Dallas Green Talks Alexisonfire’s First Album in 13 Years: “It Just Feels Perfectly Timed”
The post Dallas Green Talks Alexisonfire’s First Album in 13 Years: “It Just Feels Perfectly Timed” appeared first on Consequence.
Sometimes, all it takes is a little time to realize where you’ve been, where you are, and where you’re going. For Alexisonfire, that little time was actually a lot, spent on and off the road outside of the particular confines of this band itself. The Canadian post-hardcore band gave us a pretty definite swan song in their farewell tour documentary series, turning to their changing lives, expanding families and fruitful side projects as reasons for seeming separation, though they were never that far from one another.
That’s something proven on Otherness, their first album in 13 years. While its foundation was built during the uneasiness of the pandemic, the album is about so much more than the forced distance we all went through. All five members contributed a piece of themselves to the record but from what we’ve gathered from our conversation with singer-guitarist Dallas Green, it’s more about what the album itself contributed to them as a band, and what it hopes to contribute to their fans. They’ve never shied away from the ways in which they as individuals and as a collective have fallen into the idea of “otherness,” but with it as an album, they hope to redefine the term as a means of acceptance.
With Otherness available now, and Alexisonfire embarking on the summer leg of their 2022 North American tour (tickets available here), Green spoke with Heavy Consequence about their comeback album, the future of the band, and more.
In regard to the band releasing its first album in 13 years, why did you feel like now was the right time?
For starters, the pandemic, just stopping all of our collective lives in a way. [Co-vocalist] George [Pettit] is a firefighter as well, so he wasn’t able to not work. He was working all through the pandemic. But for the rest of us, there was nothing going on in our lives. We had stopped, everything had stopped, just like a lot of people. What we did have was this band. Wade, the other guitar player in the band, messaged us one day because he was coming back into Toronto, and said, ‘Should we jam?’ Not to get together, write songs or get together and make a record. Just literally it was something that we could do. We just started jamming because it was this beautiful thing that we still had in our lives, and we still appreciate one another’s company. That was what really started it. I think because it was such a strange time for the world but it didn’t feel like that when we started playing. We had little bits and fragments of pieces of songs on our phones from over the years of when we would rehearse for tours and stuff, and we wrote a couple of tunes, but this was just jamming, and it really just started f**king pouring out of us. We started in the Fall of 2020, and by the end of February, we had an album. We recorded it in a week. It was probably the most simply pure, creative experience that we’ve had since we were kids when we made the first record, and when we didn’t think anybody was going to listen, you know? I wish I had like a more like I wish I had a better answer for you of why, but it really just kind of happened.
I feel like that’s a great answer, though. It seems like it was kind of collectively cathartic for all of you to get it all out.
Exactly. After we made the first record, we were a band for a long time. Whether it’s subconscious or not, you go on tour for two years, and you come off and you’re like, ‘Hey, we have to make another album,’ and you have to start to try to write and then you have to get ready to go back on a touring cycle and an album cycle and all that stuff. But for this, there was none of that — we didn’t even have a record label. There was nothing, just us and the tunes. I think the album sounds like that.
I’m curious as to how you feel about future albums, because they may not have that same type of cathartic energy to them …
Yeah, I’m sure there’s a bit of that. It’s weird, because we’ve been in and out of this band for two decades. I said to [guitarist-singer] Wade [MacNeil] when we were midway through recording, how it feels like he started the band over. He was the one who called everybody 20 years ago and said, ‘I have this idea, we should start this band with all of us.’ It was almost like he did it again. I think we feel different about it now, like we’re looking at it through different lenses. There’s this beautiful appreciation for the thing. And of course, you can’t escape the trappings of once you turn it into a product, and you have to sell it, and you have to talk to people about it, and you have to market yourself — it’s just the nature of the beast in a way where that stuff will ultimately kind of creep in. But it does feel like we have this sort of different perspective on the whole idea. It’s gratitude. I think in the beginning, we were shocked that anybody liked it first place. It’s weird music. But I think 20 years later, having lived pretty crazy lives together and separately, we’re trying to hold on to this real sense of gratitude that we can still go to this thing that we started when we were kids. Hopefully, we can keep as much of that as possible moving forward.
I was thinking back to when I’d watched the farewell documentary and the mindsets and the energies that you all had, and I was wondering if anything has changed. Especially for you and how you felt during the documentary versus now …
When we stopped, it was a very emotional period in our lives. It had become this thing that none of us really imagined it could be. And then it was ending because life’s getting in the way and I’m leaving the band because I had this other thing I was doing [City and Colour]. It was a very emotional, sort of heavy time. But, you know, time heals a lot of stuff. We’d been playing here and there, but this just feels a little different. It does feel like we can hold on to this sense of gratitude now, and the shared experience of everything. It’s funny, because when we did break up, we felt like we broke up really well. I remember George saying he was worried about us coming back, even when we started playing again like five or six years ago, because he thought we had done it, and we had ended it on a really like classy note. We’re all pretty self aware. That’s another part of it, too, right? We didn’t want to come back and just make it seem like it was this nostalgic thing or this paycheck thing. We wanted to make sure we were doing it and feeling good about the band still. I think that’s probably also why it took so long for us to make an actual record, because we’ve all been tiptoeing back into it a little bit. When I think about the farewell stuff and those interviews, it’s just a sign of where we were, but this feels totally brand new, in a strange way.
And if it’s any sign of where you’re at now and how all of you have matured, I’ve been listening to Alexisonfire since I was at the tail end of middle school, early high school, and I’m in my 30s now.
And I’m in my 40s.
So we’re not that far off. And you’re right, it’s really indicative of where you were at age-wise and mindset-wise back then, because it was so long ago, and so much has happened in the world and in general sense. I hear you in regards to the “if we’re gonna come back, it’s not going be one of those kind of, like, sell-out reunion tour type things or whatever,” you know?
No, I don’t think we’re capable of it. Right? When I say this stuff, I’m not dogging anybody who does it. It’s just us, this is just our outlook on it, you know what I mean? I don’t think we were ever one of those bands in the first place. I think we got pigeonholed into a scene, but I’ve always felt like we are different. I don’t think anybody sounds like us. We are a weird amalgamation of five people who think differently, but who are also able to think completely alike when we need to. And I’ve learned this about myself, having only made music now for 20 years, I can’t force myself to be creative. I just have to wait for the moment to hit me, and then I go f**king nuts with it. with us making this record, as strange as it seems in 13 years from our last one, it just feels perfectly timed, you know?
Yeah, I get that, and I think that’s beautiful, too. As far as how you all approach writing and recording songs, do you feel that has changed at all?
We’ve always been pretty collaborative as far as trying to write songs. Nobody ever just like showed up with a song. It was always one of us start with an idea, and then everybody puts their input in until we can get to the point where all of us are in agreement that this is the way it should be. There are concessions made from your own personal opinion, because you’re trying to be in this democracy where five people are trying to agree, right? But I think this record was the most collaborative we’ve ever been. Top to bottom it was all of us talking and constantly writing the lyrics together. You know, ‘what is best for the song?’ Not not just ‘I’ll do this part because it’s my part’ or, George has to sing the thing that he wrote and I have to sing the thing I wrote.’ It’s a trust in one another that we can, in a way, we can speak for one another.
So then I’m curious, because when I think of a term like “otherness,” I think of being a racial outlier or gender outlier, or things that are particularly pertinent within society right now. I’m wondering what your personal connection is to this overarching concept of otherness, and how the band came to a place where that was the overarching theme of this album?
I think it’s a beautiful word, and I think being different should be celebrated even though it isn’t all the time. When I think about this group of people that I’ve known for half of my life, we’re very weird people, and when I wrote “Sweet Dreams of Otherness”, it was almost at the tail end of having written all the other songs, and I’ve always had that word written in my notes to try to use in a song. I was having such a beautiful experience being back collaborating with these dudes, and being reminded constantly about how wacky we are. I started writing that song as a total reaction to my love for these people. I think Alexis has always had a bit of “otherness” to us. My favorite part about music is that you can write something from your own perspective, and then it can go out into the world and everybody can take what they need from it. I also wanted to try to write an anthem for people who feel sort of a kinship to that idea, and have it be celebrated and not be this like derogatory term. I wanted to flip the idea of this word being a negative thing and have it be something to embrace. It’s weird, since it’s five white, straight men singing it, but I feel like it can be more than that.
I agree with you and I also feel like, and this might sound funny, but I feel like the fact that it is coming from five straight white dudes at a time like this, kind of does mean something. I feel, as someone who, in the bad sense of the term, is an “other,” and has been made to feel that way, predominantly by white dudes, that this touches me, you know what I mean?
That’s good! That’s what I was hoping for, and we talked about this when I wrote the song. When we decided to call the record that, we had this conversation like, ‘Is it okay for us to do this?’ Like I said, we’re aware, and we are not ignorant people, and I think we all agreed that if it was done the right way that it could be more than just the song for us. To hear you say that to me, that’s all I was hoping for.
I know when I’ve been at certain shows, as a woman of color, it’s sometimes not safe and that’s really a bummer, because we’re all fans of the same kind of music. That’s why we’re there. I feel like for many other Alexis fans of color this will be pretty special. That type of acceptance isn’t always one that I’m used to feeling when I go to shows that are in the scene, you know what I mean?
Yeah, I do. I grew up in it, right? Like touring around, and being on all those hardcore shows and all that stuff. It can be a very shitty place to be. George always, always says an Alexis show is a safe space for anybody who feels different, but it is a decidedly unsafe place for f**king misogynists, homophobes, racists and anything like that. It’s not a safe place for those people.
What would you say are some of the other themes present, but maybe not as apparent as this one of otherness, on the album?
Well, we allow ourselves to write about whatever we feel we need to write about. It’s always been that way — we cover a lot of topics. But this one somehow felt even more personal. It’s hard for me to say it any better than [bassist Chris] Steele did. On “Reverse the Curse,” he speaks openly about his journey with recovery, because him and Wade are both recovering. It’s been a long journey for both of them. There are two songs on the record, “Reverse the Curse” and “Blue Spade”, that are both written by Chris. He kind of allowed us to be the voice for it, and that’s the first time we’ve ever openly spoke about it together. There’s a song on [our 2006 album] Crisis called “To a Friend”, and that’s me writing to Steele, I wrote that song about him. Because of what he was struggling with at the time we never, ever really spoke about that. It was just this internal conversation between us. I know that’s not any lighter than what we were just talking about, but it’s real, you know? And, it’s one of those things that’s not a singular experience to Chris — it’s something that a lot of people deal with, or have to try to deal with. So being able to write songs about that, and kind of be this voice for it, is something I think that we took very seriously.
Dallas Green Talks Alexisonfire’s First Album in 13 Years: “It Just Feels Perfectly Timed”
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