Words & photo by Leif Larsen
Fans of Winnipeg indie band Boats will be pleased to know that the band has been holed away producing their third studio album, To a Fairway Full of Miners. While three records in five years may seem impressive to some, frontman, Mat Klachefsky, doesn’t think they’ve done enough.
“I work pretty slowly; write songs pretty slowly. There’s not a lot of B-sides on these records.”
Klachefsky says he’s not afraid to abandon a song that he isn’t in to.
Writing a new Boats song, according to Klachefsky, is pretty much a solo effort. It begins life on his looper, then gets recorded again and again, growing each time. When the song makes sense, Klachefsky says, only then does he show it to the band. In terms of the band’s input, he says that sometimes they have good additions, but Klachefsky always retains “veto power,” so he can maintain his vision for the song.
While the lack of collaboration may seem strange to some, Klachefsky says it’s the only way he knows how to work, and one of the things new band members are prepared for when they join Boats.
“That’s the only way I know how to write songs, on my own. So that’s what I do.”
Klachefsky says that before he recently started playing bass in a friends band, Scotch + Tape, he didn’t “really know what it’s like to play in a band.”
“You kind of realize what a shitty musician you are,” he admits. “It’s completely different from what I do.”
In terms of what he’s learned in five years of making albums, Klachefsky said he doesn’t know if Boats has learned anything, but they have become more efficient.
“We’ve just spent four marathon days in the studio, to get everything done instrument wise, but it’s kinda just doing the same stuff. We’re not the learning type.”
Klachefsky says the next challenge will be getting the vocals. “There have been a few setbacks, and we’re just trying to find time for everybody and make it happen.”
One of the setbacks was the breaking of their engineer’s pinky finger in an unrelated dodgeball incident.
Followers of Boats on Facebook may have come across a YouTube video of Klachefsky mercilessly beating a guitar into submission in the studio — all in the name of capturing the instrument’s death throes. According to Klachefsky this was an evolution of a technique he uses on stage.
“There’s just this part of a song where I normally hit the back of a guitar to get a sound, and we had this guitar no one wanted.” The video shows Klachefsky, wearing safety goggles, gloves and a hard-hat, beating on the plugged-in guitar with a hammer, and the sturdy instrument standing up surprisingly well to the abuse. “I was actually hoping that we could have destroyed it more . . . it was a pretty strong guitar.”
For those recoiling in horror at the destruction of an instrument, worry not; Klachefsky said that it was a no-name “imitation Les Paul” donated by a neighbour who told him it never stayed in tune. “One day he just showed up at the door, handed it to me and walked away . . . so I figured it was OK for me to smash it.”
“I wanted to hang it from the rafters and hit it like a pinata, but I was really worried about destroying some of the equipment [in the studio] — there was some pretty expensive stuff.”
Despite not getting to destroy it in his desired way, he says the guitar did not die in vain, and the effect “sounds great.”
Klachefsky was also polling Facebook in March for a “bowed Saw player,” so what will show up on the album at this point is anyone’s guess.
While he was vague in talking about a release date for To a Fairway Full of Miners, Klachefsky pegged “fall” as the likely timeframe, and said the band is now set to finish the album’s vocals at UMFM’s new recording studio at the University of Manitoba.
“It’s a nice little set up, and they’re giving us a pretty good deal.”
When asked what listeners can expect from the upcoming album, Klachefsky says that Boats’s sound has evolved since their first album, Intercontinental Champion, and he went in “different directions” when writing and producing this album.
“I want to say that this is a more mature record, but at the same time there are songs that are completely out of control . . . insane and ridiculous.”
He says that there are also songs that are more “restrained and simple.”
According to Klachefsky the album itself embraces this dual nature, and plays it safe at times, but also takes risks at others.
“There are a few meandering five-minute epics,” says Klachefsky. This might disappoint people who have fallen for Boats’ signature sound, but qualified it, saying there are also “some three-minute pop songs.”
Still, Klachefsky says that the it’s hard for him to put the completed album into perspective at this point, because there is still “a lot of room for completion.”