After several years of intensive gigging, this year has been a relatively quiet one for Kid Canaveral in the UK.
The principal reason for this is that the four-piece (David MacGregor – guitar/vocals, Kate Lazda – guitar/vocals, Rose McConnachie – bass, and Scott McMaster – drums) have been working on their second LP, due out on Fence Records in the New Year, for much of 2012.
In between the studio time though the band have been expanding their gigging horizons with a short tour of France in the summer and a longer jaunt to North America last month.
The Canaverals, of course, made their name with debut LP ‘Shouting at Wildlife’ released in 2010 and David appreciates the doors that the record opened for the band.
“I’m still very proud of it and it did an awful lot for us. It brought us a much wider audience and took us across the Atlantic and to mainland Europe. The coverage by local press and from the BBC helped an awful lot.
“I remember looking at that first 1000 CDs and thinking ‘when are we ever going to get rid of all of these?’. Turns out ‘fairly soon’ was the answer. It was a huge compliment to have Fence re-release it last year on vinyl.”
However, there was one description of the record that David didn’t recognise.
“We’ve been referred to as ‘twee’ a couple of times in the past, but that suggests some sort of affectation. I don’t think they could possibly have listened to the whole album. A casual listen to ‘Smash Hits’ might engender that opinion, but that song was a very fun exercise in taking the piss.”
In part due to the re-release of ‘Wildlife’ on Fence last summer, work on the second Kid Canaveral album didn’t commence until the start of 2012.
“It took a wee while once we’d said “this is it” for ‘Shouting at Wildlife’ to sit down and make sense of it all. I sifted through the notes I had and wrote most of the album between January and May this year, so the writing process wasn’t finished when we went into the studio at first.
“I was determined that we weren’t going to have a huge gap in between records. However, in saying that I didn’t want us to just record anything half-baked.”
As is usually the case with second albums, Kid C LP 2 was conceived very differently from its predecessor.
“The songs from ‘Shouting at Wildlife’ were written over a four year period as we were still finding our feet as a band. Many, many terrible compositions were ditched during that time.
“This time, the songs were all written over a ten month period and I think we all had a much better idea of what we were doing.”
If the last album came together almost via a process of attrition, David reckons that the subject matter for the new songs has resulted from some conscious choices.
“I’ve been much more careful with the lyrics this time and thought more carefully about how they fit into the idea behind a song. One song was re-recorded because it became apparent the words weren’t conveying what I wanted them to.
“We recorded the album with Gal at Fourth Street Studios in Glasgow again. I’m not sure what’s influenced it musically. It’s got electronica, goes a bit shoegaze at one point and is as heavy as we’ve been, in places. It’s still pop music, though.”
At one time the LP had been planned for an autumn release but the record now won’t come out until the spring partly as a result of the band’s foreign travels.
“We were forced to cancel a lot of studio time in June because I got really ill when we were on tour in France. I was unable to get out of bed or eat for a fortnight and I ended up in hospital. They even thought it was Legionnaire’s disease at one point.”
Now fully recovered David has challenged himself to improve as a musician.
“Spending more time in the company of Fence Collective members has driven me to try and become a more prolific songwriter. I’ve been trying to become a better guitarist too, nothing too radical, but now I don’t feel like I’m about to perform open heart surgery whenever I’m asked to play an acoustic set.”
However far they’ve come in recent years David’s not inclined to sugar coat his memories of their earliest shows after they formed at St Andrews University back in 2005.
“Our first performance was an open stage night where we murdered ‘Here Comes Your Man’ by Pixies and played one of our own songs. We didn’t do anything else for a year after that and our first proper gig was supporting Joy Zipper and The Fence Collective at the Union. We weren’t very good. That’s probably being kind!”
The band are in the process of finalising the arrangements for their, by now, traditional end of year show – Kid Canaveral’s Christmas Baubles – the third instalment of which will take place on Saturday 22nd December at the Caves in Edinburgh.
“It’s our Christmas party, and we want it to stay feeling like a relaxed end of year blow-out, so Kate and me are the ‘crack team’ behind it. Rose and Scott tell us if we’re doing something obscenely stupid and also do the ‘running about like dafties’ bit on the day.”
David is enthusiastic about who’s playing the show.
“This year we have another amazing line-up. We’re having mainly music, but also some comedy again.
“We’ll be having a very special collaborative set between King Creosote and FOUND, as well as Malcolm Middleton, Meursault, Randolph’s Leap, Josie Long, Eleanor Morton, Elaine Malcolmson, RM Hubbert and On The Fly playing. There’s also DJ sets from Pictish Trail and Papi Falso.”
This year’s venue is the third different location the band have chosen for the Baubles and the success of the previous years’ shows had created one essential criteria for a new venue.
“Somewhere bigger! The demand for tickets well outstripped the official fire capacity, so we needed somewhere with more room. Also, we had to run our own bar last year and that added a whole other dimension of organisation to it.”
Tickets for Kid Canaveral’s Christmas Baubles III are going fast but can still be purchased here, although the announcements confirming the final line-up are likely to mean that they won’t last much longer!
Prior to the Baubles, there’s a Kid Canaveral DJ set at the belated Cancel The Astronauts LP launch at the Electric Circus on Friday 30th November, while David will be playing solo sets at the Chapter Arts Centre on 15th December and Bloomsbury Theatre, London on the 16th and 17th.
Kid Canaveral’s first new material in over a year will be the release of the first new song from the forthcoming LP, ‘Low Winter Sun’ on a split single with Pictish Trail’s ‘The Handstand Crowd’ on Fence Records next month.
More KC chat at Mike’s manicpopthrills site
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