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by Chris Bryson<\/b><\/p>\nby Chris Bryson<\/b><\/p>\n
After years playing in bands like Slow Spirit, Odana, Somebody Language and under his own name, Brady Allard\u2019s newest project, Warming, lives up to its own name.\u00a0<\/span>Allard will be playing his first show as Warming at the Handsome Daughter on February 17<\/span>th<\/span>. The first single from Warming\u2019s eponymous debut album, \u201cWhite Lies\u201d, was released on January 23<\/span>rd<\/span> in anticipation of the show.<\/span>“White Lies\u201d feels warm and emotional, fluid and funky, full of undeniable earworms, jangly hooks, chiming chords, a hypnotically stirring melody and a swaying synth refrain that shimmers and enchants.<\/span><\/p>\n The new album\u2019s tracks are vibrant and potent, with influences seemingly derived from the best of indie\u2019s barnburners. Descriptions and comparisons to songs like a gothy MGMT, a funkier Deerhunter, or bubbling synths and soaring laser guitar lines alongside a Kurt Vile-ish\/War on Drugs-like Americana groove wouldn\u2019t be out of place, and Warming isn\u2019t limited to these things either. Allard has a knack for drawing from multiple styles to create songs that are immediate and catchy, fresh and revealing, distinct in sound and tone. <\/span><\/p>\n Allard was writing songs for fun that didn\u2019t seem to fit with any of the other projects he\u2019s in. He wrote the parts himself and after posting them one day on Bandcamp, he says things spiraled a bit, \u201cand the next thing I know I\u2019m spending all my money on recording an album.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n In March of this year it\u2019ll be two years that most of the collection of 12 songs were written and recorded.<\/span>\u201cI didn\u2019t really expect it to take this long. I got a grant for one of the singles two years ago,\u201d says Allard. \u201cAnd that\u2019s supposed to be you get the grant in the beginning of the year and by eight months or <\/span><\/p>\n whatever you\u2019re supposed to have it done. But it\u2019s been two years and I\u2019m just like, UUUHHUGHH, I just need it done already.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Allard says with his method of making music he\u2019ll sit at the keyboard and bang around some chords and sing over top. \u201cOr I\u2019ll think of a guitar line, or bass line, usually just throw that into Logic. Start recording a little bit. Looping it. The way I recorded or wrote most of the songs on the album, it started with just loops of guitar chords or keyboard. And then I just kept throwing more and more layers on top of that to the point where I had twenty or thirty tracks for each song.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n This created a problem of excess, but Allard had some help in dealing with that. \u201cI brought it to my sound engineer and he was just like \u2018we\u2019ve got to cut <\/span>so <\/span><\/i>much\u2019, it\u2019s unlistenable, there\u2019s way too much going on, it\u2019s so dense. So he helped a lot with picking and choosing what stays and goes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Allard went to school for music and has a degree in jazz. But after spending so much time in that world, he grew tired of it, and sought some structure back into his music.<\/span><\/p>\n With jazz, \u201cyou just completely open whatever you want indefinitely, and it was five or six years that I was doing that,\u201d says Allard. \u201cIt was great. And then at some point it just kind of gets boring, you just want to\u2026 want to play a chorus. I want the audience to listen to a chorus and think \u2018Yeah!\u2019 I want to connect a little bit more than just noodling endlessly for twenty minutes per song.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The album was inspired by events two years ago that led to the ending of an almost decade long relationship with his partner. \u201cI was totally fully ignoring everything else in my life. And I didn\u2019t want it to be, but it turned into a breakup album. Because I mean, I had ten or twelve songs or whatever that the lyrics hadn\u2019t been developed yet,\u201d says Allard. \u201cAnd when you go through a breakup it\u2019s very hard to write about anything else. I tried. I was just like, okay, I\u2019m thinking of concepts. Like maybe I could write about ancient Mesopotamia, and then I would sit down and be like, \u201cWell, I\u2019m sad! I miss my partner\u201d. So it turned into that. And sort of dealing with the existential questions that come up after a massive life change like that. Like what am I even doing? Why am I playing music?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The February show will have Dana Lee, who Allard describes as a great folk, kind of country-ish singer as an opener. He says she\u2019ll be playing with her band, which is some of the members of Heinrichs Maneuver. \u201cIt\u2019s different from what we do,\u201d Allard says, \u201cbut it\u2019s just good music.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n As for plans for the future, Allard says he\u2019s always writing, and has a lot of music left that was cut from the album that he recorded with Winnipeg mixer, recording engineer and producer Riley Hill.<\/span><\/p>\n “I honestly don\u2019t think I would have been able to do it with anyone else. We spent fourteen hours each day, mornings to the middle of the night, just hammering it out, and then we\u2019d stop, get a coffee, you know, eat a bunch of hummus or something, it kept going and going. It was to the point where I\u2019m so physically exhausted I could not get off the couch,\u201d says Allard. \u201cI\u2019m not going to do it. I can\u2019t do another track. And he just kept the energy going. It was always like \u2018yup, let\u2019s just do it, come on, I set it up\u2019. And I\u2019m like, \u2018we\u2019ve been working for like, sixteen hours, and you\u2019re still setting up mics, setting up the drums\u2019. And I\u2019m like, \u2018I\u2019m done. I\u2019ll come back tomorrow.\u2019 But yeah he was awesome to work with. We got so much done, but too much music for one album.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Chris Bryson After years playing in bands like Slow Spirit, Odana, Somebody Language and under his own name, Brady Allard\u2019s newest project, Warming, lives up to its own name.\u00a0Allard will be playing his first show as Warming at the Handsome Daughter on February 17th. The first single from Warming\u2019s eponymous debut album, \u201cWhite Lies\u201d, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[453,471,747,806,1191,1190,1104],"class_list":["post-10990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","tag-indie","tag-jazz","tag-pop","tag-rock","tag-synth","tag-warming","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10990"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10992,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10990\/revisions\/10992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}