Pardon our French

The northeast passage of L.A. duo the Dagons

SOREL-ADELIC: the Dagons

With the recent heavy export of Montreal bands onto the international scene, it’s hardly been an isolated move for a homegrown band to sign to an American label. Just look at the successes of the Besnard Lakes, Priestess and Arcade Fire, who’ve all chosen to go stateside to ink a deal. Guitar/drums duo the Dagons, on the other hand, call the entertainment hub of Los Angeles home, and while Montreal bands have looked elsewhere to scribble their John Hancocks, the Dagons chose to sign with Montreal label Blow the Fuse as opposed to courting their plethora of hometown labels.

After a chance show with Montreal’s le Nombre, whose bassist Gourmet Délice also runs Blow the Fuse, these Californians were immediately snatched up. “They’re just people we made a really nice connection with,” says guitarist/singer Karie Jacobson. “I think it’s rare to find a label where you feel understood, and it just instantly felt like the right thing. We had been self-releasing our records up to that point but we found out it was a lot of work. Now we can just concentrate on the music side of being in a band, which is a lot better for us.”

With the Dagons’ sense of stripped-down psychedelia, it’s no wonder that Blow the Fuse jumped. The term “psychedelic” may be bandied about quite a bit these days, but unlike most of the bands associated with the word, the Dagons remain musically grounded—while flourishes of late-’60s psych are there in spades, the band is able to make their statement quickly, relying on a solid pop backbone. In fact, the Dagons’ unique style of psych has earned them fans in the most unlikely markets, and like a rock version of Jerry Lewis, they’ve found most of their fans in France, Belgium and Switzerland. Their current Quebec tour includes tiny towns Tadoussac, Sorel and Île aux Coudres.

“We toured a lot of these smaller places in Quebec before and we loved it, and can’t wait to get back. To us, it’s like the further north we go, the closer we are getting to the edge of the world. We played Île aux Coudres two years ago and it was a pretty incredible experience. It’s this small little island and amazingly enough, the last time we were there, I just remember staring at this incredible sky and being blown away, because in Los Angeles, all you can see is this haze of brown mud hanging over the city. Our main mission on this trip is to just look for the aurora borealis, as well as going on a whale-watching expedition in Tadoussac.”

With a Quebec label and Jacobson’s newfound command of the French language, the time could be right for the Dagons to pick up and become Quebec residents, but they aren’t packing their bags for la belle province just yet.

“We have fantasies of moving to one of these small Quebec towns, but we still like L.A. and that’s definitely our home. People have this perception that L.A. is just about the entertainment industry, but there is a lot going on in the city with a lot of interesting things happening that are far away from what people would see just walking down the Sunset Strip.”

WITH LE KID AND LES MARINELLIS AT
QUAI DES BRUMES ON FRIDAY,
SEPT. 5, 9 P.M., $7