Cliks Love Being Normal

05/19/09 2:30pm

by Kate Harper (CHARTattack)

The last two years have been intense for The Cliks.

After the 2007 release of Snakehouse, the band took part in two editions of the queer-friendly True Colours tour (singer/guitarist Lucas Silveira is a transman, while bassist Jen Benton and drummer Morgan Doctor identify as queer), which included Cyndi Lauper, Rufus Wainwright, Tegan And Sara, The Gossip and others. They also frequently opened for The Cult.

When they emerged from the bubble of touring, The Cliks quickly discovered it was time to write their next album.

"You know, they have this saying in the music industry, which is you have your entire life to write your first album and six months to write your next one, and it didn't feel like I had six months to write this one," says Silveira. "It felt like I had two."

Silveira had 14 songs when The Cliks entered a studio in Weed, Calif., but only five of them made it on to Dirty King, which will be released on June 23. That meant he had to write nine more songs in two weeks.

Producer Sylvia Massy (Tool, The Black Crowes) helped Silveira focus his ideas and pushed him and the band to better Snakehouse and improve their musical skills. Silveira feels Dirty King is a superior record.

Musically, Dirty King is much different from Snakehouse. While opener "Haunted" and the title track sound like they'd fit perfectly on the latter album, the waltzy "Red And Blue" is a Beatles throwback and "Not Your Boy" and "Henry" are much more poppy than anything on Snakehouse.

Silveria drew on his experiences on the road and the confusion and "duality" he says he experienced when he wrote Dirty King. He describes touring in a way that makes it sound like a separate world or vortex, and says it's very difficult to detach from it when coming home.

"It's a very surreal world and you're meeting fans and you're playing every night and you're always rushing, and there's really no time to sort of catch up with the emotions that go along with that, and I think what happens is when you come home for really short periods of time, is your body needs to catch up to rest, and your mind needs to catch up to what just happened.

"But by the time you're almost starting to do that, you're already back on the road. So it makes you feel really fucked up and it makes you sort of feel like you don't know what's going on around you, so there was a lot of confusion, and I think in that confusion came a lot of distrust and there came a lot of not understanding what was going on in myself and what was going on with people around me."

That's particularly the case with Dirty King's title track, which Silveira says he wrote after returning from the road.

"The song is about the presentation of coming back to Toronto and coming home to your friends and them all going, 'Wow, oh my God! You've just been on tour with, like, Cyndi Lauper and Debbie Harry and you must feel like you're on top of the world.' And I was like, 'I feel like shit!' And I couldn't understand why I felt like shit.

"I was like, 'Man, this is my dream come true,' and there was a lot of guilt going on in me, and the song is sort of about me trying to kind of save face and keep this persona of mine back in town when it was on the road. It was sort of about that duality that happens, and it's just that: Dirty King. The 'king' was what people were looking at and the 'dirty' was how I felt."

But with experience comes wisdom, and The Cliks are gradually learning how best to deal with the whirlwind experience of touring. Silveira says he'll drink less (or not at all) on the road and will give himself a transitional period when he returns home so he can adjust to his surroundings again.

"It's really hard to come back from such high energy to feeling 'normal' or sitting down and watching TV and drinking wine, like, in a mellow environment. That seems so out of context, and so you have to do normal things, like do your laundry, wash the dishes, vacuum a bit — being normal, which I love. I love being normal."

The Cliks will spend the rest of May opening for the New York Dolls. You can see them here:

May 20 San Diego, CA @ Belly-Up Tavern w/New York Dolls
May 21 Los Angeles, CA @ The Music Box Theatre at Henry Fonda Theatre w/New York Dolls
May 22 Anaheim, CA @ House Of Blues w/New York Dolls
May 24 San Francisco, CA @ Grand Ballroom at The Regency Theater w/New York Dolls
May 26 Portland, OR @ Berbati's Pan w/New York Dolls
May 27 Seattle, WA @ El Corazon w/New York Dolls
May 28 Vancouver, BC @ Richard's On Richards w/New York Dolls
May 30 Salt Lake City, UT @ The Depot w/New York Dolls
May 31 Denver, CO @ Bluebird Theatre w/New York Dolls
June 7 Asbury Park, NJ @ New Jersey Pride
June 18 Toronto, ON @ Buddies In Bad Times Theatre (Xtra 25th anniversary party)
June 19 Toronto, ON @ Yonge-Dundas Square (NXNE)
June 24 Ottawa, ON @ Zaphod Beeblebrox
June 25 Peterborough, ON @ The Montreal House
June 27 Toronto, ON @ South Stage at Toronto Pride
June 28 San Francisco, CA @ San Francisco Pride
July 25 Halifax, NS @ Halifax Pride