Goodnight, Sunrise Don’t Want to Grow Up

All photos by Sarah Macdonald

The Dollarama at Bloor and Bathurst St. is humming. The fluorescent lights are sharp and make their own kind of soft music throughout the store other than the booming top 40 pop songs on as background noise. Toronto’s party rock band Goodnight, Sunrise, comprised of vocalists David Kochberg (guitar) and Vanessa Vakharia (keytar, synth) and Paul Weaver (drums), ask to meet me here for our interview while they do some traditional pre-show shopping for their Nov. 17 set at the city’s iconic Horseshoe Tavern. People swerve in-between us, politely asking us to move as we fastidiously examine glow sticks; their baskets filled with treats and essentials, inexpensive and surprising finds. I grimace at the Christmas decorations neatly placed on the wall, framed just so under the $1 signs.

Goodnight, Sunrise has been around for five years now, bringing an antidote to ennui prevalent in indie rock. They self-released their concept debut Create/Destroy/Create in 2013. In-between they have also developed a mini-project of split-single EPs featuring one song each by Vakharia and Kochberg in an on-going project called D/V.

Their sound is crunchy and loud, symptomatic of the classic guitar rock they want to emulate. Their influences are varied, of course: Vakharia notes that for their as-yet- released sophomore record, for example, she was caught up in a combination of new Florence + the Machine and EDM.

Vakharia’s voice is gritty and low; adaptable, strong. Their single, “Deal With It”, released back in September, is more mature in scope than their debut or EPs, which, if you talk to any band, is more of a good thing than bad. It steadily rises from quiet-ish, albeit jerky, guitar riffs and simple drumming. The topics of their songs aren’t as light and airy as it may first appear. This single matches the song’s subject matter: a blood- boiling interaction, probably, of kicking out someone who ought to have been kicked out a long time ago —any remnants of patience for whomever it is about have left. It becomes more celebratory of the narrator, of congratulating the self with triumph, truly evident in the eventual appearance of trumpet and alto sax.

Goodnight, Sunrise sincerely perform for their audience; it’s their shtick and isn’t even really a shtick at all. Performance, especially in terms of indie or alt rock bands, is typically rooted in what you hear, how that scene and those songs makes you feel, not what you see onstage other than the members of the band. Bands may banter, talk to you from the stage, but often that inclusion stops there. As bands get more fans, and bookers get them bigger venues, aesthetic aspirations grow, too. The seeds of those performance aspects, of what the audience can do to participate in the show other than simply watch it and (maybe if you’re lucky) dance, probably existed well before you ever reach any band’s show. But it’s safe to assume that all you might see is a cloth poster strung up behind them or a neat lightshow. When do you see confetti and silly string go off? It’s a special for Goodnight, Sunrise to be actively energetic and inclusive with their audience right from the beginning.

Dollarama is rudimentary at best; a place where you can get cheap kitchen supply shit or food and maybe a laser pointer for your cat. It’s important to Goodnight, Sunrise though, and maybe to their fans, to any one time Canadian kid, perhaps, because here they cultivate the feeling you’d get as a kid running through the store — completely enraptured with the discount toys you could take home with you — bringing all of that to the stage. Didn’t you bug your mom after gulping thousands of litres of red sugary soda for endless bottles of bubbles and confetti to go with your Kinder Surprise? If any one sentence or sentiment could typify Goodnight, Sunrise, it is that last one.

It’s tradition for the band to go to this particular Dollarama, usually out of convenience — the Midoco across the street sells the confetti cannons they use at certain venues (not all allow for their type of shenanigans.) This is a band that pays unique attention to anniversaries and traditions, not out of superstition, but because of the familiarity and warmth that they can bring. They throw themselves a birthday party every May to celebrate their first show as a band; giving out loot bags to the audience, bringing in a cake, and largely having the enthusiastic, soul-soaring time you’d have at your most cherished party.

“Oh my god, guys, do we need this?” Vakharia hurriedly yelps as she reveals caution tape to us. “It’s party caution tape that says, “Do not leave party zone!”

What they do and who they are when they use “birthday party in a rock band” isn’t a gimmick to them but they understand why it can so simply be thought of that way. It’s easy to criticize fun as such; that it’s a ploy and inauthentic but it’s all sincere. “The absurdity of what we do and, the regalia, like, it puts people in an comfortable but fun position. Then they are opening up a bit — they are laughing and smiling and dancing around,” Weaver says. “Indie music can take a bit of a morose perspective and we definitely disagree with that. You can still make great music and put on great shows but do so lightheartedly and have a good time.” The inception of this idea, Vakharia explains, is rooted in a personal connection to music with her earlier experiences of going to raves, listening to house music, running around to after hours places so she could dance. “That’s when I started loving music —I loved that it made you go crazy and move. So I think I always want to recreate that. When I go to a show I want to go “oh my god, my face hurts, I can’t stop moving!” And I would like to whipping around a glow stick and going nuts.”

The inception of this idea, Vakharia explains, is rooted in a personal connection to music with her earlier experiences of going to raves, listening to house music, running around to after hours places so she could dance. “That’s when I started loving music —I loved that it made you go crazy and move. So I think I always want to recreate that. When I go to a show I want to go “oh my god, my face hurts, I can’t stop moving!” And I would like to whipping around a glow stick and going nuts.” Their as-yet titled sophomore LP was finished the day I met them in Dollarama. It is a real labour of love for the band — very similar to most who are just beginning or take the route of self-release. A birthday dance party can’t sustain itself all the time. That fun, high energy can only go so far in music making; the real work behind it, especially those who self-release, is exhausting. “We’ve released everything ourselves up to this point and we’ve gotten pretty fair for what we can do ourselves, learning a lot about the process,” Kochberg says. “We’re starting to get to the point where how much time we actually have to work and also what networking we have; what reach we really have to get the music to a wider audience. It’s starting to hit that limit. We’re starting to think about labels, publicists, and radio promoters. How can we get out a little bit more to an audience?”

They don’t tell me much about the new record, just that it’s finished, is an album “about a concept”, Vakharia cryptically notes, and is a natural maturation from their previous work. They made a vocal booth out of Vakharia’s closet, which sounds fantastic, they say, joking it sounds a bit like Adele under the sea. They are quiet about specifics because in questioning what their literal time is worth, they have begun to shop it around to labels to see if they can finally have a team that isn’t just them. “I think over the year doing self-producing the album and doing a lot of ourselves means we’re spending so much time on this organizational stuff rather than playing, practicing, and getting better and writing more,” Kochberg says.

Happiness is infectious; it isn’t a ruse or sneaky, like cynics would want you to believe. Goodnight, Sunrise are like Peter Pan — they don’t want you to lose your innocence and happiness to whatever despairing Captain Hook may be in your life. It’s sweet, simply. It’s about “having our music and our shows always as a reminder that for 45 minutes we can all chill out and have a really good time, like we all used to before we grew up,” Vakharia says.

Sarah Macdonald is a writer living in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter.