Spiral Beach: Not Paint By Numbers

12/08/08 4:03pm

by Natalia Manzocco (CHARTattack)

Toronto's Spiral Beach owe their loyal local following to their spastic, theatrical live shows. But with a new album to promote, their parties have been getting even weirder.

"Did you see the part before we played our set when we gave out paintbrushes and jars of paint in primary colours and rolled around in slow-motion, painting each other in this huge, seductive pile of people?" asks guitarist Airick Woodhead after a CD release show held in a tent at Toronto's Trinity Bellwoods Park. "It was packed to the tits later on."

After two years of touring with their new material, the teenage avant-rock quartet — who also feature keyboardist/vocalist Maddy Wilde, bassist Dorian Wolf and drummer Daniel Woodhead — are set to release their new LP, Ball. The band holed up in a barn near Hamilton, committing songs to tape that they'd spent two years playing live. "Some of the Ball stuff is really old," says Daniel.

"We'll probably bang out another record soon," continues Airick. "We never really stop writing."

But that isn't the only big project the band's cooking up.

"We had an idea a while ago that we would set up a gigantic Plexiglass bubble, and then play inside the bubble," says Daniel. "And we could cover the bubble in black-light tape and turn off the lights, or maybe fill the bubble with smoke. That's something we've been planning to do for a while."

This Listen Up article is from the November 2007 issue of Chart Magazine. You can purchase the issue in the Chart Shop.