The Cliks Brush Off The Dirt

Success is often unexpected, and it can sometimes catch bands off guard. Adjusting to the somewhat artificial environment that's created by being on tour can be tough, which The Cliks found out when touring behind 2007's Snakehouse.

Singer/guitarist Lucas Silveira talked to CHARTattack about how these experiences made their way on to The Cliks' new album, Dirty King, and what he's learned from them.

CHARTattack: What influenced Dirty King, and are there any common themes running through it?
Lucas Silveira: The writing process was a kind of a little bit different than anything I've ever done.

You know, they have this saying in the music industry, which is you have your entire life to write your first album and six months to write your next one, and it didn't feel like I had six months to write this one. It felt like I had two.

So it was a little scary, to tell you the truth, because I'd been on the road for so long, I wasn't used to being on the road and I started figuring out that people don't write on the road and if they do, it's very, very random.

So it was a little strange because I felt like I was being really, really rushed through, sort of, like, emotions, and the only emotions that I'd been really hitting had been about the confusion of being on the road, and I think that that was and is a running theme in the album.

Then when we got asked to go to Weed, California to go and record the album, and there is where I think I really sat down and for the first time I had two weeks to sort of do pre-production and do some writing and it was there that it all sort of came together.

We had, probably, I don't know, I think 14 songs when we went there, and I think of those 14 songs, probably about five of them made it on the album and I wrote about nine songs in two weeks, which is something that I've never, ever done.

Sylvia Massy, who produced the album, she had this way of just sort of making you feel really free and open. This town Weed was so small. There was nothing going on around there, and I think it was what I needed, was just to absolutely be away from everything — from the city, from noise, from checking my email every five minutes to see if I was on tour tomorrow, you know?

I think the theme for the album is, it's sort of about this confusion of... sort of with the duality that I experienced, and I think our band experienced as well when we first hit the road. We sort of hit the road with our feet first and just started running. It wasn't like it was slowly — it was just, like, boom!

What happens when you're on the road is you're in this world of — it's not really real. It's a very surreal world and you're meeting fans and you're playing every night and you're always rushing, and there's really no time to sort of catch up with the emotions that go along with that, and I think what happens is when you come home for really short periods of time, is your body needs to catch up to rest, and your mind needs to catch up to what just happened. But by the time you're almost starting to do that, you're back on the road.

So it makes you feel really fucked up and it makes you sort of feel like you don't know what's going on around you, so there was a lot of confusion, and I think in that confusion came a lot of distrust and there came a lot of not understanding what was going on in myself and what was going on with people around me.

So it sort of creates paranoia, and for some reason, as well, there's the running theme of just losing your trust in your friendships and the people around you because you just don't know why they're there anymore. There's all kinds of stuff. Every time I do interviews I feel like I'm doing, like, a therapy session.

Musically, how would you say it's different?
This album has a lot of songs on it that I thought weren't quite, you know, Cliks songs. I had in my head this idea of, "I'm a songwriter, so I write all kinds of songs." I write anything from soul to classical to, you know, whatever.

I always thought the Cliks is a brand, so I have to sort of write this particular kind of music, or when I write, I have to pick through them to find the songs that I think will fit the band.

Sylvia made me see that it's not the songs that you write for The Cliks that are Cliks songs. It's the songs that you write that are Cliks songs. It's how we make them. On this album, there's a song that's sort of very waltzy, it's a bit of a Beatles throwback, there's a lot of string arrangements in it.

Morgan's drumming is — I can't even explain to you how well her drumming came out. It's probably my favourite thing on the entire album. There's a little bit more of a soulful angle to it as well with some songs.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that from song to song to song there's a different element of, like, genre almost. So it kind of takes you along a little bit more of a trip than Snakehouse. Snakehouse had sort of like a feel throughout the entire album that was very cohesive and maintained. I'm not trying to say that this album isn't cohesive. It's cohesive in a very different way.

What would you say you learned last time on the road that will help you this time?
Number one, no drinking. Bad, bad combination. Touring and drinking are a really bad thing. For me, anyway, and for most people, but they just don't want to admit it. Get as much sleep as possible, and leave the road on the road.

You have to learn to separate that life from this life, and you have to give yourself a transitional period, even if it's just, you know, like asking a friend at home for one or two days of just literally getting home and doing nothing but sleeping because that really, really helps, and then just slowly coming into your life and being very normal when you get home.

This is a skill that, you know, me and the band are still working on, but we're really, really trying to get a hold of. It's really hard to come back from such high energy to feeling quote unquote normal or sitting down and watching T.V. and drinking wine, like in a mellow environment. That seems so out of context, and so you have to do normal things, like do your laundry, wash the dishes, vacuum a bit. Being normal, which I love. I love being normal.