Pack a peck of percs

The mellifluous mayhem of Toronto’s Pick a Piper

PRETTY, LOUD: Pick a Piper

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

“To my mother’s dismay,” says Brad Weber, drummer number one and director of pedigreed Toronto quartet Pick a Piper, “I was born with drumsticks in my hands.” He’s explaining why drums are the primary—at times, even with all four members playing, the only—instrument in PAP.

“I guess I’ve been the primary song-crafter, so the focus tends to be percussion-based. Angus [Fraser, drummer number two] has also played drums for almost 15 years, so when we bring our music to the stage, we can create an onslaught of beats to our hearts’ content.”

Weber and his notably pipeless Pick a Piper pals (Fraser, bassist Dan Roberts and guitarist Clint Scrivener) also bring the rich, enveloping euphoria found chez Caribou, Weber’s main gig. “In high school, we all got into bands like My Bloody Valentine and Sigur Rós, whose aural landscapes influenced us to aspire to make music differently than the majority of young bands around us. That was one of the things that drew me to Caribou before I even met them.

“[Caribou leader] Dan Snaith has an amazing sense of dynamics, aural space and a unique way of allowing tracks to ebb and flow in a natural way. With Pick a Piper, we’re basically combining that sense of space with a drum and percussion focus, in an attempt to create organic dance music with both primal and modern pop instincts.”

PAP’s lush and lovely jams don’t ebb and flow so much as grow and grow and grow, ultimately bursting into the beat-battery described above. That is to say that an unplugged set by PAP doesn’t necessarily mean a duller, quieter set, as it does for many bands—“We haven’t fully explored what we can do acoustically yet,” Weber says.

It also means that as honeyed and hospitable as the tunes are, they can still get the local constabulary all riled up. “When we played the Trepid House in Waterloo, we actually had to stop because of the noise in their small performance room and cops outside. So we’re still learning how to make the best use of each venue we play.

“The one guarantee is that if we can drum, it will be pretty loud.”

WITH ACE KINCAID AT BARFLY TONIGHT
, THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 9 P.M., $5