? Petkau Falk divulges that “naming the two songs with the myth numbers, that came the night before we were going to mastering where I was putting all the songs in the right order and had never really been satisfied with those song titles as they were – they always felt like working titles – [my wife] Robin was just like ‘What if those are the myths?’ so Myth #3 became three because it was inspired by my sister and she was the third child of three and Myth #7 was kind of a reaction to growing up within the framework of the Mennonite church and seven is God’s number so that’s where that came from.”