by JOHNSON CUMMINS

It’s Thanksgiving Day, at least according to Americans, when I track down +/- guitarist James Baluyut during a white-knuckle drive from Seattle to Minneapolis. Baluyut is in good spirits—having missed two previous Thanksgiving celebrations due to being on tour in Japan, +/- were finally able to celebrate the holiday with the closest thing they have to family while out on the road.

“We were really determined to make sure we had a Thanksgiving this year,” says Baluyut. “We were starting to feel sorry for ourselves and decided we needed something to pick up band morale, because we were getting a little depressed thinking about not celebrating Thanksgiving again.”

The New York band brought the comforts of home on stage with them and surprised their Seattle audience by donning serving aprons, complete with the +/- insignia, mid-set and serving rotisserie chicken, stuffing, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie and cranberry sauce to famished indie rockers. “It was a little expensive, as we spent almost more money than we made, but it was definitely worth it.”

Although the second half of the post-feast set suffered a little bit from serotonin overload as the audience let their belts out a couple of notches, +/- are hardly complaining about having to celebrate holidays far from home. After spending over a year cooped up recording their new record, Let’s Build a Fire, the band is just happy to be anywhere but a recording studio. The labour-intensive efforts on their new record pay off well, as the 13 songs perfectly offset each other, with programming rubbing shoulders with traditional instruments while the tight confines of traditional pop are pushed beyond their limits.

“With this band, there is no really established sound or process of working. Some of the songs are worked out in rehearsal, some are done from demos and some are just written on a laptop while watching TV. Sometimes we will just graft a lot of the programming on a traditional type of song, and then just get rid of the traditional aspects afterwards.”

The overall sound of their most recent effort seems light years beyond their debut, which was seen as more of a vanity project born from Baluyut recording alone in his bedroom. With his band Versus on indefinite hiatus, Baluyut began recording his label boss, Mark Robinson, owner of Teen Beat, at his home studio. After Robinson heard some of the bedroom recordings, deemed “not Versus material,” he quickly commissioned Baluyut to flesh out some of the songs to do a full-length record. “I really enjoy the collaboration more than the solo thing,” says Baluyut. “I’m sure there are some people that still like the debut better, but I think with more minds going at it, we just have a lot more possibilities.”

One of their most unlikely fans turned out to be CNN’s newscaster Anderson Cooper, who included +/- in his iTunes music recommendations, adding “If they are playing some small venue, go see them before they blow up.” Not really too surprising, seeing how Mark Robinson’s band Flin Flon created the theme for Anderson Cooper 360, but Baluyut was still a bit shocked to get the nod from the talking head. “His list was all major-label bands, and then there was us. I guess he looks like a pretty hip dude, but I was shocked to find out he actually knew about us because we’re pretty obscure. I sure hope he’s right about us blowing up.”

With the Changes and Desirs Demodés at Casa del Popolo tonight, Thursday, Nov. 30, 9 p.m., $8

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