Vancouver based keyboard powered indie rock band We Are The City have undergone a few changes upon the released of their second full length album “Violent.”
They will be returning to Lethbridge to play the Slice, June 21 with Boreal Sons.
Since making their debut with 2009’s “ in the Quiet World” they have undergone line-up changes and relocated from Kelowna, to Victoria to Vancouver.
“If anything, I think that anything we do will be a departure,” said vocalist/keyboardist Cayne McKenzie.
“ A lot of the songwriting goes back three year to before our “High School” Ep, (which they released in 2011)” he said.
“It’s definitely different. There are more synthesizer on it,” he said.
“ If you listen to both of them you will hear it. “High School was our view of making pop music. On “Violent” we tried not to do that,” he continued.
They recorded the CD along with their others with the Zolas’ Tom Dobrzanski who has also worked with Said The Whale and Hey Ocean.
“ We’ve worked with him for years. He’s become come a really good friend of ours,” he said.
“ He had just built his new studio and we were his first project, so he had a lot of pent up excitement. He was so excited he added a lot to the music,” he said.
“ Tom is a different musician than us. He’s very pop minded. He listens to a lot of pop music, while we’d rather put a lot of overdrive on everything, so it’s nice to have that outsider’s perspective,” he enthused.
“I like working with Tom because he knows a lot of stuff I don’t know and its always interesting to hang out with somebody who knows different things than I do,” he said.
The band also made a film based on their music through their friends at Amazing Factory Productions.
The band’s drummer Andrew Huculiak (guitarist David Menzel completes the trio) went to Bergen, Norway to make the movie based on the music from “Violent.”
McKenzie noted they already had a connection with the group who made a short film based on “High School.”
“ We were wondering what kind of project to do, so we asked ‘what if we were to do a feature length film,” he said.
“ We love Scandinavian culture, Scandinavian films and Scandinavian music has had a lot of influence on our music,” he said adding they would like to tour Norway someday, though no plans are in the works yet.
In the meantime they are excited abut touring in support of “Violent.”
“I’m really excited about it. One of my friends from high school lives there now, so I’m going to hang out with him for a couple of days. I’m excited to swim in the river and eat pizza at the Slice,” he enthused.
“You are going to see a lot of gear because we have a lot of equipment.
We’re going to play as loudly as we can and as quiet as we can,” he continued.
We Are The City and special guests the Boreal Sons play at approximately 9:30 p.m. June 21. There is a $10 cover.
