C T Z N S H P play Divan Orange September 20th, with PS I Love You, Parlovr and more. Full details here.
POP: How would you describe your sound?
C T Z N S H P: “Recklessly groovy” is probably our favorite description. Fuzzy guitar, warm distorted bass, tight drums and verby vocals. Our songs are pretty simple and surprisingly “pop”. We try to make them sound as huge and interesting as possible! Keeping in mind that we’re a three piece. It’s like Pavement meets Roybn meets My Bloody Valentine meets The National. We have thought about adding synths but it is so much easier working as a three piece!!
Are you guys from Montreal originally? How do you think the city has shaped or affected your music?
Jesse (vocals/bass) and Scott (guitar) are from Toronto’s area but have been living in Montreal for almost 10 years. Florent (drums) is from Annecy in France, and moved in 2 years ago. I think Montreal shaped our music in a way that it is a great city to live in. Inspiring, human and affordable. Montreal allows us to have decent jobs, time for the band, good people and good places to hang at when it’s -40°C like Nouveau Palais. Sonically, we don’t consider our sound as being shaped by Montreal, but we’re proud to be a Montreal band for sure. Good things are coming out of this city. We don’t think there’s a solid explanation to it.
You’re a fairly new band, but you seem to have gained a lot of attention pretty quickly. How was the band formed, and what’s the next step? Touring, live shows, a new album?
Jesse and Scott have always been playing together in various bands. In February 2011, Jesse heard about Florent through his friends from Valleys. Florent was interested in playing with Valleys but it didn’t happen for various reasons. Jesse asked them “permission” for trying Florent on the drums (a bit like asking a friend about dating his ex-girlfriend or something…) and they went for drinks on a very cold and snowy night in Mile-End. After many beers and long conversations on everything, from girls, friends, films to music, everything just fit. The band as it is now really started to exist since June 2011.
In only one year, the band put a well received “Swan Dive” EP online, and managed to play good local shows (w/ YUCK, Here We Go Magic, The Besnard Lakes, The Vandelles) and few ones in Toronto (Canadian Music Week, NXNE). All these opportunities came from Pop Montreal actually, and Noah Bick’s Passovah Productions. CTZNSHP is now working on a debut album called “Doom Love”, with US and Europe touring plans in mind. We are going to be playing CMJ in Oct. The album is still in progress but we started shopping it around to labels. We’ll see what happens…
Anyone you’re particularly excited to see at POP this year?
Dirty Three, Valleys, Chairlift, Grimes, Gang Gang Dance, Noah Bick…