Quick & Dirty - Reverie Sound Revue
By: V. Rachel Weldon
September 22, 2009 – Calgary, Canada
The release of Reverie Sound Revue's debut is no conventional exposition. First of all, those who frequented the Calgary music scene in 2002 wouldn't even call it an exposition. And second, Reverie Sound Revue (RSR) aren't exactly a conventional band.
They were at one point, however. In 2002, in Calgary's blossoming music climate, the five musicians, including Lisa Lobsinger of Broken Social Scene (BSS), developed their romantic indie-pop sound.
"We used to rehearse weekly, and write as a group, and play shows. We used to be quite normal," says guitarist Marc De Pape.
Then the group split ways, peppering themselves in cities around Canada for various pursuits and continuing to progress musically. Fortunately, the split was only geographical, but unfortunately, it meant no more rehearsals, performances or collective songwriting.
With Lobsinger on tour with BSS, De Pape in Montreal, guitarist Patrick Walls in Vancouver and percussionists John Marcel de Waal and Bryce Gracey in Calgary, the fragments of RSR were scattered far and wide, but they wouldn't rust for long. In 2006, De Pape wrote and recorded 13 demos in Calgary, and, four years after the group split, he initiated the first recordings they had ever made.
"We wanted to make a recording, a true full-length. That was the goal. It is our debut ‘record', where we really debuted, and retired, as a band years before," De Pape says.
Working with whoever was available, and never the whole group at the same time, De Pape refers to the ensuing rehearsals as a "revolving door".
"By the time we hit the studio, everyone had taken their hammer and shaped the songs," he explains. Everything but the vocals was recorded in Calgary and De Pape took the unfinished tracks to Toronto to begin writing the lyrics, which, he says, "always came after the music for us." Lobsinger joined De Pape in Montreal and the following months were spent laying down vocal tracks. One more year of mixing, working on overdubs, editing and processing, and the album was finally ready for release, three-and-a-half years after it was started.
On June 23, Reverie Sound Revue finally released their "debut" record, over seven years in the making. In lieu of a tour, which wasn't something the group found possible in their situation, Lobsinger and Walls performed and recorded five bare-bones tracks on camera, which De Pape edited and posted to their website and MySpace. The videos—not quite live footage and not quite music videosvideos—are set in a modern French-style apartment with hopelessly romantic low-lighting that creates a daydreamy, sleepy-eyed glow. In other words, the setting couldn't fit the sound any better. The images, coupled with the blissfully tame and elegant music that Lobsinger and Walls make, are completely endearing. "I liked the idea of hearing the songs in their purest form, chords and voice," De Pape says.
With no intention of resuming the conventional life of a band, De Pape promises no more developments in RSR's music: no more songwriting, tours or releases. Reverie Sound Revue did what they set out to do as a group and are content to exist on record, and record only.
"We wanted to make the full-length record we never made, and though it may have been an odd way of producing it to many, it was the only way we could have made it. And we're glad we did."
Video: "You Don't Exist If I Don't See You" by Reverie Sound Review
