A new commotion

>> The High Dials start over, again

by LORRAINE CARPENTER

They haven’t graced a local stage in many months, but Montrealers may have caught an unexpected snatch of a High Dials song in the latest Rogers commercial. Like pennies from heaven, the ad came at a time when the band really needed it, having stayed off the road for much of last year to re-evaluate and rebuild after the departure of two members and the introduction of three new ones.

“You could say it’s a whole new band,” says singer Trevor Anderson, during a brief break from rehearsing for this weekend’s hometown show, and next week’s series of sets at Austin’s South by Southwest festival. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

Since the release of War of the Wakening Phantoms in 2005, Eric Dougherty joined on keyboards, then Max Hebert replaced Robb Surridge on drums, and now Philadelphia’s Chris McAllen has replaced founding bassist Rishi Dhir, who, alongside Anderson, was the only remaining member of the band’s old incarnation, the Datsons. But the High Dials are raring to record their next album, tentatively titled Moon Country, to be previewed at their upcoming shows.

“It’s all sounding pretty intense. For one thing, Max is a different drummer from any drummer that we’ve had. He’s a pretty amazing musician, so that’s changing the songs a lot. Half of the last album was pretty mellow compared to our live show, and there’ll be some of that still, but we’ve got so many things going.”

Anderson compares one of the new songs to a merger of David Bowie, reggae and the Plastic Ono Band, another to the soft shoegazer sound of My Bloody Valentine, others to up-tempo power pop. As a harsh critic of his own material, he’s confident that Moon Country will meet his high standards.

“My expectations of what music is supposed to do for me have really changed as I’ve gotten older,” he explains. “I demand a lot more from the songs. I feel like, if the songs aren’t doing something cosmically, then what the hell are you doing on stage in your thirties? There’s a liberation that I need to find in this music, and that need has gotten sharper, which makes the music more intense.

“Some people mellow out with age—I’m not an old man or anything, I just mean I’ve been doing this for a number of years now—and maybe my ambitions have mellowed out over time, but I feel like I’m hungrier creatively than I used to be.”

As for the new band members, locals may know Hebert as DJ Commando, or as the drummer for Final Flash and Ghost Limbs. Cross-border bassist McAllen is a member of Lilys and Miracle of ’86 back home, and although he’s worked and played hard with the High Dials in Montreal, he has yet to fall under the spell of poutine—presumably, either cream cheese or (God forbid) cheesesteak is his heart-attack food of choice.

“He lives in Philadelphia, he’s got a happy life down there,” says Anderson. “It’s not the most practical solution, but we’re a touring, working band so there’s no reason why it can’t work. We just clicked with him really easily.”

With the Royal Mountain Band at Divan
Orange on Friday, March 9, 9:30 p.m., $7