By David DeRocco dave@gobeweekly.com  https://twitter.com/?lang=en

There’s so much great Canadian indie music bubbling up from the underground that it’s easy to miss some of the great music being made. Toronto-based indie rockers Fast Romantics have been bubbling for a decade, scoring hit radio singles, winning awards, racking up huge streaming numbers and winning Pop Group of the Year’ at the Sirius XM Indies (2014) and the prestigious Canadian ‘SOCAN National Songwriting Prize’ for their song “Julia” in 2016. They’re a band with five Top 30 radio singles and over 2.3 million Spotify streams, but still striving to achieve that “household name” status that secures a place in the lexicon of Canadian music history.

Perhaps the new album will give Fast Romantics the acclaim they deserve, and if the first single is any indication, it definitely could. The band is busy trying to complete the follow-up to their 2017 critically acclaimed LP American Love, touring and playing the new songs to ensure they’re ready for inclusion on their upcoming 2020 release. With the playing Mill’s Hardware in Hamilton on November 14 and The Warehouse in St. Catharines November 16^th, founding member/lead vocals/guitarist Matthew Angus took time to chat with Go/BE weekly about the past, the present and the future of FAST ROMANTICS. 

Go/BE: It’s been a decade since the band formed, which I’m sure seems like yesterday despite all that’s happened. What’s your 1,000 foot view of things a decade into this project. Are you pleased? Do you have a full sense of accomplishment? Are things where you’d hoped they be? Are you highly motivated? All the above?

MATTHEW: Well things probably aren’t the way I thought they’d be a decade ago. The good news is, I don’t really see it as the same band. I think we basically reformed completely and kept the name, basically forming a new version of the band four years ago. If I think about the new version of the band, I think we’re feeling pretty good, about as good as you can feel in a challenging industry.

Go/BE: I’m always amazed at how a group of individuals can take the same basis ingredients – musical instruments -- and make such divergent sounds. How did the sound you have developed evolve? What is discussed and planned, or did it happen organically? What did you all say in the beginning.

MATTHEW: I think in the early stages we started by talking about what we wanted to be. The way that we came to be where we are now was not overthinking it at all. Just every time there was this kind of urge to say “we need to be more of this” or “we need to be more of that,” there’s been a conscious effort to ignore those voices in our heads. Really we’ve gotten to where we are kind of honestly, which is a new thing and it took work. I think it’s also why we can feel pretty good. Whenever we finish a song or an album and we don’t feel like it’s us or ours, it’s usually because we thought too much of what we thought we should sound like versus just picking up the instruments and whatever comes out, comes out.

Go/BE: It’s amazing how a collective of individuals can be that united in the creative process.

MATTHEW: Actually that’s one of our strengths, that I don’t feel that we’re always that united. We’re united in the end result in most cases. Everyone in this band is very different. That’s the power of it. When Kevin picks up a guitar, it’s going to sound way different than if I picked up a guitar. I think that’s where the uniqueness of our sound comes from.

Go/BE: You’ve had success as a band and achieved some great milestones, won some awards, achieved big streaming numbers. But what’s the measure of success these days for you personally. Where is the gratification for all your hard word coming from?

MATTHEW: It used to be those things, and now it’s not (laughing). That takes a lot of effort and overcoming paranoia to think that way. I’ll admit that I don’t always think that way. It’s a constant effort to try to not care if the radio wants to play our song or not, or not care what our streaming numbers are, even though we have instant access to all that information all the time. I think our measure of success for this new record we’re working on is, how good do we feel that this is a representation of my songwriting and Kirty’s songwriting and all of us as a band. Does this represent us? Or does it represent some weird short term outcome that we needed as a group.

Go/BE: Do you feel the last album, or the new one you’re working on, has perhaps moved the needle forward towards a little closer to where you want the band to be sonically?

MATTHEW: I think it’s always a learning process. If you dig up interviews during the last record I was going on and on bout how this is the first time anything felt honest and genuine. I think this is a pretty normal thing for a band to say and think about its current record. So I think it’s an evolutionary process. You’re always getting better at that, always perfecting that, so the goal posts change. Right now, in 2019, the record we’re working on now, I think that fact that we’re self -producing it has allowed us to shed a lot of outcome based songwriting.

Go/BE: So less influence from others, the band is just focused?

MATTHEW: Yes, very focused. And it’s not like we didn’t like people we’ve worked with in the past. We love most of the things we done, we’re proud of mostly everything we’ve done. But now is the time to really think about how do we just pull up and make the record that means the most to us, and showcases how we’re feeling. And not be too in our heads about it.

Go/BE: What has been the biggest eye-opening reality for you of pursuing a career in the music business? What’s been easier, harder, more unexpected than you had imagined it would be?

MATTHEW: It’s kind of like a lifecycle of anything or anyone. You start off a certain way and kind of wind up back where you started. We started off really DIY, and the more our music started getting heard and played on the radio I think you can get caught up in the industry that’s irrelevant to the act of making music. And that’s all good. That machinery is fine and good and we appreciate what we’ve gotten. Then you have to go back to yourself once in a while and embrace the reason why you got into it for in the first place, which was to sit in your studio, hopefully your own, and just spit out what’s in your heart.

Go/BE: You spend a lot of time – and money – crafted cool videos. Are they still an important part of the promotional mix?

MATTHEW: I feel like you can get too distracted by it, and we probably have in the past too. At the same time, I’ve always been in the film and video end. Since I was kid I was making movies. A lot of the videos with our band I’ve been pretty involved with them. It’s just an awesome creative outlet where you can add a layer to a song, kind of add an extension or a new body part to a song. I think they’re super relevant. I think you don’t use them as promotional tools directly. We make them more so because they’re fun to make. It’s like putting eyes to the ears, you know…allowing people to see what you thought about the music you make. We love it.

Go/BE: I loved the karaoke setting of your last video. I was recently out with Dave Rave from Teenage Head and we sort of punked a karaoke bar. Your bio says the band loves karaoke. Have you seen your own song listed in the music available at such a bar?

MATTHEW: Someone called me from the west coast and said they saw “Julia” in a karaoke catalogue. I haven’t proven it yet or got hard evidence of that. That would be a trip for us.

Go/BE: You’re touring now, with the complete new album coming out in the new year. Are you testing the new songs? Will you toss them out if the crowd reaction isn’t there? Or are you just working out the kinks?

MATTHEW: If we play a song and people literally start booing, that might affect us. So far that hasn’t happened. I don’t know that we’re playing them live to find out, ‘hey, is this okay.’ I think it’s more for us. We like to play them live before we finish them in the studio. We’ve been doing that for the last year and a half. Every time we get a song done we take it out on the road. We play it really before we record it. When we get back to the studio it feels so much more figured out. I can’t explain exactly why that is. I think it’s the deep connection when you play something for people for the first time. It makes the song real when you play it for an audience.

Go/BE:  What’s the biggest challenge for you when songwriting?

MATTHEW: I think there’s six of us, so we definitely we want everyone to love it. Every extra person you have in your band, it becomes harder to make sure everyone feels good, and not just likes it but adores it. That’s not just important to me, it’s important to everybody. It’s a challenge to make stuff that will feel relevant to all of us. That’s lyrics, that music, that’s everything. There’s high standards all around. The process here is really funny. A lot of bands will write like 30 songs and then pick the best songs. Even though I say I’d like to do that every record, it just doesn’t happen. Songs get thrown out way sooner than when they’re finished. If it’s not up to snuff it just gets tossed. We’ve probably written 100 songs just for the last record. They just never got finished. At some point if its not right, it’s gone.

Go/BE: You save those for the box set.

MATTHEW: Yea, maybe there will be a shoebox somewhere. Maybe one day they’ll get finished.

GoBE: So you’ve got a couple of gigs coming up in Niagara and Hamilton. The Warehouse in St. Catharines has a really great indie vibe. For those who never seen you, heard you on radio but don’t know what you’re about, give us the elevator speech to quickly describe your sound and why they should come see you.

MATTHEW: I suck at describing our sound. I would sort of say, if our music came on in an elevator I would just quit. It’s definitely not elevator music. I think a lot of pegged us as not letting sounds from the past go, but trying to weave them into what’s happening now musically. And that’s always been something we wear like a badge. I’ve never wanted to just chase a puck and go to where things are now. We like what we like. We’re making music we love. We get loud. That’s something I can safely say. We get really loud and exciting. We can also be pretty whispery. The live shows can be a bit of a roller-coaster. That can be amazing for us because as time ‘s gone on, we’ve found a way to connect with our audience in a way that feels really real. That’s why we play live so much, why we tour so much. Our shows are really an exchange. It’s not like watching a movie. There’s a connection there.

Hailed as an ‘Artist To Watch’ (Google Play), Fast Romantics is comprised of Matthew Angus (lead vocals, guitar), Jeffrey Lewis (bass), Kirty (vocals, acoustic guitar, synth), Kevin Black (guitars), Lisa Lorenz (keyboards) and Nick McKinlay (drums). Since forming in 2009, the band has released two full-length LPs and one EP. Known for their incredible live shows and songwriting prowess, Fast Romantics have received many accolades, including ‘Pop Group of the Year’ at the Sirius XM Indies (2014) and the prestigious Canadian ‘SOCAN National Songwriting Prize’ for their song “Julia” in 2016. The band has had 5 Top 30 radio singles and has over 2.3 million Spotify streams.

Fast Romantics are: Matthew Angus (lead vocals, guitar), Jeffrey Lewis (bass), Kirty (vocals, acoustic guitar, synth), Kevin Black (guitars), Lisa Lorenz (keyboards) and Nick McKinlay (drums). Learn more at https://fastromantics.com/home.

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