{"id":1559,"date":"2011-01-14T12:39:05","date_gmt":"2011-01-14T18:39:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stylusmagazine.ca\/?p=1559"},"modified":"2011-01-14T12:39:05","modified_gmt":"2011-01-14T18:39:05","slug":"febmar-preview-les-jupes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/2011\/01\/14\/febmar-preview-les-jupes\/","title":{"rendered":"Les Jupes – Myth-making with the middle man"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/em>
\nBy Michael Elves<\/strong><\/p>\n

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; \u201cI do feel that sometimes we don\u2019t 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\u2019t purposefully create myths \u2013 that the notion of the parable or the notion of stories that also teach is not something that\u2019s on the forefront of modern society\u2019s consciousness really.\u201d
\nAnd while Les Jupes\u2019 debut album is entitled Modern Myths<\/em>, Petkau Falk admits this stab at allegorical writing is \u201cnothing so bold as \u2018I\u2019m going to write the modern myth for the modern age,\u2019 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.\u201dDealing with life is front-and-centre in the songs on Modern Myths<\/em>, and Petkau Falk explains that much of the grist for the mill came from his own life and attempts to \u2018deal.\u2019
\n\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of stuff on the record about trying to get over yourself and do what you\u2019ve gotta do to be a better person\u2026 It reflects what I was going through personally at the time and I\u2019ve always written as a way to process what\u2019s going on in my life.\u201d
\nIt 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\u2019d created: \u201cSongs just come out and I feel like the middle man \u2013 I can know when they\u2019re done, but say a year later I can look back and say \u2018oh there\u2019s four songs here that all have the same emotion around them or the same purpose behind them.\u2019\u201d He notes that the song \u201cHow Do You Keep This All In Line?\u201d which was written while living in Montreal four years ago may seem like an anomalous \u201cangry beast\u201d on the album, but it found a place on Modern Myths because \u201cit poses the question that a bunch of the other songs try to answer.\u201d
\nOne answer for Petkau Falk, found within the lyrics to \u201cOne Solemn Oath,\u201d is to \u201cembrace your demons \/ and your art.\u201d \u00a0\u201cThat lyric is about becoming comfortable with yourself and becoming comfortable with who you are,\u201d Petkau Falk relates, adding \u201cI\u2019ve always been one who feels that it\u2019s 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\u2019ve fucked up, the relationships that I\u2019ve messed up and instead of ignoring it try to deal with it and move on.\u201d
\nIt\u2019s a cathartic process \u2013 as the recording of Modern Myths<\/em> 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\u2019s The Suburbs<\/em>) to produce and engineer the record while he focused on playing the music. [Meanwhile, not on the record, Les Jupes\u2019 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 \u201cwanted to be able to free my mind of the technical worries for as much of the record as I could because when you\u2019re doing the technical recording and the creative playing that it\u2019s hard to separate the two halves of the brain and it\u2019s 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\u2019re in the right headspace, that you\u2019re playing well… having Marcus allowed me to do that.\u201d
\nPaquin also challenged Petkau Falk\u2019s conception of the songs he had written; \u201cMarcus really prodded an attention to detail and a level of perfection musically that I hadn\u2019t sought before. Like the ending to \u201cHow Do You Keep This All In Line?\u201d there\u2019s a whole bunch of arpeggiated guitar parts happening there\u2026 I would never have done that on my own \u2013 I would have just played it how I played it and that\u2019s the way it would have been, but with Marcus all of a sudden that section had a whole new life to it.\u201d
\nBack to the album\u2019s title and why there are only two songs explicitly called \u2018myths\u2019 on the record? Petkau Falk divulges that \u201cnaming 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 \u2013 they always felt like working titles \u2013 [my wife] Robin was just like \u2018What if those are the myths?\u2019 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\u2019s number so that\u2019s where that came from.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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; \u201cI do feel that sometimes we don\u2019t acknowledge the myths that we do have in our lives right now, the […]<\/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":[546],"class_list":["post-1559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","tag-les-jupes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1559","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=1559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1559\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}