by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

Stages shared with James Brown, Feist and Philip Glass. Recording sessions in picturesque cottages, disused churches and wine-soaked boho Big Apple lofts. An 11th-hour, deus ex machina record deal with Secret City, the new offshoot of noted Canadian jazz label Justin Time. For a quartet of scroungy tunesmiths on the kind side of 30, if that isn’t paradise, it’s pretty damn close.

Close to Paradise is the third record and proper debut full-length for Montreal pianist/singer Patrick Watson and his band, guitarist Simon Angell (Watson’s bandmate way back when in high-standard ska unit Gangster Politics), drummer Robbie Kuster and bassist Mishka Stein, both firmly planted on the local avant-jazz scene. The four formulate an exquisite balance of timeless pop-music artistry, jazz precision, indie-rock honesty and classical romance, with Watson’s aching vocals and intricate ivory-tickling at its core. Add the likes of the Besnard Lakes’ Jace Lasek, Amon Tobin and Jean Massicotte (Lhasa de Sela, Arthur H) offering production assists, and you’ve got an album that truly glows.

The Mirror sat down with Watson and Angell for a wide-ranging chat about the wheres, whens, whats, whos and whys of the matter.

Mirror: Your second record, Just Another Ordinary Day, had a narrative structure to it. Close to Paradise doesn’t, but there does seem to be a theme tying things together. It suggests locations rather than points in time.

Patrick Watson: It’s definitely about locations, because the record was recorded in so many interesting places, like an abandoned church. A lot of it, though, is about the people we met. Right after Just Another Ordinary Day, we decided to go to New York for an intensive month, and just sat in a loft for like eight hours a day, got crazy and played music.

Simon Angell: That’s when we became a band.

PW: We also met Mr. Tom there, the song [“Mr. Tom”] is about him and that loft—he’s a guy who, when we were lost in New York, kinda took us under his wing. He’s this 52-year-old crazy painter. Wakes up at nine o’clock in the morning, gets hammered and paints until four in the morning. That’s what he does.

The title of the album is inspired by a painter friend of mine, called Rodney Dickson. That expression, “close to paradise,” comes from when we were travelling in Vietnam [in 2001]. He did this amazing painting called “Close to Paradise,” which is an expression that means you’re halfway there but you don’t think you’re going to make it. It’s a standard Vietnamese expression. That was the first major theme of the record.

Mind the gaps

M: Your creative sensibility seems unusually interconnected with other art forms.

PW: This project started out being based on a photography book, Waterproof9. Brigitte [Henry, Watson’s girlfriend and visual collaborator] asked me to do music for it. I couldn’t figure out the way to do my music before that. As soon as I looked at the images, I was able to structure the different stuff I wanted to do. I’ve always used that as a guideline. If you have a really good picture, a film in your head, it’s easier to bring these weird aspects into the music, because you’re telling a story.

SA: That’s not necessarily a lyrical story. It could be instrumental.

M: You also like anachronisms and the archaic. What you’re doing musically is at once totally current, but also has this resonant sense of nostalgia for a past you’re both too young to have experienced.

PW: I love Debussy, I love Satie. I also like the intentions behind music from those times. I think a lot of people, when they picture classical composers, presume they were super-straight, but that’s so wrong. Debussy, Satie—those guys would out-crazy any modern rock star by a landslide. Debussy’s orchestrations were super-cinematic and experimental in a lot of ways, but still melodic. It’s a huge accomplishment to do that. He’d have trippy sound effects, like big waves of sounds crashing over you, and then this melody soars out. It’s really visual.

Another thing is, people in the 20th century always rushed to keep finding something new, but they never perfected anything along the way, they didn’t explore any of the styles to their full potential. I think people missed a lot of steps. Now, when you want to make something new, you have to go way back and take your time with all those little gaps.

Swells of rhythm

M: You also have the privilege of picking and choosing elements from each style, whatever can be used most effectively.

PW: There are important balances in this band. For example, I’m really openly melodic, right? Simon’s the opposite, he’s really into free noise. So our chemistry together is really important—if you took Simon out, it would be too melodic and cheesy, maybe. Mishka and Robbie are the other interesting balance. Robbie’s not a—

SA: Don’t say he’s not a pocket drummer! He can play in the pocket!

PW: But he’s really into colours and swells of rhythm. Mishka, in turn, almost replaces the groove part with the basslines that are very melodic and chordy. It’s interesting how each member kinda balances the others out. Also, we play with such weird motherfuckers all the time. There’s no way you can play with like, Steve Reich or Philip Glass, and not have it make a huge impact, especially at a young age. We’re so lucky in that respect.

M: Uh huh… wait, did you just say you played with Steve Reich and Philip Glass? When did you do this?!

SA: About a year ago, Sept. 27, in New York, at the Angel Orensanz Foundation. It’s this old synagogue in the Lower East Side, the most beautiful venue I’ve ever seen.

PW: Everybody had to pick 20 minutes of stock from the New York Film-Makers’ Coop. and do a soundtrack, a 20-minute set with the visuals. We picked Hans Richter, that crazy surrealist from back in the ’30s. That was heavy. Lee Ranaldo was there too. It was a crazy night.

Ballads for Beirut

M: Didn’t you play with James Brown as well, in Paris?

PW: Yeah, we did seven nights with him in Europe. He comes from a different generation of musicians, in terms of entertaining people and playing shows. They have this old-school classiness. Every musician is always wearing a suit. In, out, after the gig, they never take it off. Also, they’ll do a 15-minute prayer, and it’ll consist of, “God, please let us put on the show of our lives”—every night. It’s not a joke. It’s heavy. You realize that James Brown, yeah, he’s a kook, a bit of a cartoon, but he’s a legend—that’s going to happen to anyone eventually. At the same time, he loves making people feel good. You can tell his passion is making people smile. It was a really touching experience. Every time I think about it, my stomach turns a bit.

SA: Turns in a good way (laughs)!

M: Speaking of touching experiences, you did an impromptu concert earlier this summer with Lhasa de Sela, which was broadcast over to Beirut during the Israeli bombings.

PW: The last five years, I’ve been working with this company called Bluesponge, a bunch of Lebanese guys. One of my best friends is this guy called Ralph. He got stuck in Lebanon during the war, and I was Skyping to him everyday. He asked if I’d want to play a little piano for his family over the Internet. I’d play the piano a bit at night before going to bed, and his family would invite friends over [to listen to it]. Then, his brother was here, and Ralph told him about it, and asked if we could do it on a bigger scale. So we decided to do a big concert and broadcast it live. It’s something that happened naturally, that’s what I like about it. But it was touching—it’s a very bizarre feeling for a musician to be more than decoration for a day, not just entertainment.

SA: I remember earlier that week, watching the news, and it hit me—I play guitar. What the fuck am I doing? You know, when you get in those moods—if I stop playing guitar, how is that going to affect anything? After playing that concert, really for the first time in my musical career, I felt like, this is why I play music. I did something. I was part of something that I think helped put people in good spirits.

At Lion d’Or on Tuesday, Sept. 26, 9 p.m., $12

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