Bleating Hearts

“There are more people here tonight than all of our other shows combined,” Hasan Li says from a crowded Waldorf stage. It’s a Friday night and the vocalist/guitarist’s band—Bleating Hearts—are celebrating the release of their self-titled debut album in front of a packed audience. It’s a triumphant night for he and the other seven members that now make up Bleating Hearts and a well-earned step into the spotlight for a band more accustomed to playing cafés and house shows.

It’s also a long way from the band’s genesis, halfway around the world—Li started Bleating Hearts with his girlfriend, singing saw/alto sax player Layla Gaïb, when they were living in Morocco. Back then, Li had a lot of time on his hands and took to songwriting.

“[Layla] would go to work, while I would stay at home and do nothing,” he says sheepishly. “I had my little computer set up and I had my guitar and I smoked drugs and recorded a bunch of songs. A lot of the songs that are on the album were [written] there, in Morocco.”

That locale pushed the songs towards the layered, orchestral sound Bleating Hearts now has. In particular, the raita, “a sort snake-charmer-flute thing,” inspired Li to think big. “I would always hear [the raita], baked out of my head, and I thought, ‘Horns! We need horns!’”

A song like “Closer Further” does a good job of showing what Li had in mind. The listener is hit with a wall of sounds; guitars, drums, saxophones, brass and a galloping group sing-along. They were going to need a band. When Li and Gaïb returned to Vancouver in late 2009, they began their recruiting.

“We put out a call on Craigslist for horn players and Michelle [Furbacher], who’s in our band, saw the ad, but she didn’t reply because she thought we might be weirdos,” Li recalls. “But then she saw us play a show and thought we were okay.”

“I found out that they were playing at a show I was going to [at Gravelevel],” says now-trumpeter and baritone horn player Furbacher. “I wanted to be cooler and just meet them at a show instead of through Craigslist.”

From there, Furbacher brought with her an entire horn section: saxophonists Aaron Cumming (who also plays with Furbacher in Role Mach) and Richard Sexton (who no longer plays with the band), and—a bit later—French horn player C. Chad Warford. Eventually the band filled out with Kevin Romain on drums, Jay Arner on guitar, and Rose Melberg on bass.

“Basically,” Li explains, “how this band works is someone will see us at a show and say, ‘Hey, you don’t have this instrument in your band, so can I play with you?’ and then they join the band.” That’s what happened for Melberg.

“Every time I’d see you,” she says to Li and Gaïb, “you’d have a different lineup, so it occurred to me, perhaps I could get in to this band.”

Melberg, who has also played in Gaze, the Softies and Tiger Trap, was determined to join Bleating Hearts, even if it took a bit of subterfuge.

“This is my favourite band in town, I want to be a part of it. I wanted to get in on it…and I’d never played bass before, so I just said I could play bass and they believed me,” she says with a laugh.

With a full lineup in place, the band recorded their album over four days in December of 2010. Arner doubled as producer (and session bassist, with Melberg sticking to vocals) and set a relaxed tone for the sessions at his home studio, Tonehenge, and Romain’s house.

“It was super relaxed,” Li admits. “We were drinking coffee and beer at the same time, hanging out.”

The sessions yielded 10 songs. The album opens with the lush, solemn instrumental “When Those,” slowly giving way to the first single, “Walls Come Tumbling Down.” It’s a beautiful moment in an album full of them. Throughout, Bleating Hearts use the full range of their many instruments to create a mood and to boisterously punctuate their melodies, all the while supporting Li, the slightly weary storyteller at the centre of the songs.

Now with 300 vinyl copies of the new album in their pocket, they plan to take their act on the road, heading down the West Coast this summer.

The plan, says Li, is to “visit Rose’s family in Sacramento and hang out in San Francisco and drink lots of beer. It’s not so much about playing shows as it is getting drunk in every town we can.”

I ask one last question: Where did the name come from?

“It was one of the ones that Hasan couldn’t deny,” Gaïb confirms. “It was like, ‘What about this? What about this one?’ And he was like alright, alright. I think he was just sick of hearing shitty names.”

But the name also harkens back to the band’s Moroccan roots.

“It’s also because we were in Morocco, and there were all these goats getting bloodily murdered, with the blood running through the streets,” Gaïb continues. “It really inspired us. And the raita kind of sounds like a goat. I think that’s what it was.” - Discorder

Let’s be clear right from the start: this band does not involve any sheep, goats or other calves. Nor can the music they produce be described as "emo", as you may be thinking with a name like theirs. Sure, there’s emotion, but that’s hardly a fault — they’re human, after all. But if that’s a problem for you, then you know which Kraftwerk song to listen to instead.

Don’t be fooled by the cutesy name, though. This is a diverse group of experienced musicians on drums, horns, saxophones and even a saw. Of course, there are a couple guitars thrown in for good measure, but their ability to transition from a full, bombastic sound to their softer, charming ballads comes from the finely-tuned mingling of all eight (that’s right, eight) members.

But it all started with Hasan Li, principal songwriter and lead guitarist, and Layla Gaïb, who plays the saw and alto saxophone. The two traveled to Morocco for six months with the intention of not returning to Vancouver, but things didn’t work out exactly as planned.

"I don’t speak French or Arabic so I didn’t have much to do," Li explains. "I think I spent about the first two months looking for a ladder and the rest of the time I spent on the roof of our house, playing guitar and smoking hash."

An idyllic life to be sure, but it wouldn’t last long. Eventually the pair did indeed return and the songs Li wrote while away needed a home. The requisite Craigslist ad was then placed and things started happening.

"We were starting to look for horn players and Michelle Furbacher [trumpet, baritone horn] came to a few of our shows and said she was interested in what we were doing. She brought along a couple of other horn players and it grew to what it is today. Our sound has definitely gotten a lot fuller and louder," Li says with a laugh.

Helping to fill out that sound is Aaron Cumming on tenor sax, Chad Warford on French horn, Rose Melberg on bass and vocals, Jay Arner on guitar and Kevin Romain on drums. The group provides an orchestral element to Li’s Neutral Milk Hotel-inspired songwriting, though we may not be hearing about flesh-licking ladies or carrot flowers anytime soon. No promises, though.

Despite Li jokingly referring to the Hearts as "possibly the laziest band in show business" (with just a hint of self-deprecation). They managed to make an appearance at last year’s Olio Festival and have just completed their first album after a year of working on it. To be fair, it’s got to be pretty hard to co-ordinate eight people, so we’ll cut them some slack.

But the process of gathering steam has started off well, which is more than some bands can say. When asked about whether they’ve found the reception in Vancouver to be cold or distant, or the energy to be a little lacklustre, Li explained that while his experience may be unique, it certainly wasn’t negative.

"I started going to see shows with Chris-a-riffic and Ryan McCormick (Collapsing Opposites) and those guys," he says. "It’s a pretty tight-knit scene and very inclusive, and when we first started out and were hanging out and playing shows in that whole scene it was very supportive. It helped us put down our defences and just get out there and play."

Now that they’ve got a self-titled album under their belt (due out in March) and bit of momentum to keep them going, you can bet you’ll be hearing more of this octet’s lovely brand of rich, moody pop. That is, if their schedules allow it. - BeatRoute Magazine

By Gregory AdamsWith Bleating Hearts' membership culled from a number of other Vancouver-area indie outfits (Fine Mist, SSRIs, Role Mach), getting the group together can be a bit of a hassle, but the symphonic popsters have finally managed to make their full-length debut.

The outfit's self-titled album, which they will self-release on March 6, has actually been in the can for quite some time now, with the recordings having taken place from late 2010 to mid-2011 at both drummer Kevin Romain's house and guitarist Jay Arner's home studio, Tonehenge. The delay, as singer/guitarist Hasan Li tells Exclaim!, came in the post-production, pre-release stage.

"The actual recording part went really quickly," he admits. "We only did a couple takes of everything which in total took about four days with a few extra days for mixing. Most of the delay in releasing it was just getting ourselves organized enough to get the record mastered and printed, which is surprisingly difficult when your band is the size of a small Caribbean nation."

Even since the recording of Bleating Hearts, the group have increased their heft. While Brave Irene member Rose Melberg (of the Softies fame) contributed vocals to the record, it wasn't until after the album was completed that she joined the band full time on bass. The addition found Arner swapping his four-string for a guitar, though apparently internal shake-ups are nothing new.

"I played bass on the album, but switching to guitar was not too too hard; I used to play drums in the band before Kevin joined so I've never really thought of the songs in terms of what instrument I was playing," Arner explains. "But I've never been the 'guitar player' in a band before, so it's pretty fun trying to come up with complimentary parts that aren't some awful guitar cliché."

While the now eight-piece act's new album often showcases bright, upbeat and brass-heavy pop tunes, Li confesses that his lyrics unintentionally came out much darker.

"I actually never consciously had a theme for the album, but it turns out all the songs deal with either death, the apocalypse, or some sort of tragic love," he says. "Wow that sounds so goth, but I guess they're all pop songs with horns so it's not as depressing as it could be."

You can check out album track "Walls Come Tumbling Down," as well as Bleating Hearts' tracklisting below and the cover above.

Bleating Hearts:

1. "When Those"
2. "Walls Come Tumbling Down"
3. "Maybe We Can"
4. "Intro"
5. "T.V. Changed Our Lives"
6. "Savoir Faire"
7. "Closer Further"
8. "Molotov Kasparov"
9. "Call An Ambulance"
10. "Sand In Our Pockets" - exclaim

If Samuel Taylor Coleridge introduced us to his hermit from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and forced him to tell us stories of his loves and life, happiness and loneliness, we would hear a harmonious melancholy that is the music of The Bleating Hearts.

Soft distortion on guitar mixed with jazzy drumbeats and a gentle, melodious conversation between chocolaty vocals, trumpet, french horn and two saxophones creates elegantly crafted tunes that are sure to leave you swaying gently in a cradle of bittersweet feeling. The singing introduced on the song “Glasses are Gone” only added to the melancholy effect, showing off their astute ability to create a cohesive mood and well crafted songs. As such, it is no surprise that The Bleating Hearts reached CitR’s Shindig semifinals and will see more success in the future. - CJSF Radio

Complete with guitar, piano, musical saw and a truly bleating voice, Hasan Li and the Bleating Hearts generate a sound akin to such greats as Montreal's Arcade Fire and Timber Timbre. Bleating Hearts Lo-Fi folk sound shows the choice still exists to recreate a time when pops, hiss and natural acoustics were king. - The Vancouver Observer