John O’Regan is trying to talk about the Juno Awards. The Oshawa-born, Toronto-based singer-songwriter, perhaps better known by his stage name Diamond Rings, was recently nominated in the New Artist of the Year category, alongside Alyssa Reid, Dan Mangan, JRDN, and Lindi Ortega. I want to find out his reaction to the nomination, whether or not he’ll attend the awards show, maybe even get him to talk some shit about his fellow competitors. Before O’Regan can get a word in though, Paul Saulnier has a pressing question of his own about the ceremony.
“What kind of snacks did they serve?” inquires the lead singer and guitarist of PS I Love You.
I’m sitting with the two and the other half of PS, drummer Benjamin Nelson, in the west end Toronto apartment where the O’Regan lives with two other roommates when he’s not on the road recording or touring. The three became close friends after the former member of The D’Urbervilles included a PS I Love You song as the B-side of his solo “All Yr Songs” 7” vinyl single in 2009. After their debut albums garnered attention, including positive reviews from Pitchfork’s Stuart Berman, they toured North America in 2011 and recorded a single together.
On paper, the two acts might have seemed like unlikely tour mates. O’Regan, who regularly performs wearing tights and rainbow makeup, recorded Special Affections’s electro-pop songs in his Toronto bedroom on a shitty laptop. PS I Love You’s Meet Me At The Muster Station in comparison is a grungier, louder indie-rock album, with many references to their hometown of Kingston, Ontario. As Nelson points out though, both records share themes of what he calls “young man problems,” namely being afraid of girls, paranoia, the struggle to be accepted, etc. “We both kind of wore our hearts on our sleeves,” says Nelson, “But we’ve switched from that and become a little darker, a little more serious.” The duo’s sophomore LP, Death Dreams, is due out May 8 on Paper Bag Records, while O’Regan’s currently untitled record will be out later this year.
Over the course of an hour and a half, O’Regan and Saulnier discuss the challenges they faced recording their second albums, where they fit in the Canadian music landscape, and yes, what they serve at the Juno Awards nominee press conference (mini bagels with salmon and cream cheese), while Nelson lurked in the background occasionally chiming in.
JOHN O’REGAN: So you just finished your record. It’s probably been done for awhile.
PAUL SAULNIER: It’s only been done since the last week of January.
I remember reading on your Twitter, and this is an approximation of what you said, but you said getting your record mastered was like watching your kids grow up and do drugs and fall in love and stuff all in one day. What did you mean by that?
You create this thing, it’s a fully formed idea and then when it gets mastered, I don’t know how to describe it without saying what I already said.
Is it the idea of giving something away?
Yeah, its giving something away and the idea of it becoming something more than it was.
I’ve been dealing with that because I’m about to go into mastering next week. I feel this is kind of the last time that I’ll have with this thing that is essentially my own, before not only technically it becomes the property of someone else or a group of people, but also musically and sonically and spiritually it becomes a property of anyone that wants to listen to it or experience it. Does that kind of freak you out?
The mixing process on some level doesn’t really end. If we didn’t set a deadline we would still be mixing because there’s always the little things that you want to change, like, “Oh maybe I should redo that guitar riff or maybe I should redo that vocal.” It would just never end so you have to stop over-parenting and let it be what it is.
Let it go to the bush party. Is your record bush party ready? Is it a bush party or a house party record? I mean that in all seriousness. I know when I was young I never went to bush parties because I was too scared.
I went to a couple of them. But they weren’t called bush parties, they didn’t seem too scary.
Did the police in Kingston have a helicopter?
No. I think they had a horse.
Growing up in Oshawa the Durham regional police force had a fleet of helicopters that would fly around at night on Fridays and Saturdays and try to find bush parties.
Like the show Cops.
The cops would be in the copters and they’d shine their light down and they’d be having a bonfire in the woods and then they’d radio to the cops in the cars and they’d ambush kids, steal all their liquor, probably their weed.
We got ambushed by the cops a few times. Just spotlights on cars.
So no helicopters? That’s why I was afraid of bush parties. At least if you’re in a house, as far as I know, the copters didn’t have x-ray vision.
When I was younger I went to a couple of parties that would be in a cabin where there was an outhouse, and we’d have a fire and eat a bunch of mushrooms and run around in the cornfields. And it was scary, but not because of a police copter or anything in the real world.
When you’re writing is there a certain, I don’t want to say like a kind of person that you’re writing for, but are you writing anticipating that your music is going to be enjoyed or experienced in a certain way or a certain environment? Like some bands are very obviously party bands or writing for people to have sex too. What do you imagine people doing?
BENJAMIN NELSON: Well unlike you John, I don’t know if we’re on any sex mixes.
Somebody told me once…well, I don’t want to get into it.
Because I think your music at the core, while it isn’t smooth, there is a kind of sensuality to it. It is emotive.
I don’t give enough thought to what I imagine my listeners doing with my music. I just imagine they turn it up load and head bang to it while drinking a beer.
I wondered that a lot working on my last record, because I really started listened to a lot of pop music and I really kind of set this goal of trying to write something that a lot of people could get into. I was always constantly struggling with whether that mattered or not.
I think our record sounds good in a moving car. It’s a good road trip album because a lot of the songs were mostly written on the road and all that inspires me in the moving landscape so I think about that a lot.
Like as a soundtrack? I really enjoy listening to music in cars. Do you listen to your mixes in cars?
Sometimes.
That’s my favourite, like when it’s almost ready. Test them in a good car and then test them in a shitty car.
We just have a shitty car stereo system.
When I got my record I dubbed it to cassette and listened to it on my boombox.
There’s nothing I can change now which is scary.
What do you do after it’s done mastering? Like I find I’ll listen to it one more time, walking around town and then don’t really listen to it until the test pressings come in. I’ll hear those and then I’ll have one moment when it’s in the package, in the shrink wrap, and I’ll get one like I’m 17 and open it. And then it’s kinda done right?
It is kind of done. I’ve been listening to it a lot though. Mostly because the songs are difficult to play live and we have to get psyched up to play because a lot of these songs we’ve never played before. We’re going to play a bunch of them tonight and I really want them to be the way that I want.
I don’t put any extra pressure on myself, but I feel a lot of pressure from everyone else, so I don’t know if that’s different from anything else. But that’s a good kind of pressure, a natural pressure, that’s how things progress. Like you’ve been writing pop jams, that must be stressful?
I would say that a put a lot of pressure on myself relatively speaking. It was my first record that I made consciously for a major label, whereas the last one I made for kind of no one. I felt in my case, most of the pressure was coming from within and I’d be kind of freaking out and everybody else from the 0label to my management would be like, “Whoa, just chill out.” I think that’s just my nature.
I started out thinking that if my first one was just this bedroom, kind of amateurish album, that the second one would be semi-pro and then the third one would be pro. But the more I’ve worked on it, I’ve realized just to go all the way or as far as I could take it, which for me was just the hardest part trying to wrap my head around it sounding way better than something I could make on my own. The first few times working with Damian Taylor, the producer in Montreal, he’d do something to manipulate my snare sounds or my drums and I’d be like “No, no that’s too good. Let’s kind of roll some of the goodness off there.” After awhile I could see it was killing him. It’d be like someone saying, “Hey PS, that solo is too great, can you make that solo shittier?” But it was scary for me just fully going for it.
You were talking about it being like a soundtrack and I read the press release and the title of the album. Were you having a lot of nightmares on tour?
They weren’t really nightmares, just interesting things.
You weren’t waking up in a cold sweat?
No, no. It was just weirdness in my dreams.
They weren’t dreams of winning the lottery or eating lollipops?
No, they were dreams where I’d be basically like running from death personified, and it’s the kind of thing a lot of people are scared but I can easily think about or dwell on it in sort of a fun way.
Could you see death? Does death have a face?
Kind of. I could see it. It’s weird talking about your dreams to people, because half the people are really interested and then the other half…
I’m interested because I don’t dream. Or if I do dream, I’ll wake up and it’ll be gone. I know people talk about having a notebook, and I have one right next to my bed, but I’ll still wake up and still have no understanding of what it was. When you’re not dreaming, are you afraid of death?
Not really. Well yeah, not obsessively. I always think it’s going to happen.
You might think this is ridiculous, but I find I’m only ever afraid of death at times like now in my life. Whether a record or a piece of art or something that I’ve really invested a lot of energy in and it’s really close to that moment where it’s about to be fully, tangibly existing in the world, from now until then would be the worst time to die. I have thoughts like, “Oh my god if I die now, what would happen if the record didn’t get finished? What if the label never put it out?” I don’t know if that’s a kind of selfish thing to think about.
No it’s not. I’m afraid of dying when I’m creating music as well, I always think about what kind of message I’m giving the world about myself. I do think about it. Let me backtrack a little bit… I have this complex of defeatism where it seems like every time something goes really good in my life something equally as bad will happen. I think more and more about dying the better my life gets because it’s like that’s the worst thing that could happen and I’m afraid of being too successful because it will then somehow be taken away.
Do you have an example of something bad that would happen?
I have an example personally. Like last week, we got paid for our record and we’re going to put out our record and we’re happy for that. And then my parents are separating and my mom’s moving out. I guess we feel pessimistic when good things happen, like what bad thing is going to happen?
It’s something that I don’t really want to dwell on but like going through a painful breakup the same week the record [Meet Me At The Muster Station] comes out. It kind of balances out the good and bad.
I think you have some good things coming. My biggest pet peeve is when people talk about guilty pleasures because I don’t think you should feel guilty about anything that brings you pleasure. Certainly there are certain kinds of music or songs that I enjoy that maybe I wouldn’t put on my top ten albums of all time list.
I have a lot of stuff like that. I have some stuff that might be embarrassing if other people caught me listening to it but I don’t feel guilty about it. Often when I’m walking around town with my Walkman, I’ll be listening to a ZZ Top tape. I’m not ashamed about that, some people would be.
Do you find that translates to your own writing?
For sure.
Because I find that songs or parts of songs I end up enjoying or liking the most are the ones that I’m most afraid of committing to and going for. Like when the song feels like it’s getting whatever word you want to use, like it’s too cheesy or too over the top, whenever I find myself in that position that’s almost like I’ve learned to trust it and its actually really good. I don’t know if you’ve had moments like that.
Yeah, definitely. When we recorded this new album, there are a couple of songs that are way, way far away from whatever we’ve already done in the realm that doesn’t sound like us, like we’re picking up on this thing that nobody else is because its cheesy. Our new record, we’re taking influences like ZZ Top and the Allman Brothers.
What are the points? Because I feel like anybody writing about it will miss the point which is usually what they do.
They will miss the point. They’ll probably just say we sound like Japandroids or Dinosaur Jr., which is far from what we actually sound like. The past year I’ve been listening to mostly punk rock and then poppy punk rock like The Pretenders, stuff like that.
Sloan.
Yeah, I listen to tons of Sloan.
Do you feel a connection like that to groups from Canada in a strong way or do you feel that sort of sentiment or era is less and less important than maybe it was ten years ago?
I feel like overall it’s less important. It’s kind of like when I was a kid watching MuchMusic in the late 90s or whatever and thinking like “Oh this is what I want to do.” Then you get to a point where you’re always doing and it doesn’t really feel like what you thought it would be. You have to reassess…
Everything.
Yeah, everything. That’s a good way of putting it.
I feel like I’ve had that moment a bunch of times this year where you look back and put yourself in your 19-year-old shoes and I think I would have been, I don’t know what, certainly a lot more incredible than what I feel. I certainly wouldn’t have had any understanding of all the other shit that you have to do as an artist.
It’s not all parting and playing shows. A lot of it is like an office job.
Have you filed your taxes yet?
No. I’m way behind on all that stuff, I’m just getting our band name registered right now as a business. I think the serious path for me that I’m considering is becoming one of those rock stars that twenty years, right around the time our greatest hits record comes out, that’s the time I go to jail for tax evasion.
Going back about talking about Canadian bands and that idea of being part of a larger community, I’ve always felt uncomfortable to some extent with the way that Canadian music is presented and promoted. As much as I understand the idea of wanting to have a unified presence, I think it’s becoming less and less important for that. Not only because the idea or the concept of Canada as a country alone makes me uncomfortable for a number of reasons, but I think fortunately for us a lot of that work has been done by other artists, and I’m really grateful for it.
Just reading the review of the new Grimes record on Pitchfork the other day, it mentioned obviously that she was from Montreal, but it was the first one of the first times I’ve seen something where it doesn’t really make a big deal about the fact that it’s from Canada. It says she’s Montreal in the same way somebody would write LCD Soundsystem is from New York, which I thought was kind of cool. Do people still, well obviously you guys don’t live in Montreal or Toronto, but is that something they ask you? Or like why don’t you live in Toronto, why don’t you live in Montreal?
A lot of Canadian press will ask us about living in Kingston because it’s somewhat interesting that we don’t live in Montreal or Toronto. I think to the rest of the world that’s incredibly boring. I remember on our first American tour I did this interview, I don’t remember who it was with, and the guy asked me, “How does it feel to be a part of this Canadian scene? And he starts mentioning all these bands like Arcade Fire and Broken Social Scene and New Pornographers, the big three, and he was like, “How do you feel to come out of that scene?” And I was like, “Well you have to understand I didn’t come out of that scene and I don’t know those people. We all live in different cities that are thousands and thousands of kilometres apart.” And the dude laughed because I said kilometres and then I just ended the interview, because it was like, what else can I say?
I found recoring this album, and perhaps it was because I was working with a producer that has lived in Canada and is currently living in Canada, all we wanted to do is make something that sounds as un-Canadian as possible. I remember mixing that would be a big thing, whether it would be as something as simple as a sound clap sample or a snare sample, can we make this a little more American or I want this to be more German? Save for a few really kind of over-the-top moments on the guitar where we’d be channeling some Neil Young or something. Not that I was writing from a reactionary perspective, but it was really the first time I really tried to fully consciously tried to do something different than from anything else that I was hearing which was really exciting and frightening.
I think Death Dreams is kind of ultra-Canadian in a way. I just kind of had to accept it. There’s a couple of songs named after Canadian cities because of how important they’ve become in my life and what happens there.
There’s so many things spouting out of the City now. The New York Times is talking about it being the new Seattle, which I think is maybe reaching a little bit, but I think there are a lot of artists getting recognized for doing a lot of different things which I think is really exciting.
I think it’s different than Seattle because there might be less stuff getting out there but it’s more diverse. Seattle was grunge.
I think that’s the point a lot of people are making. I think that’s a big reason my new material is swinging so far into the realm of pop, not only is what I’m interested in doing, but I do think there is a reluctance on the part of a lot of bands to really own it. A lot of what I listen to is old rap and hip-hop from the mid to late ‘80s, music where the artists are a little more confidant in the way they carry themselves, and not in the way that sort of turned into the overconfidence of the ‘90s rap music. Just being proud of what we do, I feel we’re starting to see a little more of that here but it’s a lot different if you go to New York or you go to Berlin or somewhere. Even Canada doesn’t really have that swagger. Maybe it’s all getting channelled into Drake, maybe he’s sapping everybody’s swagger. He has enough for maybe the whole city right now. I think music fans are a lot more tolerant and accepting of what they’ll listen to.
Austra got a Juno nomination and Junior Boys got a nomination. Those are groups that I really admire musically. I don’t want to put words in anybody else’s mouth, but I certainly never made music with the expression purpose of being nominated or winning awards. At the same time, it’s nice to be recognized in a way that even my grandmother can wrap her head around. My grandmother doesn’t even really know how to surf the Web, an eight point whatever on Pitchfork doesn’t mean shit to my grandmother, but a Juno still does. So that’s cool.
That’s the money quote right there. “An eight point whatever on Pitchfork doesn’t mean shit to my grandmother but a Juno does.”
If I win, great, that would be awesome. If it gets me on any body’s radar that I wouldn’t be on normally, I’m up for any kind of exposure.
Do you feel like you’ve grown up since the first record?
Oh yeah. Almost like an adult.
That’s what Paul and I felt like.
I still sleep in a bunk bed with Blue Jays bedsheets, so there’s only so much adult that I can be. But outwardly the way that I express myself and the responsibilities I have, I have a team that works for me, that’s only going to grow, I’m going to need a band for this next tour, whenever that happens. I think that changed my perspective a lot realizing there were actual grown ups, whether it be my management or label who are indirectly depending on me to survive in the world. I want to be able to fulfill whatever promise people see in me as an artist.
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Max Mertens is proud to admit that he’s never seen the movie P.S. I Love You. Follow him on Twitter here: @Max_Mertens
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