Oh No Forest Fires Are Guitarded

11/18/08 5:35pm

by Kate Harper (CHARTattack)

"There's this game where you put a blindfold on and you just run as fast as you can, and either you hit something, you fall down, you run into traffic, or you hit a tree. These are all the options," says Oh No Forest Fires guitarist/singer Rajiv Thavanathan.

"Or you keep running so long as there's room. More likely, you'll get attacked by a bear or you'll trip over something."

Not many bands would use this kind of description when talking about their live show, but then not many bands would also describe their music as "guitarded." But Oh No Forest Fires aren't your average guitar-bass-drums band. Thavanathan says that he and his bandmates — guitarist Brock Swanek, singer/bassist Matt Del Buono and drummer Adam Nimmo — are still having trouble classifying their music as anything other than "guitar-driven indie rock."

"A lot of people want to be like, 'Oh, you can't classify our music!'" Thavanathan says. "But it's actually kind of a bad thing, 'cause when you're trying to explain your music to someone who's interested and asks what you sound like, and I have to go, 'Oh, I don't know, like guitars, really loud guitars and we get really sweaty,' that's not really a good thing. Sometimes labels are a good thing.

"It's really great that it sounds maybe a little bit different or whatever, but sometimes it helps to be able to explain your music to someone who's actually hearing it at that moment, you know?"

If you pick up Oh No Forest Fires' recently released The War On Geometry debut album, maybe you can figure out what they sound like and slap your own tag on them. The title comes from Geometry Wars, a demo game for Xbox 360. Thavanathan says the band, who consist of ex-members of Five Blank Pages, Fox Jaws and The Most Serene Republic, settled on the name because it's rooted in their strongest bonding experience as a band.

"We were hanging out at Adam's house and most of us were starting to get a little drunk and we were playing Xbox. We were all hugging each other when we'd get certain achievements in the game, and at the end of it, we're like, 'Man, we gotta name our album after the game.' I was just like, 'Why don't we call it The War On Geometry?' Everyone's like, 'Yup.'

"We wanted to pick an album title that meant a lot to the four of us, and there's nothing more beautiful than me, Matt, Brock and Adam playing video games and actually, like, screaming at the TV."

Oh No Forest Fires recorded the disc over three days in Moneen' singer/guitarist Kenny Bridges' basement in Brampton, Ont. The band settled on recording the vocals with Bridges (an old friend to some of them) after he came to one of their shows.

"We were trying to think about who we trust and who we look up to," Thavanathan says.

"I think our songs are pretty high energy, and [Moneen are] the sort of band that are pretty high energy, and he has a sense of melody. And this is going to sound really stupid, but he knows how to sing, and at the time, we didn't know how to sing and he helped mold us into people who could not just carry a melody, but do harmonies and stuff like that. It just made more sense. We wanted it to be more of a friend atmosphere."

The album also features a guest appearance from Hey Rosetta! violinist Kinley Dowling. The Hey Rosetta!-Oh No Forest Fires connection comes down to simple DNA: Thavanathan and Hey Rosetta! cellist Romesh Thavanathan are brothers. Since some of Hey Rosetta!'s members regularly stay at Thavanathan's house when they're in Toronto, that made it pretty easy to get Dowling to lend her violin talents to the album.

"I was in my room doing some mixing while they were over one day, and just doing my own recording at the house, and she kind of poked her head in and went, 'Oh, what was that?'" Thavanathan says. "And I said, 'The new record.'

"She said, 'Oh, cool! Can I play on it?' and I said, 'Yeah, sure.' Literally, it was as simple as that."

You can see Oh No Forest Fires with their friends in Hey Rosetta! and Museum Pieces on Wednesday at Toronto's Horseshoe Tavern. Oh No Forest Fires will also play The Mansion in Barrie, Ont. with Brett Caswell & The Marquee Rose and The Junction on Dec. 11.