Cross-country
meltdown

>> Victoria’s Immaculate Machine sweat
through another summer tour

WORKS LIKE A CHARM:Immaculate Machine

by LORRAINE CARPENTER

At age 14, via her mother’s discovery of her own biological roots, Kathryn Calder’s family gained a branch, including Carl (aka A.C.) Newman, a new uncle. Before long, he became a New Pornographer, and Calder eventually joined their ranks as a singer, touring with the West Coast collective as a stand-in for Neko Case and appearing on the band’s 2005 album Twin Cinema. But Calder’s priority of late has been fronting Immaculate Machine, a trio whose indie pop prowess, on display on their latest release, Fables, is something to be reckoned with.

Calling from a non-descript gas station somewhere between Sudbury and Ottawa, Calder told the Mirror about feeling the heat and taking opera instruction from a Montreal has-been.

Mirror: I liked [singer/guitarist] Brooke [Gallupe]’s comic on your MySpace, about touring in the summer. If it’s so hellish, why do you do it?

Kathryn Calder: I don’t know. He drew that right after we realized we were doing another summer tour, thinking, “What are we doing, getting in a van with no air conditioning, putting however many tens of thousands of kilometres onto a vehicle that’s the same age as we are?”

M: You’re really in the juice now.

KC: Actually, I did the jet-set thing—I had a bunch of stuff to do at home so I flew to Toronto and then took a Greyhound bus to Sudbury and met up with the guys. But they drove from Victoria across the country, and they were feeling it in the Prairies, I think it was 41. That’s when the ice block comes out and you strip down to your underwear in the van. It’s so sweaty. We’ve got these vinyl seats—I mean, I love our van and I won’t ever say a bad word about it while we’re on tour because it works and it gets me from place to place—but we’ve got these vinyl seats that just… well, they smell and they’re gross.

M: You could put some fabric down.

KC: We just grumble and never do anything about it. We figure that if we put any money into the van, it will immediately break down.

M: I read that all three of you had opera training with Colin Doroschuk from Men Without Hats. Why opera?

KC: I just wanted singing lessons because I was in a bunch of bands. I was in my teens at the time, and when Brooke started taking lessons, he said this teacher was really amazing so I started up too, and then Luke [Kozlowski, drummer] joined in. Then, somehow, it suddenly changed from taking regular singing lessons to being fully immersed in opera. The teacher has this philosophy that it’s good to be trained in classical regardless of whether you use it. It’s just knowledge. I’m trained in classical piano, so I tend to agree.

It was interesting for me to be in a rock band and take lessons at the same time. I know a lot of classical musicians have a hard time not reading music and not playing other people’s songs, it’s hard to transition, but I did both. It’s been really helpful to have classical training, especially in this band, where I play bass vibes with one hand and then lead keyboard lines with the other. I just treat it like it’s a classical piano piece, except I stand up and rock out a little more.

With Final Flash and Flying at Divan
Orange on Sunday, Aug. 5, 9:30 p.m., $10