{"id":1473,"date":"2010-12-03T16:45:21","date_gmt":"2010-12-03T22:45:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stylusmagazine.ca\/?p=1473"},"modified":"2010-12-03T16:45:21","modified_gmt":"2010-12-03T22:45:21","slug":"karkwa-out-of-the-bleu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/2010\/12\/03\/karkwa-out-of-the-bleu\/","title":{"rendered":"Karkwa – Out of the bleu"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Sabrina Carnevale<\/strong>
\n\"\"<\/a>
\nIf it seems as though Montreal is churning out hipster rock like it\u2019s going out of style, it\u2019s probably because it is. Between Arcade Fire (who recently had the highly coveted musician slot on Saturday Night Live), the Dears, the Unicorns and the Stills, Montreal has taken over as Canada\u2019s indie rock capital. The city can now add a Polaris-prize winning band to its list of accomplished musicians \u2013 Francophone quintet Karkwa won Canada\u2019s highest musical honour, along with a cool $20,000, this past September against some major heavyweights including Shad, Broken Social Scene, Radio Radio and The Besnard Lakes.
\n\u201cMontreal is a great community, there are a lot of dedicated fans and a great group of musicians that we are friends with,\u201d says Karkwa vocalist and guitarist Louis-Jean Cormier. \u201cThe music comes very naturally, we\u2019re influenced by many things, the weather, maybe even the winters; there is definitely a \u2018Montreal\u2019 sound.\u201d
\nTo make their Polaris win for their fourth album, Les Chemins De Verre<\/em>, that much sweeter, they also managed to be the first Francophone act to take home the popular prize. \u201cAll the newspapers in Quebec and Montreal were talking about it, we were surprised just to make the short list and to be a part of it with many bands that we listen to and are fans of,\u201d says Cormier. \u201cWe were so surprised to win, it was unbelievable, we had no expectations. But when we won, we had to speak in English in front of all those artists \u2013 that was pretty strange.\u201d
\nKarkwa may be an unfamiliar name to English Canada, but these guys are anything but new to the industry \u2013\u00a0 they\u2019ve been making music for over 10 years, have won numerous awards and managed to acquire a large audience base in Quebec and France. In fact, with this win, they\u2019ve noticed music audiences expand and spread out. \u201cThere are a lot of good French bands in Montreal, we are not alone,\u201d Cormier explains. \u201c[This win] has certainly helped other Montreal bands, too, because there are many curious people and music lovers in Canada.\u201d
\nWith the announcement of Karkwa\u2019s Polaris win, also came the backlash. In a Globe and Mail<\/em> article printed on September 21 titled \u201cPourquoi Karkwa,\u201d the journalist not only called Karkwa an \u201cobscure\u201d band but also pointed to the fact that, perhaps, the Polaris voting was \u201cnot only predictable, it was, some might say, nearly pre-determined.\u201d
\n\u201cIt was pretty funny for us when the Globe and Mail said we are an obscure band; that\u2019s true for Western Canada, but we are not obscure at home,\u201d responds Cormier. \u201cAfter Polaris, it\u2019s become easier for us. It\u2019s a very well respected prize and one of the most prestigious because of its voting process, many music critics are not like the one from the Globe and Mail<\/em> \u2013 in fact, everyone we met at Polaris told us that they want to learn and speak more French!\u201d
\nFor Les Chemins De Verre<\/em>, the band opted to go headfirst and record 21 songs in 21 days. Of the 21, twelve songs made the cut. \u201cFor this album, we changed our process. With previous albums, we practiced and were very ready when we went to the studio,\u201d Cormier says. \u201cThis time, we were on tour in Europe and recorded during our breaks; we wanted to try something different.\u201d
\nThe band has toured quite a bit overseas, and has managed to garner quite the fan base in Paris. \u201cWhen we play in Paris, a lot of people come to see us; they\u2019re curious because we\u2019re from Montreal,\u201d explains Cormier. \u201cMontreal is everywhere I think, it just might be a buzz, like San Francisco or Seattle in the 90s. I don\u2019t know if it will last.\u201d
\nTouring is still very important to Karkwa, but now that some of the members have children, it\u2019s proven to be a bit more difficult. \u201cTouring was pretty important, but now things are changing, everybody in the band is a dad, we hope to do more isolated tours, not big, long tours,\u201d explains Cormier. \u201cIn Quebec, we\u2019re well known so we have the opportunity to work with our schedules. It\u2019s not the same outside of Quebec.\u201d Karkwa hopes to change that with their first Canadian tour, hopefully, planned for February 2011 alongside Montreal indie-rockers, Plants and Animals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Sabrina Carnevale If it seems as though Montreal is churning out hipster rock like it\u2019s going out of style, it\u2019s probably because it is. Between Arcade Fire (who recently had the highly coveted musician slot on Saturday Night Live), the Dears, the Unicorns and the Stills, Montreal has taken over as Canada\u2019s indie rock […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[514,743],"class_list":["post-1473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","tag-karkwa","tag-polaris-prize"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1473","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\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1473\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}