In-Flight Safety

Halifax NS based indie pop/rock band, In-Flight Safety has just released a new single, “Stolkholm” from their album, “Conversationalist”. The single is available HERE! If you like what you hear, and want to catch them live, you may just be in luck as they have just announced a few dates on their upcoming fall tour:

Sept 9 // The Horseshoe // Toronto, ON
Sept 10 // The Moustache Club // Oshawa, ON
Sept 11 // The Mansion // Kingston, ON
Sept 12 // Zaphod Beeblebrox // Ottawa, ON
Nov 5-8 // Nova Scotia Music Week // Yarmouth, NS
Nov 13 // The Seahorse // Halifax, NS
Nov 28 // Glasgow Square Theatre // New Glasgow, NS

Want even more from In-Flight Safety? Keep an eye out on Canadian Beats for our upcoming interview with the band!

Connect with In-Flight Safety:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/inflightsafety
Twitter: https://twitter.com/InFlight_Safety - Canadian Beats

It’s a chilly night November night in Truro, N.S. as In-Flight Safety take the stage for Nova Scotia Music Week. The indie rock band with a penchant for pop hooks are playing “Destroy”, the first single from their latest album Conversationalist. Lead singer and guitarist John Mullane looks to his left at bassist Chris Pernell as he sings along the “oohs” of the songs chorus. Mullane smiles before singing the chorus of the track.

The band, which originally formed in Sackville, N.B. over a decade ago, has undergone major changes over the past couple years since the release of We Are An Empire My Dear in 2009. Of the original lineup, John Mullane and drummer Glen Nicholson are the only remaining members. Lately, they’ve been joined by friends on tour: bass player Chris Pernell (Joel Plaskett Emergency, Yellow Jacket Avenger), guitarist Jon Samuel (Wintersleep, Contrived) and keyboardist Matt Scott (Matt Mays).

“In-Flight Safety is still always what it was. We’ve always worked with a slightly ebbing and flowing membership ever since Sackville, N.B. It’s a banner we fly over the band,” says Mullane.
The band needed a shakeup after We Are An Empire. They toured in support of the record for two years and by the summer of 2011 when the ended, they were tired, playing songs that were four or five at that point.

“We finished our last set of touring in Europe and we were just burnt out from promoting it,” says Mullane. “After that, it was like we just stopped rehearsing and practicing. We took some time off. Nobody really talked about it, we just went home. We were exhausted.”
Daniel Ledwell (keys, guitars, backing vocals) was busy producing records and touring with wife Jenn Grant. Brad Goodsell (bass guitar), an original member, was busy with his day job. Mullane was working on a score for a film. Glen was going to architecture school.

That Christmas, Mullane returned to a mountain of demos the band had worked on, but didn’t have a sense of direction of where to go with the songs.

“I didn’t understand how those demos fit into the broader context of what was going on in music today. I didn’t understand what we were going to do with them and how we’d finish them.”

Mullane had trouble with vocals for the demos he didn’t feel a connection with. While lots of work had been done on the songs already, Mullane knew a lot more work still had to be done and not everybody was on the same page. The new album was going to take time to create, certainly much longer than the three months spent on We Are An Empire My Dear, and that didn’t work with the busy members of the band as priorities changed.

“I personally felt we had to put another year in and I don’t think that was right for Dan and Brad to be part of that, it wouldn’t have been fair to them.”

In-Flight Safety continued with the pair of Mullane and Nicholson. They released one of the oldest songs on the new album, “Destroy” as a single in March 2013. The full album, Conversationalist, didn’t come out for over a year, finally released in August 2014.

With Conversationalist, the band took more time playing around with the production and working on creating an album as opposed to just a collection of songs.

“We weren’t going for wool and fuzzy and warm, we were going for slightly more controlled and modern,” says Mullane. This controlled sound is on display on “Crowd”, a track that intentionally alludes to songs by modern indie rock pop giants Phoenix and Wild Nothing.
For the first time in In-Flight’s discography, synths come to the forefront instead of hiding behind other layers of sound.

“We wanted to make them central characters because a lot of the stuff we’re listening to is doing that and we’ve always loved that stuff.” This is apparent on “Stockholm”, a track featuring bombastic drumming throughout and a chorus with synths that push through the vocals, guitars and bass and bounce around your head as the song moves along.

A number of threads run through the songs, giving it the feel of a cohesive record rather than a collection of singles. Intro track “Before We Were Animals” starts the album off with 58 seconds of slowed down sounds and lyrics from the single “Animals”. Instrumental track “Crowd” was the last song recorded for the album. It started off as part two of “Tie A String” but ended up taking a life of its own.

One of the standout tracks, “Animals”, contains all the elements of an anthemic indie pop single, propelled by power chords, snappy drumming and a chorus of “oohs”. But on closer inspection, it carries along a pretty bleak but brutally honest lyric at the core: “Animals, we are the worst.”

“It kind of recalled for me, Kid A and OK Computer era Radiohead where you say something overtly ridiculous but there’s something to it,” Mullane says, pointing to the track “Exit Music (For A Film)” from the Radiohead classic OK Computer and how in his opinion, the repeated lyric of “We hope that you choke” is the most beautiful part of the record.

“I was speaking to how we are the worst because we often do stuff to each other that’s not great. Hurt each others feelings and stuff. That’s just part of life. You can’t do it perfectly.” - Mixtape Magazine

"As they ready themselves to drop their forthcoming third album, Conversationalist, Canada’s In-Flight Safety drop the soaring Animals, which, with its shimmering guitars and sky-scraping chorus, finds the band flying in formation with indie types like The Walkmen, DIIV and Wild Nothing." - Q Magazine

""Animals" is In-Flight Safety's latest installment from their upcoming album Conversationalist. This track should give you an idea of how far indie music has come, and assurance that the genre is in good hands.

The Canadian indie band delivers a rock delight boasting sing-a-long lyrics and envious vocals from their lead singer." - Indie Shuffle

The 2014 CMJ music festival has descended upon New York, which means yankees will once again discover a fleet of Canadian Indie-Rock bands tip-toeing toward mainstream recognition—think Arcade Fire circa 2004. This year, In-Flight Safety, based out of Halifax, hopes to shred its way to similar success.
We talked style essentials with the group’s vocalist and guitarist, John WD Mullane, who, with his bandmates, has traveled the 900 miles—or 1450 kilometers for our Nova Scotian readers (thank you Google Maps)—to the Big Apple for a week of music mayhem. Here’s what he had to say.

New York in fall is right in my fashion wheelhouse.

I’m bringing two pairs of jeans and they are both All Saints Tochigi Cigarettes in black. I don’t even remember if I have any other jeans because that’s pretty much all I wear.

I’ve got my yearly re-up of Converse monochromatic black high tops all ready to go. I’ll break them in with the Bowery Street grime. Best kind of grime.

Gotta have my Fossil brown leather duffle bag so I can feel like Ryan Gosling getting off of a private jet.

I’m always with my American Apparel black rayon button down. There’s a 100% chance that I will be wearing that on stage. Those are good odds.

And last but not least I have un-closeted my G-star Wool navy trench. It says: “Yes my coat is sadly worth more than most of my guitars.”

The band has already developed a buzz in their native Canada after dropping their latest album “Conversationalist” earlier this month. Check out the full project below and be sure to catch them live through October 23 for CMJ. - NYLON Magazine

The CMJ Music Marathon has been around for 34 years, and every year it gets bigger and bigger. It has grown so large, it’s impossible to come anywhere close to seeing and doing everything. There are 1,200 bands playing in every venue NYC has to offer (one I’m headed to is even at a Starbucks!), and weeding through them all is a daunting task.
I can’t say I heard everyone on the roster, but I did spend the better part of the past week listening to several hundred of the artists playing this year’s Marathon, and I’ve picked 37 that have me the most excited. They’re listed alphabetically, because there’s no way I could play favorites. Well, no more than I already am. - BUZZFEED

Before the whole Ebola scare, we happened upon In Flight Safety's set at Brooklyn Bowl Wednesday night. Hailing from Canada, the band has started to infiltrate its brand of '80s-infused indie rock — in the vein of The Walkmen, Washed Out and Local Natives - into the states, and we're excited to hear more. - The Music Times