DCist Interview: The High Dials

The High Dials play tonight at the Velvet Lounge with The Receiver and Self Servants. Doors at 8:30, Showtime at 9:30. $8. Photo by Sophie Samson.

As the Montreal music scene has exploded with cathartic indie rock from the likes of Wolf Parade and the Arcade Fire, The High Dials have quietly spun some of the most well-crafted psych-rock of the new millennium. The group's breakthrough was 2005's War of the Wakening Phantoms, a sprawling near-masterpiece of orchestral swirl, guitar crunch, and Smiths-like delicate songwriting. Good press followed that release, and while its follow-up, the self-released Moon Country, hasn't quite gotten the same buzz, it's on par with its predecessor. Tracks like "Killer of Dragons" take cues from Yoshimi-era Flaming Lips, though with considerably more restraint, while "My Heart is Pinned to Your Sleeve" is a pure pop rush from start to finish. The band's now working on a new full-length, and on a short East Coast tour that brings them to D.C. and the Velvet Lounge tonight for their first District-area stop in several years. Lead-singer and songwriter Trevor Anderson took some time to answer our questions ahead of tonight's show.

Are you excited to be back on tour? What got you out on the road this time around?
Yes we are, as we have not been touring much recently. It's been a long time since we've played the northeast USA. We're road-testing a new live line-up, with Shane Watt having recently joined us on bass. Another change is we will be playing as a 4-piece (no keyboard) and playing a lot of new songs from an album in the works. So plenty of new things to be excited about!

It's been a year since Moon Country came out. Have you all been working on anything since then?
We have been recording heavily over the summer. We've been experimenting with old school, lo-fi production (i.e. cassette multitrack and old reverb units that hiss and barely work) We have about 8-9 songs at varying stages of readiness. I think the new material may surprise some people, as it is another shift in direction, at least to my ears. At the same time, it feels kind of like a summation of everything we've learned and created up to this point.

The War of the Wakening Phantoms seemed like the kind of psych-pop stuff that rock critics just eat up, but it somehow still seemed to fly below the radar, at least in the States. How do you think your last couple releases have been received?
Actually, that album got us quite a lot of attention from critics! I guess 4 years is an eternity in indie rock so it's understandable if it's obscure at the moment.The reality is, the world is just glutted with music. Everyone and their canary has a Myspace page. It's just hard to keep anyone's attention for long. But we do have pockets of loyal supporters. I'm not sure what would break us to a wider audience, as we are still very DIY. The world's softest sounding punk rock band! I have very modest goals, which is to continue to put these albums out and pay my rent.

There's a good bit of revivalism to what you all do (at least to my ears). You can pick up the Beatles, some Zombies, and I even hear a lot of the Smiths on Wakening Phantoms. Are there bands out there today that you might call influences? Are there records in the past few years that have blown you away?
I am not influenced by much contemporary music, but of course there's always bands that come along and make an impression. I like the Bees, the Horrors. I am a big fan of the Clientele. And of course, the Brian Jonestown Massare influenced us in some way, just by us spending time with them. But each of those bands would also be considered revivalists I suppose. We're reaching for a timeless pop sound, so it's inevitable people are going to hear bits of this and that from music history. I think just being 4-piece band with guitars is kind of charmingly retro at this point.

On the same note, psych and psych-pop seems like a very timeless genre -- you always read lots of references to how songs, albums, or bands can fool you into thinking its 1967 or something. Do you find this limiting? Like you have to achieve a certain affect on record?
Not at all. I still discover unbelievable music from that era and in that genre. I'm amazed at how inspiring it still is. However, we don't box ourselves in to any movement or scene. Psychedelic is a very loose term and not a great fit really. It just kind of seems closest to our attitude and taste I guess. It means we like reverb and harmonies and melody.

I know you all put out Moon Country by yourselves. Could you talk about some of the challenges this entails?
It has, truth be told, been a struggle. But that's the reality of music today. No one is going to invest massive wads of cash into your band, especially the kind of music we make. There's no way around it. You have to do it yourself, out of love and passion. I love the life I live. The album has been a very soft release in that there was no big promotional campaign behind it. I believe it has legs though and people will continue to discover it over the years. It comes out on iTunes in the US this week actually! I guess we just hope to build up an impressive body of work that we can take forward with us. You have to be a bit crazy to do what we do. It's a compulsion, not a logical life plan. And whatever the challenges are, we are privileged to do this. Look at how 90% of the world struggles just to get by every day.

Again on that same note, it seems like with Rainbow Quartz you've got a pretty good group of somewhat likeminded bands. Did you all associate with those other groups a fair bit? What caused the move away from the label?
Yes, I do like those bands and I there is a kinship. We are friends with most of them. Our relationship with Rainbow Quartz is fine. We're playing their CMJ party. We wanted to have control over our album and we had funding to do it ourselves and a distro deal, so it just didn't make much sense to team up this time.

What does the next year look like for the band?
We're releasing Moon Country on vinyl! Found a great partner in the UK and it will be launched there in the new year, so the plan is to go there. Our preproduction is almost done, we will definitely have a new album ready by the end of the summer. Hard to plan things too far ahead in our world. Best to focus on the van not breaking down on the way to the next gig!