Ones To Watch: The Wilderness Of Manitoba

We’re into January now which means, for some, more nights in to discover new music. Thankfully, we’re on hand (as ever) to guide you in the right direction – this time towards a breathtaking discovery in Canadian slowcore band, The Wilderness Of Manitoba. Their music is stripped back to a skeleton of stark and slowly-moving opuses, emotion bleeding through the grazes.

We took the band to one side and asked them a few questions which will familiarise you with the background as you fall in love with the music over at the MySpace.

It seems many of the songs written during times of massive personal change – how tough is it to perform the songs from Hymns of Love and Spirits – an EP written similarly to a monologue detailing an immense personal loss – live?
Will: I think that when songs are written from personal experiences, they are in some ways easier to perform because you’re never far away from the subject matter.  This can result in a more honest performance.
Scott: I agree, they were really honest songs which makes them still very relevant to all of us.  Playing them at the beginning was a way for me to confront head on the things i was feeling, and it is much easier to sing something to a crowd when they don’t know who you are really speaking to.

Your name partially comes from an idea that your music would suit the open space and wilderness of Manitoba. What’s your local scene like?
Scott: We consider ourselves incredibly fortunate, Toronto is a really exciting place to be creating music right now.  We’re helped and supported by people who are really close to us, and we’re incredibly inspired by the bands that live in our own neighbourhood.  there is a great network of people here who are all striving for the same things, and working really hard together to make it happen for everyone.
Stefan: Yeah, most of the people we hang out with play music, or put on shows or write about music. We all met through playing in various bands together. A lot of bands break out of it and end up touring the world, but it’s great to still see people like Feist or the guys from Broken Social Scene or Do Make Say Think still going to local shows and supporting the scene.
Melissa: While it would still be pretty cool to be playing in the middle of a forest, it’s great to be in a big city and to have so many supportive friends around us, giving us feedback and coming to our shows – we definitely feel blessed in that regard.

I’m really drawn to the almost stern decision not to speed things up in your songs – do you take nods from slowcore bands like Red House Painters, Low, Mark Eitzel etc? Or is it a subconscious thing? And do you have any plans (or indeed have you already?) to make songs that don’t follow that form?
Will: Personally speaking, I’ve always considered Red House Painters to be one of my favourite bands so it probably comes out automatically in parts of my songwriting.  I’m happy you’ve mentioned them!  The songs on Hymns called for a slower pace and stripped down approach from the beginning as they had never been written with drums in mind.  Some of our newer material calls for more percussion but I think we will always return to the slower stripped down method.

Heartbreak is key in your songs and the clear, natural sounding production evokes classic recordings from the 1960s such as Arlo Guthrie, The Kingston Trio – your classic 60s folk revivalists. But who or what are the main influences behind your sound?
Scott: We have many – for me, I love the old stuff.  CSNY, Simon and Garfunkel, The Band.  These bands for me were more than just their music, the collective spirit of all of the groups has probably been the most influential factor on the way that I write, and in the way we all live. Music as an extension of life.
Melissa: I think I’m in the same boat as Scott but you can add to that list Joni Mitchell, Nick Drake and maybe some old Pink Floyd (think songs like Grantchester Meadows, A Pillow of Winds, Fearless etc.). The first song we learned together as 4 members was CSNY’s Helplessly Hoping and we still sing it from time to time – they are definitely a big influence.

What are your plans for 2010? Any plans to hit the UK?
Will: We are playing the End Of The Road Festival in Dorset and are waiting to confirm other dates in the fall 2010!
Melissa: As you can tell, we’re pretty excited about playing the End of the Road Festival in September! We’ll also be releasing a full length album sometime in the spring so look out for that.

The songs, you’ve said, are written by all of you collaboratively. How naturally do they come about? Like the soaring harmonies on ‘Dreamcatchers’; do these things just fall into place?
Will: So far, the process has been everything falling into place.  We’ve been pretty lucky in this regard as everyone has been thinking along the same wavelength in terms of songwriting and arrangement.
Stefan: Being able to record stuff on the fly is also an asset. Someone writes a tune, records it and sends it to everyone, and by next practice it seems as if everyone has ideas on what to do with it.
Melissa: Some of the more complicated harmonies take some time to work out but for the most part, it’s a fun process and very satisfying once we get it so it does seem like a very natural thing.
Scott: ‘Dreamcatchers’ was a really fun song to record.  When we started we had no expectation of what would come, so I spent a lot of time treating my voice as an instrument, and became more comfortable with how my voice sounded, and what I could ask of myself, or get out of it.  Elise Legrow, a solo artist and lead singer of the local band, Whale Tooth, also made that song incredibly special.

‘Evening’ was written by Will’s mother, and the original 1960s version put on the EP – do you sometimes wish you were born into a different time, with different distribution of music?
Scott: I definitely used too, but the music coming out now is just so good to want to go back.
Melissa: It’s a tempting thought but I agree with Scott, it’s too good now to want to leave!

Do you produce your own material? And where did you record the EP? I have an image of a log cabin…
Will: We produce our own material and the EP was recorded in the basement of our house.  The image of a log cabin is definitely something to keep in mind as we have a detached barn space in the back where we regularly have bands come to perform.
Scott: It was in the barn behind our house where this band, or the idea that this band was even possible was really born.
Melissa: I wish we had a log cabin to record in. Maybe that’s something for the future.

Obviously having not seen you live, how does your stripped down sound fill the room?
Scott: By attracting quiet, respectful crowds and four people who really just love to sing with all their might.
Stefan: Not to mention the addition of banjo, cello, ukulele, singing bowls, loops, melodica, and various percussion – they also help.
Melissa: We’ve sung a number of times without the use of mics, in small venues, which gives things a really intimate feeling, but we do also play bigger venues with drums and the energy in that kind of show is nice too.

Listen here: http://www.myspace.com/thewildernessofmanitoba