by LORRAINE CARPENTER

With its vivacious pop sound and a lyrical feast for the imagination, A New Devotion is both an epic record and a small coup for the High Dials. It's their first release on New York's Rainbow Quartz label, who launch the disc worldwide at the end of the month, and it's the debut recording for High Dials newcomers Robbie MacArthur (guitar) and Robb Surridge (drums). But for the band's founding members, frontman Trevor Anderson and bassist/sitarist Rishi Dhir, it's the realization of a two-year mission, a mission to explore strange new worlds of concept albums, sonic metamorphoses and fresh monikers.

They used to be the Datsons, a well-known act in the local scene at the turn of the millennium, a neo-mod band whose annual Allnighter parties were sponsored by scooter companies and attended by boys in ties and girls in white boots. Then a little band called the Datsuns rocketed out of New Zealand and onto the front pages of NME, subsequently receiving spin in half the music mags and papers in the Western world. Not wanting to abandon the tag that had been theirs over four years and two albums - their self-titled, 1997 debut and 2000's See - the Datsons briefly became the Datson Four. But finally, due to ongoing confusion with their Kiwi counterparts, the quartet jumped the Dats*n ship and adopted "the High Dials," a name picked from a hat by none other than their friend and supporter, Little Steven of the E Street Band, also known for his radio show, "Little Steven's Underground Garage."

And with the reborn band's imminent hometown record launch, the Mirror spoke to Anderson and Dhir about their "mod, mod, mod" past, their would-be hippie/prog future, and that mysterious, enigmatic concept.

Mirror: So tell me about the album's character, Silas. How autobiographical is his story?

Trevor Anderson: Well, I've always written about the same character, more or less. One thing that attracted me to the Kinks was that the characters in the songs never knew how to fit into the stifling, boring world around them, and Silas is basically a projection of my frustration in trying to find a place in the world. Obviously, I'm pursuing music but it's not a conventional career and it might never be my main source of income. So, out in the real world, it feels like you're constantly betraying yourself just to make ends meet and sometimes that creates a kind of schizophrenia. This album tries to tell that story on a big scale by following this guy and his adventures, and most of those adventures are in his head. I exaggerated the outside world, which is this really nightmarish, horrible place, and how detached from that world this guy is. He gets so lost in his fantasy that he basically goes mad and, in the end, has some revelations and realizes... actually I don't know what he realizes. I'm still trying to figure that out myself.

M: Fair enough. As it's presented, the concept is fairly subtle, but my understanding is that you nearly went much further with it.

TA: At my most ambitious, I wanted to make a short film about Silas, and then we were going to release the album on vinyl with a comic book inside that tells the whole story. That never got off the ground, but I did write out a storyboard for some of my artist friends - the collages and the artwork in the booklet came from me trying to create the aesthetic - and that forced me to think about the narrative. But I'm not talking about the Genesis or Rush style of concept albums, I'm looking more to some of the records of the '60s - not Tommy, but the Pretty Things' S.F. Sorrow and the Zombies' Odessey & Oracle. Those albums are filled with secrets, and the more you listen to them, they kind of work their way into your subconscious. That was what I wanted from this album - hidden dimensions, a kind of mystery you can unravel if you dig a little deeper.

M: So will there be a sequel?

TA: No, I think I got it out of my system. Anyway, you walk a fine line when you're doing something like this. Rock 'n' roll can easily over-reach itself and become really pretentious, when it's just primal pop music that's there to excite you and to dance to. If the lyrics stimulate some thoughts in you as well, like Dylan and the Beatles did, then that's great, but you can't let yourself get lost in the world of ideas.

Quadrophobia?

M: With the new band name, are you taking the opportunity to distance yourself from See and the mod association of the Datsons days?

TA: Oh, we love See. We sell it at our shows, we still play songs from it - it got great reviews! The thing is, it was just another album for us but it kind of defined us as something we weren't. There's a clear connection between See and this album, but you can hear the evolution too. We're not running away, by any means, we're just really excited to break out into something bigger and better.

M: And you've scrapped your annual Mod Allnighter party.

Rishi Dhir: Well, we didn't have time for it, but that was also a very conscious decision to step away. The old band was so pigeonholed as mod, mod, mod that people would basically show up to our shows on scooters, singing "My Generation."

TA: We never totally fit into that, but we were embraced by the '60s circuit scene, they've been really good to us and we've played some great gigs. It's just that we always saw ourselves as much more than that.

M: How did you see yourself back then?

TA: We've always had a very strong vision for the band. We never just go into the studio and say, "Let's see what happens." On See, we gave ourselves very strict limitations, like an artist choosing his palette of colours. We said, "Let's do a lo-fi, eight-track recording of really basic, R&B-based rock 'n' roll," 'cause we listened to nothing but soul at the time. It was a rebellion against the music we were hearing on the radio, it was our form of, "Fuck you all, we're gonna do something that's so out of whack, we're gonna pay homage to all the music we love." Now I'm not gonna deny that we're still a band with huge retro influences, that's what we've been and always will be. But we're restless people, we're never gonna be satisfied with something so one-dimensional.

Getting better all the time

M: So what was the master plan with A New Devotion, apart from the lyrical concept?

TA: This time, the vision changed halfway through, which is kinda cool. Originally, the plan was to make a psychedelic dance album, kind of like the Stone Roses, but then more and more of these gentle songs with softer textures started creeping in. A band changes so much in two years - there were personal changes, new influences, and we took on two new members, Robbie and Robb. That totally transformed our arrangements, because the band had always been a three-piece, so the songs just grew and grew as we jammed them over the years.

M: Are there any current bands you feel a kinship with, or that you're particularly influenced by now?

TA: The Flaming Lips for sure, Super Furry Animals, Wilco, Radiohead. There's just so much music out there that I really identify with and that I feel is trying to do something more than basic rock 'n' roll about chicks, booze and cars. I mean, we like those things on the side - especially our guitarist, he's been the wild boy in the band - but we just don't sing about them.

M: I read a weird review of one of your L.A. shows that pegged you as part of the post-Strokes crew.

RD: Yeah, they said something like, "They belong in glossy trend magazines." I found that really funny. We've never been called poster boys before, so it's kind of cool.

M: Are you being hounded by teen magazines?

RD: It's coming. But, more than anything, everybody's calling us hippies here on the west coast.

M: Well, Trevor's got that beard.

RD: But even without seeing us, we're getting, "Grateful Dead without the tie-dye," "California sunshine pop," Beta Band comparisons. How different is that?

TA: Yeah, they're saying the most outrageous things, but in a really complimentary way. We're hearing hippie, psychedelic, even prog rock, which is hilarious.

RD: I guess we'll always have some kind of retro tag associated with us. In terms of good, classic pop songwriting and a '60s aesthetic, we are a retro band, but one that's always looking forward. I think this is the right time for us. We've never been as good live as we are right now and, musically, everything's just very positive. When we're on tour, people ask us what the Montreal music scene is like, and we're never quite sure what to say, but our typical answer is that it's a great place for a band to grow up.

With Starvin' Hungry at Café Campus on
Thursday, August 21, 9PM, $8

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