Over the past decade, Montreal has proven to be a prolific exporter of diverse and captivating acts.
Felix L Petty (Off Modern) meets SUUNS, Canada’s latest and most provocative group.

There is something about SUUNS that has got me; it’s in their menace. Combining straightforward sexiness and dark, intangible complexity, their music comes at you soporific; forever lulling you, forever tormented. Yet, listening to SUUNS, it’s clear that they remain in control of their torment – it’s a tool to be manipulated, subjugated to their whims, enhanced. Take the scratching vocal lines of Ben Shemie, the creeping megalomania of Max Henry’s keyboards and the unfathomable density of Joe Yarmush and Liam O’Neill’s rhythm section, and it becomes clear that complexity is the ultimate strength of this quite remarkable band.

Watching on whilst they creep the fuck out of a crowd made up of mainly Industry types during their debut show in London, it’s ironic that having met and interviewed Ben and Max earlier, they were two of the sweetest guys I’ve ever had the pleasure of talking to.
Life is full of little oddities.

So this is your first UK tour right?
Ben – Yeah, it’s been real fun, we went to France before coming here and played some amazing shows – the audience seemed to really get into it. Then we’ve been doing the UK and then onto Belgium and the Netherlands next.
Has it been going well?
Ben – Yeah, great

Suuns – Arena by Lunta_sen

Was SUUNS the first project you’d all worked on together? How does it feel now you’ve got the album out?
Ben – It feels like a natural thing, this album, this band. We’ve just done this record and we’re getting a really good response; we’re laying the foundations.
Max – For me it’s been a little bit like…we’ve had this time to germinate, and it’s coming to fruition. Sometimes it feels like you’re trying to pick a lock and you need all the cylinders to align in the right way.

The album is really good by the way, PIE IX, it’s a very brave first single, especially with that video (directed by Frédérique Bérubé.
Ben – PIE IX is actually “Pie Neuf”, it’s French. Pie is pious, like religious, but also Pius the Ninth, the pope, and it’s also a street in Montreal, and it’s the metro station where you get off at to go to the Olympic stadium, which is an incredible building. It’s a bit like ‘this is where we’re coming from’.
It’s not really a single though, we’re not really a singles band, but a lot of people like that song. Its short! That’s why it’s a single! We’re not going to get on MTV anyway, so why not do a video like that?

But there are some tracks on the album that have an almost rock and roll sound to them. It’s got a great diversity to it – it never really sits still.
Ben – Yeah, there are some more poppy sounding songs, but we try and do something different things with melody – refract them, and abstract them a bit. It’s a very broad album, I think, there’s a lot of different sounds to it.
Max – It’s a bit like a document of the two weeks we spent recording it, but I also think it seems a lot more cohesive as a live performance sometimes.

There’s a very epic quality about some of the songs, some of the guitar work on it especially. The mixture of sounds on the album really came out of the blue for me.
Ben – Well we’ve never set out to sound like anything, for us it wasn’t like ‘oh we really want to sound like ‘Sonic Youth’ so let’s go out and try and do that. It just ends up sounding the way it does. I think it has a lot to do with the four guys who are in the band rather than it being something pre-meditated – it’s about craft.

What were you doing before SUUNS?
Max – We’d all been in music school…well actually, Ben, Liam and I were all studying in jazz school. Ben and Joseph needed a drummer for this band they were working on, and Liam was known for being one of the best drummer’s around…eventually word came to me that they needed a keyboard player.

Would you say jazz has had any influence on the band? Or are you trying to avoid it all together?
Ben – Well, I think that we learned to play in a certain way, so that will come across from a performance point of view too. We have this background as professionally trained musicians, whatever that means, but the language of the music isn’t jazz, it’s not really what we do.
Max – Well, like Ben said, I don’t think the band has been influenced by the music of jazz directly, but more like the spirit. It was interesting at school, where there was dichotomy between people studying classical and people studying jazz, and it seems to me what you get from the classical is an appreciation of the form, and with jazz its much more about spirit; its more aurally driven, and I think Suuns falls somewhere in between.

Do you approach playing live and recording differently?
Ben – Yeah I think, especially for a rock band, there is a lot of improvisation when we play the songs live, we like to switch gears, but we’ve never been tempted by a ten minute keyboard solo. It’s more about slight changes and variations and experimentation, keeping the songs and the show fresh, it’s about creating a certain energy; a dynamism.

I find it quite refreshing that you’re willing to chat about that though, especially in England, where being able to play and being technically proficient is looked down upon sometimes.
Max – Some people find that their lack of technical aptitude helps them and allows them to create what they want to create, like look at the whole No Wave thing, like Lydia Lunch still claims she can’t play guitar, and she does it with pride. It’s all about what you want to do.
Ben – But yeah, we’re a jazz band.

Armed for Peace by SUUNS by feverhawk

Zeroes QC is out now on Secretly Canadian.
http://www.myspace.com/suuns_