Nameless Friends

HIGHLIGHTS OF RECORDING:

The Quiet Part, Loudly

Number 7: For me, it was the fact that we were at the Bathouse, the Tragically Hip's recording studio, because I've had a weird relationship with the Hip in that I didn't think I was into the Tragically Hip, then realized that one of their albums was like my teenage angst album. (Between Evolutions.) 

I walked into the studio and it didn't really hit me that we were like at the Tragically Hip's studio until at the end of the first day and I had a few drinks. I was standing in the studio looking at the original artwork for the album and it was like, oh my God. Yeah I'm playing the Hip's drum kit. I have, shit on the same toilet as Gord Downey. I started to freak out.

Number 1: I feel I need to interject that this first night I was upstairs. I'm not just the band leader, I'm producing this album. So I'm responsible on so many layered ways. I'm upstairs at the Bathouse and I know that Blue's going to go take a wander. 

He's been drumming all day, hasn't really seen the studio. I leave him on his own for five goddamn minutes, and I hear a bang from downstairs. And I'm like, amazing, we've just destroyed Canadian history. Great, let me go see what he destroyed. 

I go downstairs and find him in the studio, looking like he's seen a ghost, staring at this sculpture that he's clearly dropped hard on a table. He looks at me and starts off very soft and goes, "I was just kind of wandering around and looking at the studio and it's just really cool and there's all this original artwork and I saw this cool sculpture and I was like, wow, you know, I'm just going to look at the cool sculpture. And I picked it up and it's one of GORD DOWNIES JUNOS." 

Number 7: They were just there in the open and I didn't realize that they just did that. We're just going to keep this in the open? I thought they would keep that in a vault somewhere, but no. I don't know what you do with awards. 

Number 5: Highlight, I think early on in the writing process for the record, we got together at Lydia's parents' cottage, and we were just kind of hanging out, jamming a lot. Lydia hates jamming. The rest of us love it. Lydia's like, let's get things done. Let's like write songs. The rest of us are like, we're going to hang out, have a beer, and just like play music.

Number 1: We're going to play on E for 45 minutes. We're having so much fun...

Number 7: What if we played Bossa Nova versions of every song on our album for like two hours straight. Let's fucking go!

Number 5: I can't remember what we were discussing, but we were like playing random shit and we started, we got around to that, the riff that's on John Van, like the bass riff. And out of that weekend, I don't know how much we kept, but that's like the one thing that I remember. I think that's the only thing, the start of the record where I was like, oh, we're cooking, we're cooking.

Number 7: And Sam’s part for Mary

Number 3: But I wrote that when I was 19. That's when I showed it to you.

Number 1: John Van was being written as we recorded it.

Number 7: So much of that song was on the fuckin’ fly.

Number 1: I think it's a testament to the song because it was, it meant that it wasn't self-conscious when we were recording it. I joke, but like complimentary that John Van was the junk drawer song of the album. So every like cool idea we had, every riff we had that didn't fit anywhere else, it ended up in John Van.

Number 3: The only rule for John Van was the skeleton we set in Logic Pro. We set a tempo skeleton in it with sections and bars and time signatures and then we were like okay. We're figuring out what we're playing within these.

Number 1: So all the other songs in the album we got, pretty written and recorded. And John Van, I think, was the very last set of drums we did for the album.

Number 7: That was, I think that was, no, it was the last one. I remember one of the last takes that we did was the one that we ended up using. Because you used that fuck-ass thing that Prince does. And I know you're doing it and I hate that you do it every time. We were like, well, okay, so we got all the takes we want it’s fine, let’s just do one more for fun Don't even worry about it. I'm like, motherfucker I know what you're doing.

Number 1: And yet I say it's one more for fun and he gives the best take with the sauce. So I am a great producer. It’s okay, I do it to myself.

Number 3: Except it doesn't work on you. You give your best work in the first two takes of the day.

Number 1: I have a lot of different highlights of the recording. All the guest artists are a big one. Like, you know, on that note, the choir who's on the song Blasphemy, Anna Greg who's the cellist on Daigle's Motel.

Even like everybody here in the band guested on an instrument that isn't their primary instrument. Eron sang and did a bunch of synth on some stuff and Blue was doing all sorts of vocals on things. Sam played fuckin' trumpet and accordion on I'm Afraid of Failure.

But also personally finishing our vocals. Because we did a whole version of the record with the vocals in London, where we recorded like all of the leads and everything else. They were fine, but I don't think they really arrived at the performance standard of what everybody else had done at that point. As a producer, I felt everyone else wasn't overdone. They knew the songs, but we hadn't rehearsed too much. So kind of threw everybody in by the seat of their pants and they really did a great job of expressing themselves on the recording without time to overthink it.

By the time we got to doing my vocals for that first pass, like it just sounded like overthinking and like I'd recorded them under duress because I'd been listening to everybody else the whole time and anticipating vocal recording coming up. So we, lucky enough, had the time to take a break. We went and did a big tour last year in 2025. When I came home from the tour, we were no longer in London. We were in Oakville and ended up setting up a makeshift vocal recording studio in Sam's parents' garage.

We did all of the vocals in there in the middle of the summertime. It was hot as shit and it meant that couldn't overthink things because the temperature. I'd spent some time away from everybody else's recording and we'd actually gotten to play the songs live. That's what's important to me is knowing how they're going to play with audiences and play with people and it felt like it was informed and organic. Some of my favorite parts of the record is seeing everybody else play and then also like hot boxing myself in the fucking garage to do vocals.

Number 5: Honestly, working with Niles Spencer, our mixing engineer and the recording engineer, for our drums, because I was the engineer for most of the other stuff, along with Lyd, we kind of coded all the guitars and basses and vocals. But working with Niles for the drums and working on editing the tracks and mixing the tracks with them was a joy. I

In previous albums, we mainly worked with kind of more amateur producer. No shade to Kyle, to Kyle at the Sugar Shack. He was professional as fuck. He did a great job. Niles being the superstar that he's worked with. He worked with the hip.

Number 7: But just as a general shout out, shout out to Niles.

Number 1: Niles is my favourite I pitched him this project on perhaps one of the most nerve-wracking e-mail phone call weeks I've ever had in my life. I now know that I shouldn't have been nervous, but like his work is just fantastic. He's ego-less.

Number 3: He is cannabis infused into a man. Along with autism and 30 years of audio.

Number 1: He is like one of the most egoless engineers I have ever worked with, like just true mastery. There was no power jockeying. Especially as a young female producer, I run into that a lot, like engineers who, and they can't help trying to fight you to co-produce the thing. And Niles was just, he was such a professional, and he got the album, like really got it, because it's a bit of a genre blend of stuff.

When I was pitching it to him, I wasn't sure if he would be into that. He instead was like, that sounds fucking cool. Get in here. Let's do it. He offered like such good ideas of things, you know, we hadn't even thought of for amplifying the production. We recorded most of the guitars and basses ourselves. And then he suggested re-amping them at the bathhouse, in the stairwell, just to help add this liveness and room to everything. That man knows what he's doing.

It was the compliment of my life when we brought Niles tracks and he thought they sounded good. Tracks that we had recorded on our own and he likes the quality and likes the content, I can die happy.

We had a moment at the end of the album. We were driving home after one of our last post-production sessions. Sam looked at me in the front seat and was like, sorry, but I think we're working with Niles on future records. And I was like, I was like, what do you mean, sorry? I love Niles.

Number 7: How is that a bad thing?

Number 1: Sam goes, I know, I mean, sorry to Niles. He'll be seeing us again.

UPCOMING TOUR: 40 SHOWS ACROSS CANADA

Number 1: It's somewhere between 35 and 40 shows. We're going to every province and territory.

Number 7: I'm going to I'm going to miss my cat. I'm going to miss my cat a lot.

Number 1: Yeah, me too.

Number 3: It was my idea.

Number 7: It was you? Motherfucker!

Number 3: You endorsed it immediately, but it was my idea. And I was like, completionist tour.

Number 7: I want it on record that when everyone's like, Oh, we're going to do like a whole run of like all of the Northern Territories. And I said, Nah, I'm good. And then fast forward a couple of months, I got the news, Hey guys, guess what? We're doing all the territories. And I was like, OK. Sick. Awesome. It's fine. I'm fine.

Number 1: Aaron is soothingly rubbing his back. We genuinely love playing in Canada and we love playing across Canada. Yes, it's a fun bit to be able to tell people we've gone everywhere. Especially as this album is critical of a bunch of different parts of Canadian institutions that, Southern obnoxiousness and self-absorbedness is a thing.

The furthest north we've gone at this point is Edmonton, which don't get me wrong, it's pretty far north, but like, those are all of the major cities and there's a certain stereotype of entitlement of Southern Ontario musicians in particular. And I don't want that for us. If we're making a record that is about our love and criticisms for Canada being as a Canadian band, I think we should fucking see most of it. We went to every province on the Blasphemy release tour, just out curiosity more than anything. And it was fucking great.

Number 7: Curiosity, and maybe a little bit of hubris and optimism.

Number 1: And we lived. So why not also add the territories? Because frankly, I think the territories are going to be safer because we're flying in. So nice little planes as opposed to everywhere else.

Number 7: That way we don't have to drive 30 plus hours.

Number 1: Yeah, I trust a plane more than us in our fuckin' van, as people will know from this album.

Number 7: With our track record, yes. Thank you.

Number 3: And that was just John Vann.

Number 7: Yeah, okay, but you weren't driving John Van when the wheel fell off. I was.

Number 3: I was not. John Van behaved for me.

ARE YOU STILL AFRAID OF FAILURE

Number 1: Oh my God. Every day. This song is first on the album because I sing it to myself in my head as a soothing stim every day. But also like the point of I'm afraid of failure is that you do stuff anyway. And this fucking economy and capitalist hellscape. It's all coercive and it's all terrifying and you got to do it anyway because the alternative is just doing nothing. And I'm not interested in that.

Number 7: I think it's a folly to not be afraid of failure. Anybody who isn't afraid of failure, I'd analyze that. That's a red flag.

Number 1: I agree. That's concerning. Bravery does not come from a place of not being afraid. It comes from a place of acutely understanding why one should be afraid and doing it anyway.

DOUBLING DOWN

Number 1: We are a band that loves to play live, which is apparently somewhat rare these days, and we think that's sad. So we play a lot of live shows. On tour, because we are somewhat demented individuals, we say all sorts of out of context, unhinged things to each other. And we keep a list of the greatest hits. It's called the tour quotes list. We've needed somewhere to put those over the years, because there's some really fantastic stuff there, but they're often too long for songs. So we, I'm actually really excited about this, we produced our new album, The Quiet Part Loudly, ourselves, and Substack allows you to do an e-mail list and get more in-depth with people about our creative endeavors than the usual short-form content.

So it's running as an e-mail list right now. It's totally free. You can sign up, get all the posts. Most of them are just talking about like how we made the new album and like the stories and the politics and stuff behind it all. There's a good bunch of production nerdy stuff in there. But it wouldn't be us if we weren't being irreverent. So the title of every post is a choice quote from the tour quotes list. I think our first post was a quote from #5, “only good things happen on January 6th.” And our latest one is from me, which is, that the title of our next album, Prognancy Scare.