Tag: Montreal

Ep. #122: Heather O’Neill

Post author By vish
Post date August 14, 2014

Heather O’Neill is a talented and provocative novelist based in Montreal. Her first book was the celebrated Lullabies for Little Criminals, which won Canada Reads in 2007 and the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. Her latest novel is The Girl Who Was Saturday Night, which was published by HarperCollins Canada this past April and tells the compelling story of a pair of directionless fraternal twins in Montreal, Noushcka and Nicolas Tremblay, who live in the shadow of their has-been folk-singer of a neglectful father and bare certain emotional scars as a result. Young Quebecois coming of age in 1995, they are separatists on one hand, but unwitting sovereignists on the other. Their creator is bringing their story with her as a participating author at the Eden Mills Writers’ Festival, where she’ll read on Sunday September 14. Here, Heather and I discuss how to pronounce Nicolas, why it’s difficult to describe what The Girl Who Was Saturday Night is about, the magic in the mundane, having an amicable break-up with a book you wrote, separatism, separating, and needing people you need to get away from, establishing boundaries to become your own person, why we’re reading this world from Noushcka’s perspective, what this book might say about the separatism/sovereignty debate, class divides, promiscuous has-been folk-singer daddy issues, embittered former child stars, Raphael the sexy bad boy, fame might be a drag, people who think authors are their characters, how Heather relates to her characters, how Quebec today relates to Quebec of the mid-1990s, how a teacher’s encouragement drew Heather to write a story about shrinking machines and a cockroach, needing to write, delving into creative non-fiction and how it intertwines with a novel like The Girl Who Was Saturday Night, the political folk music of Montreal that’s conjured in this book via Etienne Tremblay, Heather’s thoughts on film treatments of her works, Wes Anderson and The Royal Tenenbaums, her forthcoming book of short stories Dear Piglet out this spring, writing more than one story at a time, what Heather will be doing at the Eden Mills Writers’ Festival, @lethal_heroine, weird turns, and the end.

Related links: harpercollins.ca twitter.com/lethal_heroine vishkhanna.com

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Tags @lethal_heroine, Canada Reads, Dear Piglet, Eden Mills Writers' Festival, HarperCollins Canada, Heather O’Neill, Lullabies for Little Criminals, Montreal, Quebec, separatism, sovereignty, The Girl Who Was Saturday Night, The Royal Tenenbaums, Wes Anderson

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Ep. #114: Nat Baldwin of Dirty Projectors

Post author By vish
Post date July 8, 2014

Nat Baldwin is a talented double-bassist, singer, and songwriter who originally hails from the state of New Hampshire but lives in Maine. Baldwin is a skilled musician who studied with jazz and improvised music giant Anthony Braxton and, for the past decade, he has been a member of the Brooklyn, NY band, Dirty Projectors. In 2011 Baldwin released People Changes, his second solo album, and this year brings us its captivating, lovely follow up, In the Hollows, which is available now via Western Vinyl. Baldwin has a couple of shows in Massachusetts later this month and he plays The Monarch in Toronto on July 24, Casa del Popolo in Montreal on July 25, and Guelph’s Hillside Festival on July 26. Here, Baldwin and I talk about Love Lane, training for a marathon you can’t run and making music, an injured achilles’ heel, losing control of your physicality, the late, American middle/long-distance runner Steve Prefontaine, Nat’s long history of connecting athletic iconography with the music he makes, running rhythms, process-oriented parallels between bands and basketball teams, learning how to play music at 18, running/reading/music regimens, underground literature networks, Barry Hannah, Blake Butler, Lindsay Hunter, Amelia Grey, the song “Cosmos Pose” and bodybuilding, death, playing in a wedding band, Nat’s dad’s band Ben Baldwin and the Big Note, Ray Charles, seeing the Moonbeams sing the national anthem at Celtics games at Boston Garden, Larry Bird, visiting French Lick Indiana and Larry Bird Boulevard, getting into Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman, Charlie Haden, Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler, Anthony Braxton, and other jazz heroes, loaning William Parker a dodgy bass amp, losing interest in music, double bass and voice songs, what’s new with Dirty Projectors and David Longstreth’s writing habits, the song “Knockout,” and then we cross the finish line.

Related links: westernvinyl.com/artists/natbaldwin.html vishkhanna.com

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Ep. #98: Owen Pallett

Post author By vish
Post date May 8, 2014

Owen Pallett is a tremendously gifted multi-instrumentalist, composer, and singer who currently lives in Montreal. Pallett was initially acclaimed for his string arrangements for artists like Jim Guthrie, Arcade Fire, Fucked Up, and many others and, particularly when he lived there, he was viewed as a true leader and champion of Toronto’s underground arts community. Since releasing his own music, Pallett’s profile has risen considerably; he was recently nominated for an Academy Award for his work with Arcade Fire on the score for the Spike Jonze film Her and he has also touched a nerve with his critical essays of contemporary pop songs for Slate. Pallett’s fourth album is a stirring and complex one called In Conflict, which is available in Canada on May 27 via Secret City and his current tour includes stops at La Sala Rossa in Montreal on Friday May 9 and at the Danforth Music Hall in Toronto on Saturday May 10. Here, Owen and I talk about Columbus Ohio, great Szechuan food, and Dan Boeckner’s band Operators, the idea of parenthood and the truth, how kids are the darndest things, disassociation and themes within In Conflict, liminal spaces, sanity, change, and not feeling at home at home, going to Montreal, treating illness like a kind of gift, ‘musicians’ and ‘white people’ and music critic Ted Gioia and what prompted Pallett to write his pieces on pop music for Slate, music theory and populism, elevating social media posts and watching them turn into clickbait, his upcoming review of the new Tori Amos record for The Talkhouse, Owen’s opinionated streak and where it comes from, what Owen’s night at the Oscars was like, Joe Trapanese not Richard Trapunski, eating dinner with Randy Newman, Burt Bacharach, and John Williams, how meeting celebrities you’re not working with might be overrated, trying to write music while on the road, future plans, the song “In Conflict,” and then boom goes the dynamite.

Related links: owenpalletteternal.com vishkhanna.com

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