Junk's not dead

>> The trash-heap treasures of Toronto's FemBots

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

A couple of months ago, I reported back from New York's CMJ festival, and among the highlights I mentioned was a low-key but fascinating act from Toronto called the FemBots. A strange juxtaposition of inconsolable sadness and deadpan silliness--the tunes were surreal alt.country laments and bordertown murder ballads, but the only "legitimate" instrumentation was guitar and violin. Beyond that, there was a musical saw, a failed balloon-fart solo, budgetronica, fucked-up tape loops and a Teddy Ruxpin doll singing a Weakerthans cover.

"A lot of it was born from trying to find everything musical," says FemBot Brian Poirier, "rather than finding music in traditional instruments. When sampling came around, it was great. You could make a song out of anything. What did people do? They sampled other songs! They sampled good grooves and snare sounds. I don't understand--you can make a song out of, I don't know, lightning bolts or something. Anything you could possibly find."

Beyond the creative aspect, "bare-bones guy" Poirier and his cohort Dave McKinnon, production whiz and hearse driver, parade a musical philosophy that's fiscally and ecologically sound. In their books, Value Village is a good source of gear, but the best deals turn up on garbage day.

"FemBots reduce, reuse, recycle," continues Poirier. "If you're an independent musician, you gotta learn to do everything really cheap. We've adopted that way and we've survived fairly well. We can continue recording and rehearsing and doing stuff basically for nothing. It's just that anything important to you takes a long time. It's such an involved process, just trying to sort out noise. We'll spend four or five hours trying to get one stupid noise."

That stupid noise will then make its way to McKinnon's reel-to-reel machine, often forming the basis of a tune. "When we started, before reel-to-reel machines became popular again, it was a lot cheaper. I found one we used to use behind my friend's grandparents' barn. We keep going through them, though--we'd buy one at a garage sale, it would last for one show and the next, it would break and Dave would be kicking across the stage."

But what's up with the Teddy Ruxpin? You know, the friendly, singing teddy-bear from a few years back--not known for doing Prairie-core covers? Poirier spills the beans: "There's a line into him and it's in stereo. One channel is the story on the tape and the other channel doesn't go through the speaker. It's just tones which make his eyes and mouth move.

"We opened up for the Weakerthans at their CD launch--in Winnipeg, where they're from--and we pulled out the Teddy Ruxpin. There's 500 people thinking, 'What the hell's gonna happen?' Then the song starts--you shoulda seen the utter confusion. They have a really young audience, kids brought up totally on computers. To me, that's a mystery, because you don't see anything happen. Something clicks and all this information's passed around. But then they see a Teddy Ruxpin, which is just a mechanical thing opening and closing its mouth, and it just scared the hell out of them."

With that, Poirier illuminates the FemBot's true motivation, in a quiet, impassive voice: "We just looooove confusion."

FemBots open for Mishima at Cabaret on Wednesday, Feb. 21, and join Lederhosen Lucille at Jailhouse on Thursday, Feb. 22, 9pm, $5