This Civil Twilight

Ten years is a long time for any band to stick together, especially without releasing at least one album to call its own.

The four guys who make up Edmonton’s This Civil Twilight realize that, and they’ve been working hard to change things. After a couple of recording sessions the band had enough songs in the can to release an EP a few months back, and are now set to let their first full-length disc out of the bag, along with a limited edition EP of four leftover tracks that will be available at the CD release show.

Of course, the band could have released all of the songs together in one monolithic package. Drummer Steve Derpack says that’s something that they considered but decided against for a number of reasons.

“It was something we talked about and we kinda chuckled, because we’ve been a band for almost 10 years and haven’t released a proper recording,” he explains. “So to go from no records to all of a sudden releasing a double record—it would have been funny.

“But at the same time,” Derpack continues, “one of the concerns was that people tend to tune out when they get to the second half of the disc if there are too many songs or it’s too long, so we really didn’t want to have it be too daunting to the listener to get used to right off the bat.”

The decision to split the songs up into stand-alone releases was not something the members of the band took lightly, and they carefully chose the songs for each disc. This sort of consideration is very much in line with Derpack’s overall outlook regarding the band.

He says that, while they’re unique in the sense that they don’t play all that many shows and take things rather casually, they still take their music very seriously, putting a lot of thought, effort and creativity into what they do.
The thought that the band puts into what it does is partly a necessity, as each member brings their own distinct influences to the band’s indie/math-rock sound. Derpack admits that he grew up listening to CanCon groups like the Tragically Hip, Blue Rodeo and the Grapes of Wrath, so the lo-fi approach of This Civil Twilight has been a gradual adjustment for him.

“I’ve developed and learned to appreciate the aesthetic of more of a minimalist and simplistic approach,” he says. “Which isn’t to say that it’s easy, but it’s kind of nice to be in a band where everything is a little more left-of-centre and not so standard. It’s given me a new outlook, and it’s really nice to be able to get up on stage and play a song and not worry about how it’s received, and then hear back from people after. It’s very self indulgent.”

At this point, the members of This Civil Twilight are very much interested in doing what makes them happy. One of the things they’ve done for themselves, for instance, is tap into the deep pool of artistic talent that Edmonton has to offer, choosing producer Graham Lessard as the man to helm their recording sessions for the new releases.

“It’s really nice to go with someone local,” Derpack enthuses. “I’m a huge, huge local booster, and there’s a difference between ‘homer’ and ‘booster.’ I don’t like stuff just because it’s from home. I’m just really excited that we have a really solid depth of musicianship and artistic merit in town. Not just music, but all across, like painting, even. We’re actually using one of [local artist] Tony Baker’s paintings as our album cover, so we’ve actually had a very much homegrown tie in to the album.”

-- Eden Munro

Thu, Oct 26 (8 pm)
This Civil Twilight
With The Cape May, Field & Stream
Starlite room, $10
- VUE Weekly

Wolf Pack Days
This Civil Twilight
Independent

ROSS MOROZ / ross@vueweekly.com

Genres—that is, the catchy, oft-hyphenated labels applied to music for the sake of classification and organization—are meaningless. Utterly useless, too, not to mention generally confusing and usually completely without merit. Take “math rock,” for example. Sure, bands classified as such have some common elements—shifting time signatures, dissonant and sometimes atonal arrangements, less emphasis on lyrics and vocals—but come on, now: it’s rock. There are guitars and drums, played loudly. Pretty simple, really. All this classification bullshit is just that, really: either the music is listenable or not, and, sadly, rock of the “math” variety usually falls in the latter category.

Which is why, despite the general consensus of their fans (and themselves), I am hesitant to blindly classify the music of Edmonton’s This Civil Twilight as math rock. Sure, the requisite tonal dissonance is here, as is more starting and stopping than the number 9 bus at rush hour, and the lyrics certainly don’t follow conventional narrative-ballad standards. But, damn: it’s actually a pretty pleasant listen. Somehow, despite all its deliberate unmusicality, much of Wolf Pack Days is catchy, even toe-tappingly groovy. I mean, sure, it’s not the Bee Gees or anything, but especially compared to the younger, noisier, angrier and more purely math rock groups usually associated with the genre, This Civil Twilight are practically a pop act. Maybe it’s math pop? Post-math? Proto-emo-post-math-core? Man, I’m glad I don’t write about music that much anymore.
- VUE Weekly