A Day for Kites
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A Day for Kites

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"Rock & Roll Report Card"

An album like Born At Sea being recorded by a student band is nearly as surprising as walking into Stauffer and finding a circus in full swing, complete with fire-eaters and acrobats. Student origins aside, it’s still almost as unexpected as coming home to a ferris wheel in your backyard. Confident and complex, the album is pinned together by Kerri Carisse’s expressive, controlled alto and dark, stream-of-consciousness style lyrics. Songs completely transform at the drop of a hat, like “Bobby Pin,” which leaps from horse to horse on a carousel playing Beatles records, and “Communist Cowboy,” which ditches its Latin shuffle for a megaphone and drag-race guitar. It’s not all fun and games, as Born At Sea has a strong theme of anxiety and loss. Narrated by a ghost, “NYC” is the most stunning example, balancing eerie keyboards and a blooming, singalong chorus while making the tightrope act seem effortless. Born At Sea is slightly uneven—some songs can’t support the weight of their ambition, and the sequencing could sound less arbitrary—but where A Day For Kites succeed, they are in uncharted waters.

—Meghan Harrison


- Queens Journal - ISSUE 2, VOLUME 134


"a day for kites - N.Y.C."

imagine my surprise when one day, an internet acquaintance of mine sends me this track by A Day For Kites. It’s a melancholy little number, very accomplished and well produced. Kerri Carisse has a great singing voice, full of nuance and maturity that belies her relatively young age (or so I assume; I don’t actually know how old she is, but I’ve got a good guess). In fact, you could say the same about the whole production. It’s a seductive and beguiling piece of work, but the most surprising thing is that the band is made up partially of members of the Radical Dudez, and all are alums or current students of my alma mater. How my acquaintance managed to find them, I don’t know. It’s shocking in a way even the meteoric rise (and inevitable downfall) of Bedouin Soundclash can’t match; it’s like having someone you’ve never met walk up to you one day and compliment you on that short story you wrote in high school. It’s a pleasant surprise to be sure, but now you’re wondering what other hidden treasures you’ve missed out on.
- angels twenty


"running a gerand - Bobby Pin review"

Bobby pin,’ “is like a really busy day, where you wake up and the television is still on, but it's showing three shows at once, and you're late for your tap dance recital, and after there's a picnic, and then back home to do some dishes and waltz with the broom, then catch a plane (grab a nap) to someplace close enough to drive to, where you friend is getting a huge award the size of a bear, and then skating to celebrate, where you literally turn into a jewel and become part of the sky. - saidthegramophone - Dan Beirne


"Light and dark meet in one of Kingston’s best new bands"

A Day For Kites played their second show ever in round three of K-Rock’s Bandslam competition on February 7 at The Ale House. Some members of the group had only joined two weeks prior to the show and were still frantically trying to learn their parts. Uncompetitive by nature, they entered the competition simply to get a gig and maybe a little exposure. They had no plans to advance to the next round.
So, when they did emerge as the unlikely victors, they were more surprised than anybody.
“We were standing at the back of the bar, waiting to see which one of the other bands would win,” said guitarist Matt Kicul.
Unfortunately, some fans of the other bands were equally surprised, and they didn’t agree with the judges’ selection either.
“After they announced that we won, people started yelling ‘Horseshit!’” said Kicul. “To get our picture taken, we had to walk past all of these people who were telling us how much they hated us.”
“We basically accepted the award with our heads down and then ran the hell out of there,” added singer Kerri Carisse, who commutes from Ottawa for shows and practices and participated in the interview by phone.
“It was the most awkward win ever,” said keyboardist/guitarist Jon Marck, laughing.
The band’s acceptance photo says it all: drummer Adam Bell is shrugging his shoulders as the rest of the band look like they’re trying to contain their disbelieving laughter. It looked like they thought the whole thing was absolutely absurd.
And they probably did.
The friendly folk who make up A Day For Kites don’t take their music, or themselves, seriously enough to get worked up about that kind of stuff.
And they’ve all been around long enough not to let those little things – be they battle of the band successes or nasty hecklers – get to them.
All veterans of the Queen’s campus music scene – save Kerri, for who A Day For Kites is her first band – the rest of the group have each played in a handful of on-again-off-again campus acts.
Bell – along with Anna Hasek, who sings back-up in ADFK – both play in The Radical Dudez, whose status, Bell says, is “forever on simmer.”
The other members have similarly risen from the ashes of recent campus musical casuaties: Kicul from Whiskey Steve and the Steves, and Marck from Ryuchi, Seven Year Sunrise and “six or seven other bands.”
The band’s bassist has alternated between Nick Kaars-Sijpesteijn, who also plays in the Dudez, but now lives in Montreal; and Bryce Daigle, who currently plays in Fat Robot, but is out of the country at the moment.
The band was born when Bell and Carisse started writing songs together last summer.
“I knew that Kerri was a really talented singer, so I just bugged her a lot last year until she agreed to get together and write with me,” Bell said.
At the time, they planned for A Day For Kites only to be a studio project.
“It was kind of a summer project that turned serious,” he said. “I didn’t think we’d be a band; I just thought we’d make a CD.”
Born At Sea was recorded over a few months from the end of last summer through to early 2006. It was released on Bell’s own Poverty Records in February.
Bell, known for crafting upbeat, top-down, summertime power pop in the Dudez, proved to be a perfect complement to Carisse’s deep and dark, brooding melodies and measured intensity.
“Adam is the lighter side of the writing for sure,” Carisse said.
“And, I mean, our appearances are the exact opposite,” she added with a laugh.
Bell’s got a strawberry-blonde shag, with wide, playful eyes and is usually sporting a goofy grin. While Carisse has long, straight, jet-black hair and can strike a pretty serious glare when she wants to.
“It’s like light and dark meeting,” she said.
“Some of the songs are Radical Dudez meets Kerri,” Bell said. “I tried to get at least one happy part in each song.”
Born At Sea’s finest moments are in fact when the songs seem equal parts Bell and Carisse, like “Bobby Pin,” which begins as typically bouncy Bell, accentuated by hand-claps and glockenspiel, but it eventually works itself into a slow burn, crunchy riff and vocal duel between Carisse and Hasek; or “The Cave,” which might be what The New Pornographers would sound like if they were fronted by PJ Harvey instead of Neko Case.
But there are lots of other moments on the record – aside from Bell and Carisse’s apparent attempts to hijack each other’s songs – that are difficult to pin down. One minute you think you’re listening to something that might fit nicely sandwiched between some radio rock standards, but then “Communist Cowboy” will throw you for a loop with its latino salsa beats that lead into screeching-guitars, and propulsive drums that preface menacing banjo.
It’s definitely an album that reveals more and more with each listen.
“We like music that isn’t predictable, but still has a mass appeal,” Carisse said.
And this is all without mentioning Carisse’s wicked set of pipes, which are the driving force behind every sing - Kingston Whig Standard - By Brendan Kennedy


Discography

a day for kites (2006)

Photos

Bio

The band originated while Kerri attended Queen's university in Kingston, Ontario. There she recorded some musical and lyrical ideas on her computer. She then met fellow Queen's students, Adam Bell and Nick Kaars-sijpesteijn. Together they formed A Day for Kites, and began recording in the summer and fall of 2005. In 2006 they released their self-titled album and have been playing shows in Kingston and Toronto since. This year will be the band's final year at Queen's university. They plan to move to toronto and begin their plan for world domination.