How Two Hours Traffic Have Changed

09/11/09 12:00pm

by Scott Bryson (CHARTattack)

For a while, it looked as if Two Hours Traffic might be able to coast on their Little Jabs album indefinitely.

The Charlottetown-based four-piece owned the summer of 2007. It seemed like everyone in the country was simultaneously humming along to the chorus of "Heroes Of The Sidewalk." "Jezebel" and "Stuck For The Summer" were let loose soon after, and without much effort, Two Hours Traffic found themselves bona fide successes on MuchMusic and mainstream radio as well as with the considered-trendy indie crowd.

As news of their infectious pop trickled southward, the quartet — singer/guitarist Liam Corcoran, singer/guitarist Alec O'Hanley, bassist Andrew MacDonald and drummer Derek Ellis — also hit the American teen romance jackpot, when their songs began popping up on almost-hip shows like Gossip Girl, Smallville and The O.C. Just recently, "Stuck For The Summer" was chosen as the theme song for a new MTV reality show.

There were awards, too — best pop recording at the East Coast Music Awards, alternative rock recording of the year and group of the year at the Music P.E.I. Awards — collected after countless nominations at just about every awards gala in Canada.

After all the accolades and a couple of cross-country tours, Two Hours Traffic still had a good half an album's worth of songs that they could have milked, Moby Play-style, for the remainder of the decade. Instead, they made their way Halifax, back into the arms of their famous-in-his-own-right producer, Joel Plaskett, to record Little Jabs' follow-up, Territory.

"A lot of people took notice of Little Jabs," says Corcoran. "There was definitely some pressure in the recording process [for Territory] — it was a little bit stressful. I think that ultimately helped the recording because we knew we really had to deliver on this one."

Although most every band in the country would sell their souls to have a man like Plaskett produce their album, and although Plaskett was behind the boards for Little Jabs, the Nova Scotian singer/songwriter wasn't an immediate choice as producer for the new disc.

"This time around," says Corcoran, "we all sat down and talked about it. It wasn't a sure thing that we were going to go with Joel again. We looked around at different options that we had. At this point, we wanted to stay with a Canadian producer, just for money reasons and things like that.

"We didn't feel that we'd really hit our potential with Joel yet. The better we know each other, the better the working relationship gets. So, we thought in the end, why mess with a good thing?"

Two Hours Traffic may not have messed with the staffing for Territory, but they did make some noticeable changes to their sound. They're no longer the little band that could, and their music has grown to reflect that. The songs are polished, the drums have more bounce than they used to, and there's more focus on structure than on energy.

It's likely they'd have fielded complaints either way: don't change enough and you're labeled stagnant; change too much and fans feel alienated.

"We knew we wanted to be different," Corcoran says, "and that ended up being a lot more keyboard. Alec played a lot of piano and keyboard. He's a really good piano player but we hadn't really showed that off on any of the early records.

"We kept a lot of empty space in, that on previous records we would have filled up. I think that listening to certain bands — Spoon being one — they leave a lot of empty space and it causes this cool, eerie thing. We wanted that feel on some of the songs. So you'll notice there's not as much guitar layering as there might have been on some earlier records.

"We also used a lot of distance with the recordings. We wanted things to sound like the guitar wasn't right in your face, or maybe the keyboard is off in the distance a little bit.

"Listening to the same music in the van for two years, we sort of had the same ideas. There are certain things that we all like and I think we just tried to use some of those ideas in our own recording this time around."

Lyrically, Territory is also unlike anything the band have made before. They still spend a lot of time singing about relationships, but they're no longer addressing the ladies in their songs as "baby."

"It was a lot of the down side of relationships, this time around," Corcoran says. "Maybe not so much about the happy times, but the darker times. We explored that on maybe three or four songs. It definitely has a darker turn to it."

Territory's songs also address religion and depression, but the album isn't a total downer.

"We didn't want to have it all dark," Corcoran adds. "There's a song called 'Happiness Burns,' which is basically about a really perfect situation, a really great day or a perfect moment. We tried to balance it a little bit but didn't steer away from a dark topic if it came up.

"That's a relative term. Dark for us probably isn't dark for another band."