Charles Spearin Talks Happiness

02/12/09 3:07pm

by Scott Bryson (CHARTattack)

Enter "happiness project" into a Google search and, in addition to Charles Spearin's debut solo album, you'll find information on an in-the-works book about living life to its fullest and a website for a collective of psychologists, life coaches and ministers that run self-help seminars.

It's tempting to dismiss the study of happiness as feel-good bunk with examples like these. Even Spearin had some initial reservations about the subject.

"I thought it was dorky at first, or a little naive," he says. "The notion of happiness sounds like something you talk about with little kids.

"But there's more to it than that. It's what connects all living things. Everyone wants happiness, whether it's through sophisticated means or simple means."

Spearin's The Happiness Project, which was released this week, investigates the common ground between music and speech. The Do Make Say Think and Broken Social Scene mainstay invited several of his neighbours over to discuss happiness, for what he initially labelled a "musical sketch of the neighbourhood."

He recorded those conversations and later built songs around interview snippets in an attempt to complement his neighbours' voices with instruments that seemed to match the cadence and intonations of their speech.

"I've been interested in making music out of speech for a long time," Spearin says. "A couple of years ago, I actually had a bit of time on my hands during the summer and it just kept coming up, so I thought I'd get started with it.

"I wanted to add some sort of philosophical nature to the conversations without getting too political or religious, or anything like that, so happiness became a very comfortable and very friendly way of having some kind of connecting point, so that all the conversations could have some sense of unity to them.

"It was really interesting to get my neighbours' perspectives, and I was amazed by how profound some of them were."

While The Happiness Project's overall concept is unique in indie rock circles, the disc's music isn't far off from the jazzy post-rock Spearin makes with Do Make Say Think. That he branched out on his own for this album certainly doesn't mean he hasn't also been busy working with his bandmates.

"We're recording," he says. "We've got another record coming out, probably this year."

Spearin has a handful of shows lined up so he and a full band can bring his solo record to life. The vocal components will, of course, be played from recordings.

"It'd be kind of tricky to get my neighbours out on tour with me," he says.

Here's where you can witness the live incarnation:

March 11 Toronto, ON @ The Music Gallery w/Laura Barrett
March 12 Toronto, ON @ The Music Gallery w/Muskox
March 13 Montreal, QC @ Il Motore w/Andrew Whiteman and Julian Brown
March 15 New York, NY @ Le Poisson Rouge w/Verge Ensemble, Todd Reynolds & Evan Ziporyn Group