Real enough

For Montreal’s Hexes & Ohs, two is all it takes

CALLER AND RESPONDER: Hexes & Ohs

By LORRAINE CARPENTER

“It’s nothing a glue gun can’t fix,” says Edmund Lam. He’s kicking himself over dropping the last surviving trophy that Hexes & Ohs were awarded at a Toronto video festival called CraveFest. The duo, also featuring Miss Heidi Donnelly, won three awards for “H-H-Highschool,” namely Best Overall video, Best Production and Best Electronic/Dance/World, Unsigned (despite being signed to Toronto indie label Noise Factory). One trophy went to the video’s director, Alon Isocianu, one was stolen and one is in pieces.

The superstitious may blame a curse—or hex?—for this turn of events, but Lam and Donnelly’s bad luck ends there. In the three years since the release of their debut album, Goodbye Friend, Welcome Lover, their profile has been ascending, with festival dates, regional tours and gigs alongside such acts as Mates of State, Sloan and Au Revoir Simone. And given the spike in confidence and pop appeal plainly audible on their new record, Bedroom Madness, this is definitely a duo on the rise.

The Mirror spoke with Lam about their new approach to pop, and their flirtation with rock.

Mirror: So you’re back as a duo after a brief stint with a drummer. What made you alter your set-up in the first place, and why didn’t it work out for you?

Edmund Lam: When we first started out, we tried to pair ourselves up with similarly set up bands, like laptop bands, but we really identified more with rock bands, so we started playing with them a lot and then it felt like something was missing. Having drums was a lot of fun, there was definitely more energy on stage, but I think we became just another band—guitar, bass, drums. I really wanted to keep that aspect of the duo, so we evolved our set around what we could do as two.

M: So you’re a different kind of duo on stage now than you were at the beginning.

EL: We’re definitely more comfortable. We move around a lot more, we have a lot more energy, we adapted some drums as well. I switch between drums and guitar depending on the song, and Heidi plays synth and bass. And instead of just playing the electronics straight, we have more jams, more improvisation. There’s a loop pedal as well so we let things run and jump on an instrument, which is more fun for us, and hopefully for the audience as well.

M: And that aspect of the show seems to have made its way onto the album.

EL: Yeah, the new songs have the same kind of intensity that we feel works best for us live, and there’s more interaction and dynamic between Heidi and I, more harmonies, more call and response.

M: How about the lyrics? They also appear to be more upfront this time ’round.

EL: I started reverting back to our roots in Halifax pop. I wanted to write more pop songs and for things to be more relatable. The lyrical direction was more about imagery and aesthetics on the last album, and this one is a lot more personal—sometimes autobiographical, sometimes kind of fictional, but deep down, they’re real enough.

WITH THE WORLD PROVIDER AND
CAMAROMANCE AT CLUB LAMBI
ON SATURDAY, SEPT. 27, 9 P.M., $10,
AND WITH CAMAROMANCE, MIA
VERKO AND POSTAGE STAMPS
AT LES 3 MINOTS ON
WEDNESDAY, OCT. 1, 8 P.M.