Grizzly Bear's Chris Taylor was on a bus yesterday, somewhere between Seattle and San Francisco, when he spoke to me about creating music under his new moniker,
Cant. It was one of those conversations in which the call would cut out repeatedly and, of course, during only the most captivating moments. Still, he shed plenty of light on his new album,
Dreams Come True, which he created in collaboration with George Lewis Jr. of
Twin Shadow, and which I have been playing in heavy rotation since it came out mid-September. Its home is in the
Terrible Records catalog, Taylor's own production company, via which he also produced Twin Shadow's
Forget. As he apologized on the phone for the dropped call, saying "we're" driving, I imagined those accompanying him being his touring bandmates, Devonté Hines (
Blood Orange,
Lightspeed Champion,
Test Icicles), John Kirby (
Sebastien Tellier) and Guillermo Brown (
Jamie Lidell,
Arto Lindsay).
The new album shares Grizzly Bear's dark sensibilities. Though where those previous albums could drown you and all that's wrong with the world in their sweet sadness, Cant's despair feels gritty and invigorating, likely owing to its more dance-driven electronic sound. Elements of synthpop, new wave, psych, shoegaze and old R&B underscore Dreams Come True; the album sounds new and current, and yet also comprehensive. Here's what Taylor has to say:
Q: What motivated you to create this project outside of Grizzly Bear?
A: I like making things. I stay busy, spending my time making my own music. It’s pretty different stuff. There are also two singers in Grizzly Bear already, and I felt like singing and writing songs.
Q: Were there specific things you were interested in exploring that departed from Grizzly Bear's aesthetic?
A: I kept thinking it would be fun to make more of a dance record. I like dance music a lot, I like dancing, and I want to do fun stuff too. I suppose I did my best [laughs] – it ended up not coming out all like that.
Q: There are so many different sounds to this album, as if multiple genres came together as building blocks. From where do you pull your inspiration?
A: I don’t really think of music as direct inspiration. I don’t make music about music. If I told you what my favorite bands were, that would be as close as I could get to it. I always listen to lots of different things, but when I’m recording, I actually don’t ever listen to music. After a day of recording or writing, I’ve had enough music. I’d rather go to a museum or watch a movie. On Dreams Come True, I was pursuing sounds that I liked and, without thinking about it too much, I worked on each song individually. So they all kind of came out with their own thing. The record has a lot of different vibes on it but I didn’t go about trying to make a one-dimensional record because those are not the kinds of records I’m interested in generally.
Q: It sounds like Cant has a sadness that's different from Grizzly Bear. Were you in a different frame of mind while working on this album?
A: Yeah, I was getting off of touring for so long, and I had some time to work on my album. As it turned out, sitting down unpacked my head and my heart and everything else. I ended up having uncomfortable realities to face and to try to sort out. The record was a cathartic process for me. I don’t want go so far as to say that I was bummed out, though that may have been part of it. I was just trying to fix things that were not quite right in my relations to people and to myself, to take a step outside of myself and look at myself from some sort of objective view. Where I was at and how I was doing. With my own head, with my friends, with love, with family.
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And cut. Cant will play San Diego at the
Soda Bar this Friday, October 7th, with
Mirror Mirror and Blood Orange. Tickets are $10 in advance and the show starts at 8pm. (21+)