by LORRAINE CARPENTER

“Next time around will be even more retarded!” This is the promise printed inside the recently re-released debut album by Toronto’s Luca Giulio Maoloni, aka the Old Soul. Packed with raucous chamber-pop goodness, the record gets goofy with absurd lyrics and frenetic genre-hopping. But the indie edition of the album, made in 2004, sounded much more “all over the place” and “cartoonish,” according to Maoloni. So, to match the musical wackiness, he commissioned a cover image in the spirit of a 1960s Burt Bacharach soundtrack, but wound up with something more akin to Ren and Stimpy—a lurid cartoon of a fat man in a wife-beater being chased by a giant prosciutto.

“I got so much flack for that, it was unbelievable,” says Maoloni. “People would be like, ‘I was gonna buy the record but I didn’t ’cause I found that cover offensive.’ So we re-did it and it’s really psychedelic and shit.”

The two covers are like night and day, but the re-recorded album is only slightly cleaner, tighter and shorter than its predecessor, and all the changes were Maoloni’s choice, not directives from his new corporate overlords.

“My other band kinda dissipated in a shitty way,” says Maoloni, formerly of the White Star Line, “so I did the [indie] record by myself, with a few friends helping out, but I didn’t think anything of it. Then I guess [Universal] just got their hands on it somehow. But I was scared—I didn’t know how to go about it, ’cause you only hear horror stories with that kinda stuff. But this A&R guy loves music. He’s a super guy.”

Maoloni scored a sweet three-record deal with Universal, who are licensing the Old Soul from his Hand of God imprint, and therefore can’t shelve his future records, one of the nightmare scenarios of small-time major-label acts. But arriving at this agreement took seven months.

“They wanna fuck you over, that’s their first agenda,” he says, before backtracking. “It’s not that they wanna fuck you over, but I understand that they gotta make money and they don’t wanna lose money. Mind you, if anybody’s losing money, it should be them because they can afford it, right?”

While other Canadian labels showed interest in the Old Soul, Universal won out because they didn’t demand incessant touring. “I hate singing fucking songs every night about stuff I don't wanna talk about,” says Maoloni. “You wrote this song for whatever reason, like you fell off a bridge and went into a coma, and I’m like, ‘Fuck, do I have to sing this every night?’”

But the Old Soul also loves touring, apparently, with his contractible band, which ranges from a five-piece (which is what Montreal will get this weekend) to a 12-piece.

“We went out west in October, and how can I tell my band, ‘You can come, you can’t come,’ when they’ve been pretty much doing it for free and loving it? So I’m like, ‘Fuck, let’s take everybody out.’ Some people couldn’t do it for work reasons, but eight of us went out on the road in a stinky van with all our gear, and it was unbelievable.

“You know, we set up in five minutes. We’re the type of band that when we’re doing something, we don’t fuck around.”

With Now Yr Taken, Cuff the Duke and DJs at the Truth Explosion Magazine launch at Main Hall on Friday, Feb. 24, 9 p.m., $10 before midnight, $12 after

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