Music

Meet May's X3 Artist of the Month: Miracle Fortress

by Nicole Villeneuve

Graham Van Pelt isn’t a fan of the spotlight.

More readily known as Miracle Fortress, he quietly released his debut album, Five Roses, via Secret City Records in 2007, and quickly, the unassuming Stratford, ON-raised and Montreal-based singer/songwriter found himself the subject of high critical praise, even ending up on the 2007 Polaris Music Prize shortlist. His ethereal Brian Wilson-eqsue bedroom pop was discretely helping to lead a return to lo-fi, tuneful, shoegazey trends in indie rock. Van Pelt, however, never expected the attention, let alone the responsibilities that came with it.

“I’ll definitely admit that after making the last record, which is something I did by myself, like, literally in my bedroom, and [then] turned it into a performing and touring rock outfit, there were some growing pains associated with that,” he says on the phone from Montreal. “Some that I never really quite felt all that comfortable with.”

Though Van Pelt was used to performing as part of his other project, Montreal party-pop band Think About Life, the satisfaction of making Five Roses on his own turned into something else entirely when adding other members on stage. Still, for all the tension, it was the opposite—the notion of getting too comfortable—that saw a complete sound transformation on his new second album, Was I the Wave?

“I think after touring that record a lot, I had become a little bit too comfortable with the sounds and I wasn’t really pushing myself to try anything else. So I just sort of tore it all down and started experimenting with tons of different sounds.”

The sounds are nothing like the dreamy guitar haze of Van Pelt’s past—Was I the Wave? is a sampled, synthesized stupor through 80s new wave and modern electro-pop. Its deep percussive bottom anchors Van Pelt’s familiar falsetto and soaring melodies, ones that draw the clearest line between this and his past work (the best example of which is the “Miscalculations,” its sprightly synths competing with the yearning, softly plucked electric guitar, which gets its due distortion in the last few seconds). Initially it’s so arresting because of it’s departure; soon, it’s just engulfing. It’s been four years of waiting, but Van Pelt says it wasn’t exactly that long in the making.

“I just didn’t really make anything long for a long time,” he admits. “I kind of had a bunch of tracks floating around that didn’t exactly fit together as a complete piece, so I just took a bit of extra time to mess around and make sure I had something cohesive.”

And it was, again, a solo venture, Van Pelt recording everything at home or in tour vans through headphones while on the road, sampling bits and pieces as those elements found him. “It was pretty fractured process, but then I just kind of reassembled it fairly quickly over the last few months.”

It’s notable that a process so splintered and synthesized has produced something with the ease and warmth that much of this album has. As a teenager, Van Pelt would make drum loops and sample on the software his parents would let him install on their home computer. It’s always been in his DNA, he says, only this time the influence of longtime favourite artists like Aphex Twin and DJ Shadow is more evident.

“There’s a lot of ways of describing what you’re talking about in varying degrees of technical mumbo jumbo,” he laughs. “I am pretty careful, and kind of the main thing that I’m doing when I’m tinkering around in the studio is looking for these kinds of sounds.”

The live performance has been shaken up to best represent the new direction as well; Van Pelt will be touring with only a drummer (Think About Lfe’s Greg Napier), and the show is still a work in progress too. Out of fear that the next album could take another long time, it’s suggested that Van Pelt mine his parents’ old computer for ready-made loops. He doesn’t seem as into the idea, but admits that some of them are already floating around back home.

“I made a couple cassettes in high school actually, and on a recent visit to my hometown, one of my old teachers presented me with one of these electronic music cassettes that I’d made as a 15 year old.”

Any chance of getting our hands on one of those in case of emergency?

“[There are] very, very few. I’m sure they’re going for three or four figures on eBay right now.”

Read more about Miracle Fortress on the X3 Artist of the Month microsite.