Music

Unmasking Toronto's distorted-reality pop duo Phèdre

by Richard Trapunski

Photo: Dimitri Karakostas

The masks have come off for April Aliermo and Daniel Lee.

Erstwhile billed only as “three lovers from Monaco,” the Montreal/Toronto-based duo have owned up to being the voices and synths behind Phèdre.

Their anonymity was always more playful than practical, but it suited the release of their self-titled debut in early 2012—the decadent, woozy psych seemed unbound by time or space, like it could only have sprung, fully-formed, from the loins of the internet. Their first video, the absurdly hedonistic and grossly visceral video for “In Decay,” spread from blog to blog, practically devoid of context, leaving its creators flabbergasted by its autonomous reach.

“Yeah, that was weird,” laughs Lee over patio beers and grilled cheese on a surprisingly warm Labour Day in Toronto.

“It was strange to see our art getting out there,” Aliermo agrees. “But it was even weirder to see the workings of the internet firsthand.”

Recorded in a single wine-soaked weekend in 2010 and then shelved for two years, the debut’s spontaneous burst of strangeness had all the makings of a one-off art project for Phèdre, so the fact that they’re about to release the follow-up, Golden Age, is a bit of a surprise. But Phèdre now isn’t identical to Phèdre then. Airick Woodhead joined the pair for their original attic recording session, but left to focus on his own weirdo pop project, Doldrums. Lee and Aliermo have trudged on without him, shedding the bogus backstory, masks, and enigma in the process.

“We just got bored, to be honest,” Lee admits. “We felt kind of locked in, like, oh, now we have to dress up and pretend every time we play a show? It’s nice to have the option, but we don’t want to constrict ourselves in any way.”

Sometimes that means filling the stage with props, costumes, dancers, and platters of gold-wrappered Big Macs. Other times, it’s stripping down to two mics and beats (on this tour, courtesy of Beta Frontiers).

The pair laid down Golden Age over another anything-goes month in a Berlin apartment, inviting visiting artists to collaborate. Sometimes that meant reaching out to Dirty Beaches on Twitter (he missed the call); at others it meant hosting a Japanese opera singer in their living room (her vocals on the album-closing “Atomic Love” are mixed to sound like a theremin). The gloomy winter atmosphere drove Aliermo to stave off anxiety by creating a collage for every song, which is included alongside lyrics in the vinyl insert.

That versatility also allows the pair to insert a bit of earnestness into the recipe, a quality more often seen in their main project, the comparatively straightforward (but still genre agnostic) garage-pop band Hooded Fang. Golden Age’s first single, “Ancient Nouveau,” for instance, is inspired by Chief Spence of the Attawapiskat First Nations community, whose hunger strike became the rallying cry of the Idle No More movement.

“Sometimes it’s just about fun, sometimes it’s about distorting reality, sometimes it’s about putting good energy out into the world,” says Aliermo. “And then I think sometimes it’s good to raise awareness or bring attention to issues that I think should have attention. I think when you’re in this position where you have an audience it’s important to have some kind of social responsibility.”

Opening the project up has given it new life, turning it into an ongoing concern. They’ve already put out the songs “Zenith” and “Cocoon” as part of an ongoing record-and-release album called Eternia. The songs use live bass and drums to create what Lee calls “scuzzy jungle music, but with vocals.”

“We’ll just keep doing it until it’s not fun anymore,” Aliermo says.