Sunglaciers: It’s Just Regular Nature
Photo credit: Shannon Johnston (@me_onlylouder) - Shot for REVERIE Magazine
Calgary post-punk band, Sunglaciers have released their third studio album, Regular Nature, and as the name suggests, music continues to be a natural aspect of their lives. The album revolves around themes found in the complexities of human emotion. Collaborating with local icon and producer Chad VanGaalen, Sunglaciers have proven that they can evolve and mature as a band. With tracks like ‘Cursed’ and ‘Rotten Teeth’, the lyrics soothe intense emotions, inspire catharcisim, or at the very least, accompany you as the perfect soundtrack during a late night drive with friends. We connected with founding members Evan Resnik and Mathieu Blanchard to hear more about the making behind the new album.
REVERIE: ‘Regular Nature’ is the new album. What inspired the title?
MATHIEU: *laughs*…it’s really stupid really.
EVAN: A bag of chips on a mural in a bar in Toronto.
MATHIEU: We were staying at our friend Brandon’s, who’s a guy in the Toronto music scene there. He lives right by a bar that has a big mural of two people sitting in bed eating snacks. And there’s a big prominent bag of Ruffles in the foreground that says “Regular Nature” in the front. We weren’t right away like “oh ya of course!” but it continues to come up again and we thought “yeah…why not regular nature?” I’m francophone, it’s bilingual which I like. It’s a double entendre, all of our merch has nature stuff like a cow and a banana peel. Evan and Nyssa also speak French. Our label is out of Montreal. So I liked all of those aspects. And it’s silly and fun.
EVAN: And we are just doing what we do. It’s a regular thing for us. It’s natural baby.
Photo credit: Shannon Johnston (@me_onlylouder) - Shot for REVERIE Magazine
REVERIE: What was your relationship with Chad like working on this record?
MATHIEU: He’s hilarious.
EVAN: One of the best weirdos of our generation. You throw something at him and he’ll twist it into something like clay and he’ll spit something back at you that you didn’t even know was part of what you gave him.
MATHIEU: Yeah, he’s so creative and a gem. Very chill, very fun and easy to hang out with. I think the first thing he showed me when we were at the studio was his piss trough. His studio is like a garage and if you go out of it, it backs onto a hill, and it goes into an alley, but the alley is behind the hill. He built a gutter that you can pee into and it goes down the hill.
REVERIE: Just for fun?
MATHIEU: Yeah the studio is just for fun, weird things. He does art in there and music, he has the kids sometimes in there and the floors are painted.
EVAN: The floors light up as well.
REVERIE: Of course they do.
MATHIEU: He’s just making things all the time.
EVAN: I’m not sure if we should reveal his piss trough.
MATHIEU: I mean he was pretty proud of the piss trough.
REVERIE: You led with the single “Cursed”, which is one of my favourites hands down from the record. You also directed the music video for the two singles (the other one being “Fakes”).
EVAN: I think we knew that “Cursed” and “Fakes” were the top two that we wanted to share right away. It included footage I’d compiled on our tour last year…the video for ”Cursed” was made completely on an iphone. And then “Fakes” we shot here at Idle Eyes. And we knew we wanted something with a white background. Kind of 90’s, kind of cheesed, kind of weird. Once I get into the editing room, I don’t even know what I’m going to do. It’s a result of different concepts.
MATHIEU: It’s funny because the inspiration for that video was “Big Bang Baby” by Stone Temple Pilots. Because I loved that video as a kid. Evan hadn’t even re-watched it, since forever ago.
EVAN: We had talked about it and I saw a thumbnail a year and a half ago when we talked about it. And then it just turned out that so many things I put in the “Fakes” video are in “Big Bang Baby”. The shitty tv!? We weren’t leaning on it, but I opened with it. All the different colours in the bridge.
REVERIE: Is this venture into visual work based on the DIY ethos? You’re like ‘okay...let’s just step up to the plate and get it done’?
MATHIEU: That’s exactly what it is. I force him to do it *laughs*. He was always good with visual things and look, music videos cost way too much money! We talk a lot about what we want to sound like as a band. But for everything else it’s just how do we do it as cheaply as possible, and still make it good? So Evan learned how to make music videos, I learned how to record so we could record all of our own music, for that same reason. Also because I love doing it. But we look at the biggest costs of the band: recording and marketing. The videos are a huge part of that and paying for PR, which we don’t do. So we get Mothland to do that and radio.
REVERIE: Right, some of the support comes from your label home, Mothland. I love this relationship and the folks behind it. Can you explain how you joined Mothland?
MATHIEU: Circumstance and the internet. On our first tour out East we played with a band named Yoo Doo Right. It was our Toronto show. We were playing Ottawa the day before and we didn’t have a band so we asked them to join…they are super loud…
EVAN:…and we played a tiny cafe with them in Ottawa too. And glasses were raining down onto the bar and the owner was just sitting there…with the loudest band in the country I would say. Shattered glass everywhere.
MATHIEU: The poor guy was trying to save them. But yeah we asked them to hop on for the show and we were instant pals. A solid year or two later we recorded the record, shopped it around, getting rejected as usual. And then I was like “I just saw that Yoo Doo Right signed to a new record label in Montreal called Mothland, we should ship it to them”. And so we did and they responded back right away saying they’re interested and we should talk in a couple weeks. And that was it, we were in. They’ve gone on to sign so many great bands since. They work super hard. They just have a good mix too. It’s not all psych rock bands or experimental weirdos. There’s Francophone, there’s us. It’s the coolest label out there right now for sure. They could have very easily just signed Montreal bands, but they’ve hit up Toronto, Calgary. They’re not insular.
REVERIE: So the stars aligned for you guys, with hard work of course. It seems like for some local bands, they’re still struggling to get to that next level. It’s hard to breakout of the city! Do you have any advice as you see more bands trying to make it?
MATHIEU: Get on the road. That’s how we got on a label. We met Yoo Doo Right on the road, randomly playing shows out East.
EVAN: Send me a DM, I’ll give you some contacts. Book shows, find other local bands in these places and go. Do it again, and do it again. You’ll continue to meet cool people and find opportunities. And if you don’t, well at the very least, you’ll have the best time.
Photo credit: Shannon Johnston (@me_onlylouder)
REVERIE: Last question: What artist’s are you inspired by? What are your dream collabs?
EVAN: I know a flip switched for us when we saw Mount Kimbie at Sled Island.
MATHIEU: I didn’t know them at all at the time.
EVAN: I knew their record had just came out. But I didn’t know how impactful that live show would be. How they moved around the stage, how they just shared duties and just kept everything moving.
MATHIEU: They had different stations and moved across it so smooth. And I was like damn we need to do that. It was so fun. And it inspired us to go out on tour and do different things and we try to do that with every tour that we do. They’re a big inspiration for us for sure in terms of a live show. We were listening to a lot of McCartney too. We love ‘McCartnery II’. It inspired us to keep things somewhat eclectic and different.
EVAN: We love vibe shifts.
MATHIEU: Also Beak and Portishead. I’m a huge fan of both. A dream collab would be Jeff Burrow from Beak, the drummer, and the producer for Portishead. I’d love to go out to the UK and do a record with him one day.