Breakout 2007: Kill The Lights

07/02/09 2:04pm

by Caitlin Hotchkiss (CHARTattack)

Hometown: Toronto, Ontario
Official Site: www.killthelights.ca

Sound:
You know that post-rock, melodic-guitars-and-aching-vocals style that was seemingly bred somewhere in England and for which hipster critics like to describe with adjectives like "angular" and "frantic?" That.

Why?
When presented with the very MuchMusic-esque question of "What makes you guys cool?" Kill The Lights' affable drummer Yann Geoffroy takes a minute to think — and chuckle — before answering on behalf of the quintet.

"Well, first of all, we are really nice people. Plus we're relatively good-looking, and that's basically what you need for a band, right?"

OK, seriously now. "We take pride in being good musicians, and we're always striving for a beautiful melody in a song that invokes a feeling. We don't write songs about how George Bush invaded Iraq or something like that. We write songs about feelings, and so our music comes from an honest place. For that reason, people will dig it."

And it looks like Kill The Lights will have a solid chance to get their music out to the people, as their first official debut album, Buffalo Of Love, gets a Feb. 27 release through MapleMusic. Longtime fans who already have a copy of their indie EP, Winter Asthmatics, may find the latest release the same, yet better. Half of the tracks, including "Skinny White Girls" and "Orestes," are retooled from their original release.

"When we signed with Maple," Geoffroy explains, "they were like, ‘Here's some money, let's do a really good job with this album.' We used a lot of the bed tracks, but we went back into the studio and did a lot of work on the songs, and now they sound way better. We added a lot more keyboards and vocals and harmonies and overdubs and whatever you could think of. Lots of noise. We're big noise fans."

However, in terms of pinning down an actual sound for the band, "we definitely don't want to be pigeonholed," Geoffroy quickly states.

"Just through the writing processes in the few years we've been together, our style has definitely changed greatly. It's very vast, and we're all over the place. I don't want that to be a bad thing, but y'know, I think we can be all over the place and still retain our style — which is inevitable, because we do have these vocals that are very characteristic, plus the way that we play together and the tones that we go for are very identifiable. But in terms of a definite style, I think that we're gonna be very broad."

This feature is from the February 2007 issue of Chart Magazine. To purchase the issue, go to the Chart Shop.