Neverending White Lights: Black Celebration

NWL main man Daniel Victor looked into a different heart of darkness to create his second album

I'm about to give up on Daniel Victor. I've been sitting at the back of Toronto's Rivoli for the last 35 minutes, coveting other people's food as it makes its way to various tables. Just as I'm about to reschedule, he arrives, and he's not alone. Magneta Lane vocalist/guitarist Lexi Valentine is with him, and they look a bit worse for wear.

"Sorry, sorry, I know. I thought I lost something, but it was in my purse. We were out kinda late last night," Victor sheepishly admits with a grin.

Victor is the mastermind behind Neverending White Lights, an ambitious and unique musical undertaking. While the Windsor, Ont. native writes, records and produces everything under the NWL moniker, he seeks out distinct vocalists for most every track. His Act I: Goodbye Friends Of The Heavenly Bodies debut featured a diverse roster that included Raine Maida, 311's Nick Hexum and, most famously, Alexisonfire's Dallas Green. The album exploded with the help of Green, who guested on NWL's biggest track, "The Grace." In the wake of the chart-topping single, Victor was nominated for a whole host of industry accolades, including a nod for new artist of the year at the 2007 Juno Awards, and he scored a win for favourite single of the year at the Indie Awards. Now Victor's focus lies with his sophomore effort, the newly released Act II: The Blood And The Life Eternal.

Neverending White Lights aren't typical in either their conception or execution. In order to complete Act II, Victor says that he holed up in his basement studio in Windsor with sound engineer Larry Thompson — someone whom Victor describes as "literally, a genius" — for 400 straight days. Victor didn't share any of his work with anyone until he was ready to bring completed songs to his guest vocalists. All the while, he strove towards a cohesive theme for the record.

"I didn't get into this being an artist, lead singer-type. I got into this being a producer," says Victor. "I wanted to make a record that was a unifying piece of work, start to finish. I implemented different guest vocalists because I thought it would be more interesting than most other albums. And the trick is to approach it with the producer's hat on."

NEW DAWN FADES
Despite an edgier tempo and compositions that are more textured and subtle, the body of songs that make up Act II are distinctly Victor, a man who, according to Valentine, "can make anything depressing." For his latest turn, Victor worked with another equally varied group of vocalists, including Hawksley Workman, Melissa Auf Der Maur, Sune Rose Wagner (The Raveonettes), Valentine and the one man who made the cut on both records, Jimmy Gnecco of Ours.

"I guess I thought it would be interesting to have the guest who closed out the first album open up the second," muses Victor. "He's a really close friend of mine. I feel very connected to him musically and also on a friendship level. And he's got this voice that is just absolutely phenomenal. 'Dove Coloured Sky' [the song Gnecco lends his vocals to] is a masterpiece. It's probably the best song of my career and it needed this soaring eagle of a vocalist, and he was my go-to-guy on that. I said, 'Jimmy, you have to sing this song.'"

Making the best song of his career wasn't an entirely painless process though, as Victor explains.

"It wasn't easy," admits Victor. "We did a lot of different takes and he was tired from having been on tour. His throat was sore. We mixed it over and over and over again, trying to get something he liked and something I liked, and it was just really sort of an ordeal. But now that it's right, it's just absolutely stunning."

Though the other collaborations may not have yielded the ultimate song of his career, Victor crossed borders and even oceans to get exactly what he wanted out of people. More often than not, he provided a great deal of guidance for the vocalists, and ultimately had the last say. Among the contributing artists who lived abroad were Wagner and Catherine Wheel's Rob Dickinson. Both lent unique vocals to their respective cuts, but their geographical distance from Windsor posed unique challenges for Victor.

"A lot of the time I'm not in the room with the artist," explains Victor. "Dickinson, he's out in England or L.A. and it might not be cost-effective to actually fly out there and spend all the money when he could just do it in his bedroom on a laptop and just send me the vocal files. They [the artists] want to know what way to approach it, so I give them my best input and let them do what they're doing.

"I knew [Wagner] had this lilting soft voice, but he's used to being drenched in reverb. I just wanted to explore him on a really dramatic piece of work. He did this piano ballad with me, which you would never expect him to do, and that was kind of the idea.

"They [The Raveonettes] don't do a lot in Canada, so here's me working with a band that is relatively foreign in the Canadian market. It's diverse and it's interesting."

When recording sessions happened closer to home, Victor exercised a more hands-on approach in order to get the right vocal aesthetic to match his arching compositions. While sitting in with the likes of Auf Der Maur and Workman, Victor was surprised by the artists' reluctance to take creative license with his music.

"In the other cases where I'm in the room with them, there's a lot of direction. I was right there in the vocal booth with them — you know, singing to them — which I thought I would have to do much less in terms of, like, telling them what to do because I wanted them to have more creativity. But they actually wanted that guidance there.

"Hawksley was a lot of fun, very open to experimenting. He did 12 different takes of random yodeling and shouting and singing, basically improv on a piece of music that is six minutes long."

When it comes to his experience with Valentine, it seems a bit more complicated. There have been reports that the two share an on-again, off-again relationship. When I ask, Victor shoots a nearly imperceptible but distinctly nervous glance in Valentine's direction. She's absorbed in her pad thai, paying us little to no attention.

"Uh… we're best friends," says Victor. "A lot of people write that [we're in a relationship, but] we're just really, really close."

Valentine appears in the only duet on Act II, "Black Is The Colour Of My True Love's Heart." The track, as the title suggests, can best be described as a soaring and dark eulogy for a dead-on-the-table relationship as told by Victor and Valentine in alternating verse.

"It's like the most depressing song on the album," Victor says with a laugh. "I just thought it would be really interesting to have that sort of balance of conversation between a man and a woman. I wanted to do a duet with somebody, and I'm a really big fan of Magneta Lane and Lexi. She's got a really interesting voice and again, that's the ticket: these artists that have these really interesting characteristics to their vocals, and she is one of ‘em.

"I didn't realize how bleak it was going to turn out. I mean her voice is sad, my voice is sad, the song in general is sad. But I think the album needed that one low point where you go, ‘Oh my god!' And really, I would love to find a song like that on an album."

Victor, who's no longer looking at me but, unconsciously gazing at Valentine, adds, "Then you actually have the story being told by both characters in the song. It's just beautiful."

SHADOWPLAY
Victor still loves "The Grace" because without it he wouldn't be where he is today. It has opened creative doors for him. Most notably, vocalists were easier to come by this time around. Artists actually approached Victor in hopes of securing a spot on Act II (though he won't say who, some didn't make the cut), whereas he used to have to seek them out. But despite a self-confidence that can border on egotistical, the rapid route to success doesn't sit easily with Victor. Nor is he willing to ape himself simply to ensure solid airtime on MuchMusic and repeated spins on alternative radio stations.

"I didn't want to repeat myself in terms of sound," he says. "And if you listen to the new single, ‘Always,' it sounds nothing like 'The Grace,' and that was absolutely intentional. The tempo is way off, I'm singing… It's different than what I had been doing, and that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to change. I wanted people to say, 'Oh, he's off in this direction now.'

"If I had just repeated 'The Grace' as a safe attempt to get another ballad hit single, that would have been in really bad taste. With 'The Grace' hitting #1 and the Juno nomination and the CASBY and the Radio Music Award and the Indie Music Award, I thought it was a little quick in my career. So when I approached Act II it was like, 'Well, you've already been nominated for all this stuff, so you had better make it good.' I also had that feeling, I had written a hit song that everybody knows. Can I do that again and will people expect me to do that again?"

Victor is confident in both his ability and his musical direction when it comes to the execution of Neverending White Lights, and he's not about to hide it. His desire to share what he's going through on a day-to-day basis has led to some extensive blogging in an effort to provide his fans with a glimpse of where his work is coming from. While some artists would shy away from such a personal connection, it's something Victor embraces, in part because it's what he seeks out in the music he likes.

"I'm very in touch with sadness and emotion. I'm a sensitive person. I've always been attracted to music that makes you feel — whatever it is. And the most predominant emotion that music always makes me feel is that melancholic sadness, that longing, that hope. And I've been attracted to writing songs like that because that's what I listen to."

bonus sidebar
The Top Five Collaborations In Rock

In honour of Neverending White Lights' collaborative ethos, Chart compiled a list of some of our favourite rock collaborations:

1. David Bowie and Queen "Under Pressure" Seriously, who doesn't love this song?

2. PJ Harvey and Thom Yorke "The Mess We're In" This is the antithesis of a mess.

3. Kevin Drew and J. Mascis "Backed Out On The…" Indie god of old, meet indie god of new.

4. David Bowie and Arcade Fire "Wake Up" That's right, Bowie, twice.

5. Johnny Cash and Joe Strummer "Redemption Song" Two icons playing a Bob Marley song. This one speaks for itself.

The following is Chart's November 2007 cover story. To purchase the issue, go to the Chart Shop.