Photo courtesy of Gay Nineties“The one thing we do collectively as a band is we don’t hide. We’re not afraid,” says 25-year-old Parkey Bossley. The Gay Nineties front man is elaborating on the band’s credo to be exactly who they are, while still having the best time possible. Prior to becoming the quartet they are today, the Vancouver band had consisted of Bossley on vocals, and his pal Malcolm Holt on drums. Having already played together in Fake Shark - Real Zombie!, forming the Gay Nineties was a natural progression for the two. The next component of the band came in the form of bassist Daniel Knowlton, who worked alongside Holt at American Apparel. “We were the most useless employees,” says Holt. “We’d just go skim boarding and listen to Dr. Dre.” In between their time in retail purgatory, Bossley had been feverishly writing songs. Those would ultimately comprise the band’s debut EP, Coming Together.Although the band was pleased with the final outcome, there was still something missing. Amidst a jam session with another band, Holt met Bruce Ledingham and realized the Gay Nineties needed him. “I didn’t know if he was any good at playing, but I saw his gear and was like ‘please come jam with the Gay Nineties,’” says Holt. With Ledingham now on keyboards, the band was ready to raise Bossley’s songs to their full potential. Although coated in sunny, pop bliss, the band’s debut LP, Liberal Guilt, is a vulnerable, introspective look at past loves and good times had by all. While most pop albums are branded with having little to no substance, Liberal Guilt exceeds expectations by enveloping its listeners in a wave of both compassion and understanding.Noisey: Why did you guys decide to name yourselves the Gay Nineties?
Parker Bossley: Basically, we’re all sitting around and Malcolm was like “I saw this thing called the Gay Nineties. I was searching on the internet late last night.” We all kind of giggled, and then we really looked into it. To me it’s this name that’s timeless. It’s not trendy. It felt like something that wasn’t gonna date us as a 2010 band.
Malcolm Holt: It’s also a little controversial. We wanna be a successful band, but we also wanna push buttons and it felt like just enough of a button pusher we could get away with.Even though we are in 2015, the word “gay” can still be used as a derogative. Have you guys been met with any type of homophobia?
Holt: We’ve met it on both sides of the spectrum. There’s been times where people who only associate the word “gay” in a homophobic sense have been like “you guys are great, but you gotta do something about that name.” We’ve also met with some pushback from really liberal people, who think that we are in fact homophobic and that we’re using it in a derogatory sense. We’re the furthest thing from that.
Bossley: There’s been a few times of being in an interview, and having people come on to us because of the name.
Holt:The incident Parker is talking about, is we were being interviewed by this guy, and at first he was like 'yeah what’s the deal with the name?' Then he revealed to us that he had mixed feelings towards guys too.
Bruce Ledingham: He felt safe in our company. [He realized] we were accepting and forward thinking, and he wasn’t around that very often.
Holt: For a name to have that ability right off the bat with people, to reveal truth about themselves, be it homophobia or coming to terms with their own sexuality, there’s something powerful about that.Your debut EP, Coming Together, was released in 2011. How would you say your craft has changed sing then?
Bossley: We’ve become less eager. I feel like we’ve learned to let the song make the decisions, as opposed to forcing a song into avenues it doesn’t belong.
Holt:The obvious difference is that Coming Together was a three piece, and then we got Bruce on keyboards. As a three piece, we were trying to make as much noise as possible and fill the space. I think that’s a natural inclination when you’ve got a smaller amount of instrumentation. With Bruce, he’s got like 10 keyboards on stage and so dynamically and sonically he can fill up more space. Even though there’s more players, we’re all able to play less.Where did the title of the album come from?
Daniel Knowlton: Liberal Guilt can be interpreted in a few different ways. For me, liberal guilt is the feeling of being a little too adventurous and stepping out of your comfort zone, whether it be creatively or personally. I think the name lends itself to a situation where someone might not know how to react. In their mind and in their heart they know how they want to, but they’re not really sure what the community or people around them are going to think.
Bossley: It’s like the hipster that only listens to Wham! in their bedroom, and not in public. That’s liberal guilt.
Holt: As a band we feel like we straddle many different lines. On a local level we don’t feel like we fit into any real scene definitively, and on a national, Canadian level we feel like we don’t have a definitive place. Relating it musically, we just wanna write the music we want to write. And yeah we wanna guide it in a pop direction, but there’s a lot of stuff on there that’s pulling from weird influences. We don’t want to have any sense of liberal guilt about that. We want to write what we wanna write, without being concerned with fitting into any of these peer groups.You mentioned that you pulled from weird influences in order to create the album. What sort of influences do you mean?
Bossley: When we were talking about weird influences, I don’t think we were relating it to the EP. We were talking more about who we are as people.
Holt: Even with that, we’re not gonna be playing minimalist, French new wave spoken word from the ’60s. It moves us, and a bit of that will find its way in. I think with our record there are immediate, obvious references that we make. There’s definitely some Beatles and Wings vibes on there. If we look at our influences, it’s a much deeper well that we’re drawing from that might not be as obvious.
Knowlton: I think art and creativity gets us fired up. For me, The Gay Nineties is an art project and music is the main platform.
Holt: With regards to that, I’d say that we’re really open minded to art in general. We want to absorb as much as possible, but we want to siphon that through the parameters of a pop band. We’re writing little three minute pop nuggets and we’re not afraid of that.
Bossley: For instance, we’re shooting a video for “Hold Your Fire” on Sunday. We’ve been taking avant-garde, modern dance lessons which has been fucking great. We all look forward to our dance rehearsals, because it’s just the best feeling to be in a room freaking out with your buddies and dancing. I don’t know how often you dance or if you do much of it at home, but it is such a good vibe. You’ve gotta try it.
Holt: That’s a perfect example of what we’re getting at. The song “Hold You Fire,” that’s a rock and roll, pop [song] in many ways. However, we’re fans of Kate Bush, and we pulled a strong influence from her visual aesthetic that we’re trying to put into a video to counter the immediate pop, rockiness of [the song].What song gave you guys the most trouble to record?
Bossley: “In and Out of Style,” we recorded it like five times. We just kept not hitting the tempo right.
Holt: We write all of our songs in a space. We just jam them out. You play whatever feels right, and with that tempos and parts heat up and cool down. When you go into the studio, unless you’re trying to recreate that loosey goosey liveness in the jam space, you can over sterilize it. Us locking that song to the various tempos every time we recorded it, lost some of the immediacy we felt in the jam space.Quite a few of the songs on the album deal with love. How autobiographical is the album?
Bossley: Lyrically it’s either autobiographical, or about people who are close around me. I’ve only recently decided to start writing a little bit less from experiences. I’m trying to make a conscious decision to allow myself to write about other people’s experiences, or imagine myself in other experiences. It’s quite literal, the whole record, which is strange to think about.What would you like listeners to take away from the album?
Bossley: A sense of joy.
Ledingham:Freedom.
Holt: I think with this our goal is to have as many people hear it as possible. We’re pushing this more than we’ve ever pushed a record as a band. I want people to see the direction we’re heading in, and get turned on by it.
Bossley: I would hope that when they listen to the record, they want to come to a show and find out who we are and establish that connection. I think that’s very important.For people who haven’t seen you live, what can they expect from a Gay Nineties show?
Bossley: Passion, punks.
Ledingham: A sense of inclusion.
Holt: Hopefully they can’t stand still, and if they are standing still—
Bossley: —it’s because they’re so excited that their legs won’t move.
Knowlton: I feel like we’ve spent a lot of time crafting our live performance. Every time we play live we like to start the sets with a very warm, all encompassing intro. It’s sort of that sense where you’re at a movie theatre and the curtains come down, and you hear that first surround sound note. You know that something’s about to happen, and that unifies everybody. I feel like we’ve gotten really good at doing that.
Holt: I think live always came easiest to us. We’re natural performers and for me that always made sense. I think part of why we’re so proud of this record, is that we were able to do something that turned us on aside from live.
Bossley: It’s been a long journey for me understanding recording, and being willing to put in the time to make a recording amazing. For the first seven or eight years of being a musician, I was always like “ugh these recordings aren’t working for me.” I was never satisfied. Now we’re at a point where we’re satisfied with our recordings and that’s a very exciting place to be. I used to associate recording with constant disappointment. Going back to your question of how the sound changed from Coming Together till now, Coming Together was really just capturing what we did in that jam space. That was how we played those songs live. There was very minimal over dub. With Liberal Guilt, we have zero fear of making a record that sounds different than how we sound live. We’re confident that we sound interesting and dynamic live, and that we don’t have to recreate that on record. That realization freed us.You guys have been doing a lot of touring lately. What’s your favourite part about being out on the road?
Bossley: If you’re actually in a positive state of mind, being on tour forces you to be a human and interact with people and explore. And tackle your own demons. When you realize you’re being a dick because you’re hungry and in a van with three other dudes, you just learn to shut up. So that’s been good for me. But also my favourite thing is this strange zone where your brain slows down on a 12 hour drive, and you enter this zen state of mind where you’re numb, but in this beautiful way. It’s very strange.
Holt: It is quite zen. It’s like you’re neither here nor there. You’ve got nowhere else to be except for exactly where you are, and consequently you disappear.
Ledingham: This 45-minute lifespan, and the 24 hours around that are just weird clouds—
Bossley: —weird clouds of Matthew McConaugheyisms.Aaron Morris is a writer living in Toronto - @aarmor12
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Parker Bossley: Basically, we’re all sitting around and Malcolm was like “I saw this thing called the Gay Nineties. I was searching on the internet late last night.” We all kind of giggled, and then we really looked into it. To me it’s this name that’s timeless. It’s not trendy. It felt like something that wasn’t gonna date us as a 2010 band.
Malcolm Holt: It’s also a little controversial. We wanna be a successful band, but we also wanna push buttons and it felt like just enough of a button pusher we could get away with.Even though we are in 2015, the word “gay” can still be used as a derogative. Have you guys been met with any type of homophobia?
Holt: We’ve met it on both sides of the spectrum. There’s been times where people who only associate the word “gay” in a homophobic sense have been like “you guys are great, but you gotta do something about that name.” We’ve also met with some pushback from really liberal people, who think that we are in fact homophobic and that we’re using it in a derogatory sense. We’re the furthest thing from that.
Bossley: There’s been a few times of being in an interview, and having people come on to us because of the name.
Holt:The incident Parker is talking about, is we were being interviewed by this guy, and at first he was like 'yeah what’s the deal with the name?' Then he revealed to us that he had mixed feelings towards guys too.
Bruce Ledingham: He felt safe in our company. [He realized] we were accepting and forward thinking, and he wasn’t around that very often.
Holt: For a name to have that ability right off the bat with people, to reveal truth about themselves, be it homophobia or coming to terms with their own sexuality, there’s something powerful about that.
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Bossley: We’ve become less eager. I feel like we’ve learned to let the song make the decisions, as opposed to forcing a song into avenues it doesn’t belong.
Holt:The obvious difference is that Coming Together was a three piece, and then we got Bruce on keyboards. As a three piece, we were trying to make as much noise as possible and fill the space. I think that’s a natural inclination when you’ve got a smaller amount of instrumentation. With Bruce, he’s got like 10 keyboards on stage and so dynamically and sonically he can fill up more space. Even though there’s more players, we’re all able to play less.Where did the title of the album come from?
Daniel Knowlton: Liberal Guilt can be interpreted in a few different ways. For me, liberal guilt is the feeling of being a little too adventurous and stepping out of your comfort zone, whether it be creatively or personally. I think the name lends itself to a situation where someone might not know how to react. In their mind and in their heart they know how they want to, but they’re not really sure what the community or people around them are going to think.
Bossley: It’s like the hipster that only listens to Wham! in their bedroom, and not in public. That’s liberal guilt.
Holt: As a band we feel like we straddle many different lines. On a local level we don’t feel like we fit into any real scene definitively, and on a national, Canadian level we feel like we don’t have a definitive place. Relating it musically, we just wanna write the music we want to write. And yeah we wanna guide it in a pop direction, but there’s a lot of stuff on there that’s pulling from weird influences. We don’t want to have any sense of liberal guilt about that. We want to write what we wanna write, without being concerned with fitting into any of these peer groups.
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Bossley: When we were talking about weird influences, I don’t think we were relating it to the EP. We were talking more about who we are as people.
Holt: Even with that, we’re not gonna be playing minimalist, French new wave spoken word from the ’60s. It moves us, and a bit of that will find its way in. I think with our record there are immediate, obvious references that we make. There’s definitely some Beatles and Wings vibes on there. If we look at our influences, it’s a much deeper well that we’re drawing from that might not be as obvious.
Knowlton: I think art and creativity gets us fired up. For me, The Gay Nineties is an art project and music is the main platform.
Holt: With regards to that, I’d say that we’re really open minded to art in general. We want to absorb as much as possible, but we want to siphon that through the parameters of a pop band. We’re writing little three minute pop nuggets and we’re not afraid of that.
Bossley: For instance, we’re shooting a video for “Hold Your Fire” on Sunday. We’ve been taking avant-garde, modern dance lessons which has been fucking great. We all look forward to our dance rehearsals, because it’s just the best feeling to be in a room freaking out with your buddies and dancing. I don’t know how often you dance or if you do much of it at home, but it is such a good vibe. You’ve gotta try it.
Holt: That’s a perfect example of what we’re getting at. The song “Hold You Fire,” that’s a rock and roll, pop [song] in many ways. However, we’re fans of Kate Bush, and we pulled a strong influence from her visual aesthetic that we’re trying to put into a video to counter the immediate pop, rockiness of [the song].
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Bossley: “In and Out of Style,” we recorded it like five times. We just kept not hitting the tempo right.
Holt: We write all of our songs in a space. We just jam them out. You play whatever feels right, and with that tempos and parts heat up and cool down. When you go into the studio, unless you’re trying to recreate that loosey goosey liveness in the jam space, you can over sterilize it. Us locking that song to the various tempos every time we recorded it, lost some of the immediacy we felt in the jam space.Quite a few of the songs on the album deal with love. How autobiographical is the album?
Bossley: Lyrically it’s either autobiographical, or about people who are close around me. I’ve only recently decided to start writing a little bit less from experiences. I’m trying to make a conscious decision to allow myself to write about other people’s experiences, or imagine myself in other experiences. It’s quite literal, the whole record, which is strange to think about.What would you like listeners to take away from the album?
Bossley: A sense of joy.
Ledingham:Freedom.
Holt: I think with this our goal is to have as many people hear it as possible. We’re pushing this more than we’ve ever pushed a record as a band. I want people to see the direction we’re heading in, and get turned on by it.
Bossley: I would hope that when they listen to the record, they want to come to a show and find out who we are and establish that connection. I think that’s very important.For people who haven’t seen you live, what can they expect from a Gay Nineties show?
Bossley: Passion, punks.
Ledingham: A sense of inclusion.
Holt: Hopefully they can’t stand still, and if they are standing still—
Bossley: —it’s because they’re so excited that their legs won’t move.
Knowlton: I feel like we’ve spent a lot of time crafting our live performance. Every time we play live we like to start the sets with a very warm, all encompassing intro. It’s sort of that sense where you’re at a movie theatre and the curtains come down, and you hear that first surround sound note. You know that something’s about to happen, and that unifies everybody. I feel like we’ve gotten really good at doing that.
Holt: I think live always came easiest to us. We’re natural performers and for me that always made sense. I think part of why we’re so proud of this record, is that we were able to do something that turned us on aside from live.
Bossley: It’s been a long journey for me understanding recording, and being willing to put in the time to make a recording amazing. For the first seven or eight years of being a musician, I was always like “ugh these recordings aren’t working for me.” I was never satisfied. Now we’re at a point where we’re satisfied with our recordings and that’s a very exciting place to be. I used to associate recording with constant disappointment. Going back to your question of how the sound changed from Coming Together till now, Coming Together was really just capturing what we did in that jam space. That was how we played those songs live. There was very minimal over dub. With Liberal Guilt, we have zero fear of making a record that sounds different than how we sound live. We’re confident that we sound interesting and dynamic live, and that we don’t have to recreate that on record. That realization freed us.You guys have been doing a lot of touring lately. What’s your favourite part about being out on the road?
Bossley: If you’re actually in a positive state of mind, being on tour forces you to be a human and interact with people and explore. And tackle your own demons. When you realize you’re being a dick because you’re hungry and in a van with three other dudes, you just learn to shut up. So that’s been good for me. But also my favourite thing is this strange zone where your brain slows down on a 12 hour drive, and you enter this zen state of mind where you’re numb, but in this beautiful way. It’s very strange.
Holt: It is quite zen. It’s like you’re neither here nor there. You’ve got nowhere else to be except for exactly where you are, and consequently you disappear.
Ledingham: This 45-minute lifespan, and the 24 hours around that are just weird clouds—
Bossley: —weird clouds of Matthew McConaugheyisms.Aaron Morris is a writer living in Toronto - @aarmor12