by LORRAINE CARPENTER

After the Unicorns, there was Islands. When success took Montreal’s Unicorns by surprise, the trio toured themselves into the ground, Alden Penner quit and Nick Diamonds and J’aime Tambeur fled to L.A., where they were rumoured to be pursuing acting careers and working on a hip hop project.

Upon their return, Diamonds and Tambeur aimed high and established a careening world-pop collective featuring Toronto-based guitarists Jim Guthrie (whose solo career might soon remove him from the picture) and Wooden Stars/Snailhouse founder Mike Feuerstack (who played their first few shows), ace bassist Patrice Agbokou and violinists Alex and Sebastian Chow.

And that’s not to mention the stars of Arcade Fire and Wolf Parade who play on their debut album, Return to the Sea, released last month by local label Equator (founded by former DKD president Mathieu Drouin), and by Rough Trade overseas.

Now that Islands have worked with Beck, racked up reams of critical acclaim and generated enough buzz to earn them an E-Talk Daily segment, the Mirror had to move fast to book an interview with Diamonds, the band’s singer and lyricist. He brought Tambeur along to discuss drug dealing, sensei Steve McDonald (of Red Kross fame), the appropriation of hip hop and how tired they are of being asked about Graceland.

Mirror: Going back to that period between the Unicorns and Islands, what happened to th’ Corn Gangg?

Nick Diamonds: You blinked, you missed it. It’s happened. It’s happening. It will happen. It transgresses space and time.

J’aime Tambeur: It transfers money from American to Canadian.

ND: Back and forth every day.

JT: Most of its dealings are in the U.S. Th’ Corn Gangg is the drug-dealing wing of our enterprise.

M: That’s what you guys were really doing in L.A.?

JT: We’ve been selling Adderall to college students.

ND: Yeah, then we switched to Dexadrin ’cause it’s easier to get up here. We had a tunnel going from Washington to B.C.

JT: Then our guy had a bad dream about the tunnel collapsing on him and he won’t go in anymore. We’re looking to train dogs to do it.

ND: That’s the straight truth.

M: Uh-huh. So what role did Steve McDonald play in the development of the band?

ND: He was a friend first.

JT: And probably a storyteller second.

ND: Legend and icon third. Mostly, he was a mentor for us. We were in L.A. trying to break free of the bonds of our past lives—rebirth was a big influence on us, and before rebirth, destruction. He was there to usher us into a new era of our being and he did that through meditation.

JT: Sound therapy.

ND: In the hills.

JT: Vibrational acoustics. He taught us about Scientolerance, which is really important.

ND: Compassion for the weary, wayward thetans.

JT: Steve McDonald is a great man.

ND: He’s charmed and charming.

Free bass

M: I read that you switched gears at a certain point when you felt that the music you were working on was becoming too rock.

JT: We were doing too much rock.

ND: I do vaguely remember having an aversion to the direction it was going in. It kind of had a glam, Sunset Strip quality to it. The funny thing is, we’re slowly heading in that direction again. We’re getting a little heavy.

M: With the old material or new stuff?

ND: Both. We’re going back to our rock roots.

M: In L.A., though, I gather you were going back to your hip hop roots and incorporating some of that into Islands.

JT: I’ve been listening to hip hop music since I was nine.

ND: But we don’t make conscious decisions, like, “Now let’s craft a song that—”

JT: “—I think we should put 10 per cent hip hop into this one.”

ND: We put it through this computer that does all the math. We’re not good with that stuff.

M: But you’ve said you were consciously trying to get away from rock.

ND: Yeah. True. Busted.

JT: In L.A., one of the things we did a lot was go to record stores.

ND: Mainly one.

M: Which one?

JT: You know, Tower.

ND: No, Amoeba, but we don’t really wanna give Amoeba props. It’s the world’s biggest independent record store, it’s got like a million records.

JT: And it’s so cheap there. A record that would cost $30 here would be $5 or even $1 there, so I felt a lot more willing to try out different stuff. I was listening to as diverse a selection of music as I ever have, and that played a big part in the direction that things took.

ND: Books played a role in the direction of our sound too, or maybe just the lyrical content.

JT: The Da Vinci Code especially.

ND: Yeah, that’s a big one.

JT: I’d say late-night call-in radio had an influence.

M: Out in L.A.?

ND: Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell. He’s a radio host from somewhere in the desert, he talks about all kinds of conspiracy theories. We would listen to that a lot, and it became the basis for one of the songs on the record, “Volcanoes,” which starts out with this little recording that was actually a demon calling in to that show.

Bubble boys

M: I understand that Paul Simon’s Graceland was an integral influence too.

JT: No comment.

M: You guys covered the title track live?

ND: Only after the record was made, kinda by accident. Wolf Parade were doing the song, Dante initiated that—they’re all into Graceland except Spencer—and then we did a show here and they played with us, and they decided to do a big jamboree with us, the two bands doing “Graceland.” It was pretty cool. Then we decided, ’cause we learned the song for that show, to do it on tour.

JT: It’s a good song.

ND: We weren’t trying to wear our influences on our sleeve.

M: Why are you being so defensive?

JT: Honestly, it’s just something that gets said a lot in articles. Sure, it was a big record, it’s something that I listened to when I was a little kid and that I developed a really strong attachment to. Yeah, Paul Simon’s Graceland is an influence on this record, but if we’re defensive it’s because—

M: —it’s been overstated.

JT: Yeah. Not to disassociate ourselves from that record, it’s just out of a fear that it’ll become the only thing that people talk about. That happened a lot with the Unicorns, it happens with Islands.

ND: It was Milli Vanilli with the Unicorns, “Blame it on the Rain.” It was like, okay, it was a huge thing for me, get over it.

M: Did you own that record?

ND: Oh yeah, cassette single.

M: Since you guys obviously worry about being misunderstood, do you think your interview style might lead people to believe that Islands is ironic?

ND: If I say no, does that mean yes?

JT: I don’t take the accusation that we’re not serious seriously. The things is, honestly, this is how we are normally. We’ve been hanging out for so long that you gotta make jokes all the time.

M: But are you concerned that people will get the impression that the music, or what you say about the music, is also a joke?

JT: I hope not. You can’t stop people from thinking things.

ND: You can, actually.

JT: The new pills that we got, and the combination of LSD, electro-shock therapy and that guy’s voice through headphones.

ND: Oh man, we’re jerks. But I like it.

With Busdriver and Cadence Weapon at le National on Saturday, May 20, 9 p.m., $12 (proceeds go to Ashraya Initiative for Children)

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