The Old Soul Dig For Gold

Fearless Stoner Popsters Get More Polished On New Album

It’s hard to avoid the feeling you’ve been wasting your life after having a
conversation with The Old Soul’s founder and primary member, Luca Maoloni.

As if it weren’t enough that he wrote and played nearly every note on the new Old Soul album, Gold, he also found the time to start working on a self-titled “solo” record and a third disc that just sounds too odd to be real.

“I’m doing a food album — music to cook to,” he says excitedly, as if it were a logical next step in his career. “It’s just kind of a soundtrack to cooking. It’ll have more shout-alongs. I like to cook and when I cook, I like to make up stupid songs.”

If one could see the inside of Maoloni’s brain, there’s a good chance it would look very different than a regular human being’s. A piano prodigy at a very young age, the now-30-year-old musician seems able to create sprawling pop masterpieces at will. Myth has it that one of the songs on The Old Soul’s debut record was arranged by Maoloni in a dream and then recorded in an hour upon waking. His creative process for Gold was similarly effortless.

“This time around it was fully realized. I knew exactly what I wanted to do,” he states matter-of-factly. “I wouldn’t even practise it. Everything was in my head and I just went in and the first couple of takes, it was done."

There’s a certain level of fearlessness that a man in Maoloni’s position has to possess. Already unconcerned that the explosive, cacophonous chamber pop of the first Old Soul disc might be a difficult meal to swallow, Maoloni upped the ante by including a cover of Brian Wilson’s “Vege-Tables” because he didn’t think Wilson got it right. That debut disc was well-received and garnered The Old Soul comparisons to Guided By Voices, The Polyphonic Spree and The Flaming Lips.

Unwilling to let his music be categorized for long, Maoloni decided that a change was in order and took a different approach when making Gold.

“I wanted to get rid of the horns and the guitar,” he recalls. “I wanted to stay away from the straight pop aesthetic that I was holding on to for the last little while. I wanted to make it more challenging but darker. I know I didn’t want it to have that straight-up ‘60s vibe. I really made sure that it wasn’t like that.”

Though Maoloni would be the first to admit that he’s his own worst critic, some of the changes he made on Gold were prompted by feedback he was getting from the public.

“I know I wanted to do things better this time around,” he concedes. “People last time were like, ‘Well, it’s too all over the place and he can’t really stay on something for too long.’ I figured, if people don’t like that aspect then I’ll try and change it, right?”

Fans of the original Old Soul sound need not worry. Maoloni refers to Gold as a “more accessible” album, but his trademark gleeful, zig-zagging pop is still present on the new disc, albeit in a restrained form.

“I want to keep myself on my toes,” he says. “When I listen to music myself, I like to be challenged, so I figure that’s what I’d like to do... I love listening to my own music so I want to make sure that I can listen to it and it doesn’t fade away fast and get boring.”

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Now That’s A Social Scene

Maoloni has no shortage of friends to play instruments when The Old Soul hit a stage. Membership in The Old Soul live band has included gadabout multi-instrumentalist Paul Aucoin of The Hylozoists, as well as Jay Anderson, Juri Biondic, Matt McClaren, Nick Taylor, Andrew Innanen, Michael Johnson, Jo-Ann Goldsmith, Andrew Zalameda, Robert Sinko and Brendan Howlett.

This feature article is from the October 2007 issue of Chart Magazine. You can purchase the issue in the Chart Shop.