Photo: courtesy of Courtney Lee Yip
sound is also the product of a more fundamental change. For the first few years of its existence, the Balconies was a power trio. Jacquie sang and played guitar, Stephen played bass, and Jaeger kept time behind the drum kit. This arrangement unraveled when the band joined forces with producer Arnold Lanni (Finger Eleven, Our Lady Peace) to make Fast Motions. As Neville recalls, Lanni’s studio assistant, Steve Molella, “just happened to be an incredible drummer.” This realization led the band to conclude that Jaeger, who happens to have a degree in classical
Photo: courtesy of mike ford
guitar, should switch instruments. Molella agreed and wound up playing drums on every track. “The dynamic between the four of us was so amazing that we couldn’t ignore
it,” Neville says. “Just the way the sound of the band was progressing, it would have been impossible for us to achieve what we were doing in the studio [onstage].” The upshot is that the Balconies became a four-piece. Besides giving Jaeger an opportunity to deploy his formidable guitar chops, the expanded lineup allows Neville to concentrate on engaging with the audience. Although she is a talented guitarist, playing the exuberant frontwoman is arguably her greatest skill. She is a talented singer, capable of producing spine-tingling howls, and her fondness for leather pants, exaggerated gestures, and iconic guitar postures transforms the Balconies from a solid rock band into a killer live act. “I feel like we were almost doing ourselves a disservice by having me doing double-duty, basically — doing lead guitar and singing,” she says, explaining that the guitarist’s “foot-pedal dance” interfered with her singing and performing. “Now, I can focus on being the frontwoman I always wanted to be and really engaging the audience as much as I can. I’m still playing awesome licks, but I have that freedom to worry more about getting lost in the moment.” The expanded lineup also allowed the Balconies to draw on a wider palette of sounds. The sonic differences between Kill Count and Fast Motions are easy to discern because two tracks appear on both releases. “Serious Bedtime” was altered considerably for Fast Motions, where it appears as “Do It In The Dark.” The palm-muted introduction was stripped away, as was the subdued chorus riff. The newer version is a snarling rock anthem, shaped by a pair of blistering guitar riffs and a soaring bridge during which Neville and Jaeger trade lines. “Do It In The Dark” is probably the most accessible song the Balconies have ever recorded. It is also one of the most infectious. It’s the same story with “Kill Count,” the song that catapulted the Balconies onto the national stage two years ago. “I felt like we had unfinished business with it,” Neville says of the song, which opened Kill Count with a crunchy guitar riff, a burst of
joyously uninhibited “woo-hoos,” and two verses worth of deeply ambiguous lyrics. “We wanted to push [it] even more. When we perform it live, I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, the reaction from the audience is night and day compared to how people reacted to the song before.’ It’s more anthemic. I like it even more now.” The latest — and according to Neville, final — iteration is forged from much harder metal than its predecessor. The guitars are grittier, the drums louder, and Neville’s delivery more impassioned. More noticeably, the rhythmic “woo-hoos” have been expanded. On the Kill Count version, they felt incomplete; this has been rectified on Fast Motions, which Neville demonstrates by singing both parts into the phone: “Before, it was ‘Woo-hoo-hoo.’ Now, it’s ‘Woo-hoo-hoo-ooh-ooh-ooh.’ It feels complete, the idea feels complete.” After a pause she continues, “We wanted to keep things fresh for people who had previously listened to it. It’s the same song, but we added an extra splash of colour.” But Fast Motions also includes several sonic experiments, departures from the Balconies’ rock and roll wheelhouse. “Moving Parts” is a minute-long tapestry of atmospheric
synthesizers that introduces “The Slo,” one of the most ambitious rock cuts the band has ever recorded. “Moving Parts” also sets the stage for the album’s closer, a richly detailed confection of synthesizers titled “Let Me Go” that features one of Neville’s strongest vocal performances to date. More importantly, the last track on Fast Motions is an uplifting coda for the album’s major theme. “I think it’s a portrait of me being in my early twenties,” Neville says, explaining that she wrote most of the album’s lyrics five years ago, after the band relocated to Toronto. It was a big change, and Fast Motions reflects Neville’s struggles to fit in. The songs on Fast Motions cover a range of subjects, including sex (“Boys and Girls,” “Good And Ugly”), disintegrating relationships (“The Slo”), unbridled lust (“Kill Count”), and vulnerability (“Beating Your Heart”). “In my head, it’s like I was still in high school — trying to find your group, trying to find your place in the world,” she continues. “I found it very overwhelming and very exhausting, but it was also very exciting. So to me, when I think of Fast Motions, that’s what it is: the chaotic big city that can consume you, for good and bad reasons.”
This duality is woven into every song on the record. It builds and builds, until it is released by the sombre strain of “Let Me Go,” which signals the end of one chapter and the beginning of another in the band’s career. Neville concedes that her struggles to fit in, chronicled in exacting detail on Fast Motions, are largely a relic of the past. She prefers to view the band’s formative years in Toronto not as an unpleasant memory to be excised, but as an inevitable part of the long journey toward rock and roll glory. “Maybe it’s not my best work, or something I’m completely proud of, but I look back on this and it reminds me of where I came from,” she says of Fast Motions. “And that’s the most important thing, that I’m here now, that I’m still alive, and that I’m a better person than I was yesterday.” The Balconies May 26 @ Vangelis Tavern $10 (ticketedge.ca)
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17 May 23 – May 29 @verbsaskatoon
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