by LORRAINE CARPENTER

“The first time I met these guys, it was electric right away,” says singer Raphael Parent, gesturing to his bandmates Charif-Pierre Megarbane (guitar) and Dominique Salameh (drums). “[Pierre] played me some songs that I fell in love with on the spot.”

Megarbane raises his eyebrows. “Fell in love?” he asks. “It wasn’t that good.”

Megarbane is the chief songwriter and lyricist in Heroes & Villains, with melodic guitar stylings rooted in the Johnny Marr school of finger-pickin’ goodness, but he’s self-effacing about his role in the band, and often defers to Parent, the band’s lead spokesman on and off stage. Unlike Megarbane and Salameh, who grew up together in France and Lebanon and recorded a pair of unreleased albums together, Parent had no musical background in 2003 (weekly karaoke notwithstanding), when a “musicians wanted” ad brought them together for that fateful rehearsal. It was one of the few happy memories from their first year, dominated as it was by their involvement with the Emergenza battle of the bands.

“We’re glad that we got to play those first few shows, it really broke the ice, but otherwise it was a really bad experience. We shouldn’t have even gone to the final, which was a big farce,” says Parent, agreeing with Megarbane that the annual audience-response contest simply milks the bands’ friends and families with a series of increasingly expensive shows.

In their second year, the band quickly learned how to book shows and record an album, releasing All the Giants Are Buried at Sea, but it wasn’t until bassist Jeremy Proville joined just over a year ago, and the band began touring in earnest, that Heroes & Villains really came into their own.

Not only did their newfound bond generate Air Sea Rescue, their second and superior aquatic pop doozy, but it gave them something to write home about. These days, even their worst gigs come with a silver lining, like dining at Hooters before a dead show during an ice storm (and the Grey Cup!) in Ottawa, or free barbecue at last summer’s Bonebash “festival” in Belleville, where they played in a field to six seated people, a few farmers and their dogs.

“Oh fuck,” recalls Parent, “that was weird! But we got free hot dogs.”