The return of Limblifter and the release of their forthcoming album Pacific Milk isn’t exactly your average ‘90s CanRock revival story. Since releasing their self-titled debut album in 1996, the band has never truly gone away. They may not have released an album since 2004’s I/O, but they did play a handful of shows in 2012 and 2013 in celebration of the vinyl rerelease of their first record, and Ryan Dahle, the band’s founding member and driving creative force, has never stopped working on music both in and outside of Limblifter.

“I’ve never quit. I never will quit,” Dahle says on the phone from his studio in Vancouver. “People glom onto numbers, so it’s like, ‘How many years has it been [since Limblifter’s last release]?’ Well, it’s been been 11 years, yeah, but I did a solo record [2009’s Irrational Anthems] in between and I’ve produced a bunch of fucking records. I’ve only ever been working in music. I’ve never come out of it.”

Dahle had also been working on songs that could potentially become Limblifter music for most of that decade-plus. But he held off on releasing a new album or touring too extensively for reasons that are more financial than they are creative.

“It’s more so, ‘Is there anybody fucking listening and is there anybody going to fucking pay for it?’ That’s kind of how my life is. People say ‘Why don’t you tour?’ Because if you can’t afford to go play and at least break even and put on a decent show, then you’re just kind of hurting the name and hurting yourself.”

Besides, Dahle has been keeping himself busy with his new band, The Mounties, which he formed with Hawksley Workman and Hot Hot Heat’s Steve Bays in 2013, and his studio work, where he has produced and mastered an impressive array of records including Hot Hot Heat’s Future Breeds and k-os’s BLack on BLonde.

He credits playing with Workman and Bays, as well as Mounties percussionist Cary Pratt and bassist Parker Bosley, with revitalizing his interest in the whole process.

“All four of them make me excited about playing music again. I wouldn’t be able to underscore that enough, how much they’ve changed things for me,” he says. “It’s just sort of this dream scenario of people that I didn’t think I’d be falling into at this stage of my life. Being in a band was not on my radar. As you get older, you sort of become less and less interested in those kinds of relationships, but it’s really just worked out well, and there’s massive respect between everyone and it’s been really fun.”

The Mounties have also, inadvertently, brought Limblifter full circle. The band began as a side project for Ryan and his brother Kurt’s main band, Age of Electric, and only became a full-time concern after AOE disbanded in 1999. Now that Limblifter has taken on more of a side-project role in Dahle’s life for the first time in over 15 years, he’s also starting to rediscover a certain lack of pressure and certain abundance of creative freedom that comes with juggling multiple projects.

“When Limblifter was created it was a side project to our day job playing in Age of Electric, and when that day job went away, the chemistry and the seriousness of what that was changed. So maybe in some ways, having Mounties makes Limblifter viable to me again because I’ve been so protective of it not becoming crummy. I didn’t want to play shitty shows, so I just didn’t play shows for years. I didn’t want to make shitty records, so I just didn’t make records for years,” he muses.

“Limblifter is something that I love doing and I love it when people are excited about it and want to see shows, but I definitely don’t want to force that card and I’m not desperate to sell it. If people want to hear it, I’m there. If people want to hear this band play, I’m there. But I’m not in a desperate position like I’m really trying to promote this thing. Whereas with Mounties, we just feel so hungry to build and play as a band, so it’s a different feeling. They’re parallel and I think that feeds off another for me. It’s good to be able to have something else that I go to. There’s my own songs that I’ve recorded over the years, so I kind of like having Limblifter as my own little thing that I can do.”

So when a collection of tunes written over the past five years started feeling like Limblifter songs, Dahle decided it was finally time to think about a new album. Pacific Milk, which will be released April 7, was born.

“It just seemed like it was the next stage in my life.”

From the album’s oldest track (“Hotel Knife,” recorded almost immediately after the release of Irrational Anthems in 2009) to its most recent (“Castanet,” written and recorded last year), Pacific Milk is a classic Limblifter album, filled with the trademark sound that has made the band so beloved amongst power pop-loving weirdos for almost two decades.

Dahle and company – which currently includes his longtime partner Megan Bradfield, who has been with Limblifter since the early-’00s, Sloan’s fifth member Gregory Macdonald, and new drummer Eric Breitenbach – are eager to show off their new songs during a collection of pre-release shows ranging from Vancouver to London, ON later this month, but they’re also interested in digging as deep into their back catalogue as they can.

“That’s the problem! I printed out this list of the five albums, the four Limblifter records and the solo record, and it was like ‘Shit! What songs are we going to play?’” Dahle says. “I think our MO right now is that we’re going to play a pile of songs. And that hopefully there’s a tour at some point this year, hopefully there’s a demand for a tour, and if there is, then we’ll play a whole pile of other songs. And we might start playing longer sets. We’re rehearsing a set that’s super-long, and so we’re going to warn people: When you come out, make sure you’re in it for the duration! It’s an endurance test.”

Upcoming Limblifter Canadian dates:
March 19 – Vancouver, BC @ Biltmore
March 20 – Calgary, AB @ The Gateway
March 21 – Edmonton, AB @ Pawn Shop
March 26 – Hamilton, ON @ This Ain’t Hollywood
March 27 – Toronto, ON @ Lee’s Palace
March 28 – London @ Rum Runners