Code Pie Are Down With Drive-Ins

MONTREAL — Local six-piece rock outfit Code Pie will release their The Most Trusted Name In Yous album on June 19 via PHD, but anyone in a car with an FM tuner within a 100-metre radius of a building in a grimy area of the city's industrial sector outside of Outremont will be able to hear it on Friday.

"We're trying to create the whole '50s drive-in feel," says singer Enzo Palmero, who will emit the signal from the band's Mile-End recording studio/jam space. "We're not sure how we came up with the idea, but we wanted to do something different.

"It's just about bringing something exciting to those who have seen us play the same venues over and over. We didn't want to repeat the same show again and we wanted to make a big weekend out of our record launch."

Don't tell the CRTC, but during this pirate radio event the band plan to play songs from other acts they enjoy as well, in addition to serving food and beverages. The group will officially launch the album the next night with a concert at La Brique, a hardly-known venue adjacent to their studio.

Code Pie formed three years ago (after previously existing as a two-piece made up of founding members Palmero and Sal Ciolfi) and were eager to complete the follow-up to 2004's This Habit. But Palmero says the process took much longer than expected, almost two years in total. They recorded Most Trusted at Montreal's Hotel2Tango, where studio time was hard to come by.

"The time allotted to us was sparse, but aside from that it took us a lot of time to decide on the mixes," says Palmero. "And eventually we went back to some older mixes, so there was a lot of time wasted."

Things were made more laborious by the fact that all the band members either have full-time jobs or are students, making it difficult to get all six together to record at the same time. It was important for everyone to be together for every moment of recording, Palmero says, because the songs were written democratically.

This was in contrast to the first album, where the male members recorded at drummer Vince Varano's old high school auditorium, with the cello and horns overdubbed afterwards.

In retrospect, Palmero doesn't think This Habit accurately reflected their aggressive live shows, and he refers to it as more of a "minimalist thing with a wall of sound." On the new record, the group tried to produce an urgent, party-like atmosphere.

"When we were recording this album, we weren't really focused on song compositions," explains Palermo. "It was more of a rock sound and we tried to get some big climaxes at the end."

Here are Code Pie's upcoming shows:

June 15 Montreal, QC @ 6574 Durocher (free drive-in listening party)
June 16 Montreal, QC @ La Brique
June 19 Montreal, QC @ Lbsynthe
June 29 Hamilton, ON @ Underground

Here are the songs on The Most Trusted Name In Yous:

"New England"
"The Room"
"Conway Killjoy"
"The Surface"
"The Cost Of Living"
"Joke Song"
"Paradise"
"Trying In The Water"
"New You"
"Gold Rush"
"Kinsey, Are We Even?"
"Svejk"
"B-bootsd (56.41)"
"Home"
"Min Wage Fight"
"Wild Turkey"