PS I Love You are your textbook music nerds. You can hear it in their music: the chunky riffing of J Mascis, the adept solos of Jimi Hendrix, the skin-tight rock rhythms of Steve Shelley, and underlying layers of New Order synths. It’s carefully crafted, heavily inspired indie rock from Kingston, an Ontario town known best for its university (Queens) and Canrock’s ambassadors (the Tragically Hip).Comprised of singer/guitarist Paul Saulnier and drummer/designer Benjamin Nelson, PS I Love You are also music nerds in person. Mention Factory Records sleeve designer Peter Saville to Nelson and he will light up and give you a serious talking to about why his aesthetic is so compelling. Saulnier, on the other hand, is a serious record collector who obsesses over rare soul 45s, which are currently winning the battle of space in his recently acquired Toronto apartment he shares with his girlfriend.After releasing two well-received albums — 2010’s debut Meet Me At The Muster Station and 2012’s Polaris long-listed Death Dreams — the twosome have reached their trinity with third album, For Those Who Stay (out July 22 via Paper Bag). Noisey met up with Paul Saulnier at Toronto’s oldest independent record store, Kops Records, to browse through some vinyl and nerd out over the smell of musty cardboard and plastic.
Paul Saulnier: I go to the new arrivals. I look at every single one of them. I have a list of records that I want and for the past few months it’s been everything J Dilla sampled for Donuts. Some of it was surprisingly easy to track down, but there are some that are hard to find. I keep a list, and I’ve had good luck. I have about half of them now.Do you have a white whale record that you’re forever chasing?
There is a 45 by a soul group called Them Two that I really want. The song is “Am I A Good Man” but it’s way out of my reach. I hope to find it digging someday. This record is one of many I want that I will probably never own. There is no one white whale. There’s an entire ocean of whales. But the exciting thing about digging is that I have found stuff that I thought would be impossible to find. Like Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland with the naked ladies on the cover, Dionne Warwick's Just Being Myself, Buzzcocks’ Spiral Scratch EP, the Winston's "Amen Brother" 45, the list goes on and on and will keep growing. Metallica's Creeping Death 12" was also one of my favourite scores.Discogs has changed the way people buy records. Has it changed things for you?
No, it hasn't. I use it sometimes to see how much some records I’ve found are selling for, and then I get giddy if I feel like I can make some money. But I don’t ever let go of anything, which is also a problem. I’ve only ever bought one record online. I don’t have a huge record-buying budget either. But I like digging. I usually just find stuff that I like in dollar bins. So I have a lot of weird stuff.On the album there is a song called “Hoarders.” Is that about your record collecting?
Oh yeah. For me it’s most about my records. I have thousands and thousands of records – in a tiny apartment. My girlfriend is okay with it because she has records too. For her I think it was like, “Well, I now live with this record collection. And there’s also this dude here.” I also hoard a lot of childhood toys and dumb papers of random things that I can’t let go of. Benjamin is the same way but he collects more things than I do. Like stuff that seems important to him. He’s really into design, so things that look good. His favourite type of design is the 1990s Blue Jays. He buys a lot of ’90s Blue Jays stuff. And Bauhaus [architecture] stuff. And anything related to David Bowie. Both of us, well, I’m not as bad as I used to be, but TV stuff from our childhood, like X-Files memorabilia. Dumb stuff.The song is also about being paranoid. Like how I haven’t done my taxes in a while and how whenever I try and do that I get distracted by all my other stuff. I feel weighed down in… stuff. It’s also about how I put more value on what other people make instead of what I make. So I’ll make a song or drawing and just throw it away. But it’s mostly about being paranoid. And then the other half of the song Ben wrote, but I don’t know what he’s singing about. We mostly did that song separately.What city that you’ve visited on tour would you say has the best record shopping?
I’m always looking for soul music, especially on 45s, so when we’re travelling through the south in America, all of the stuff I’d pay top dollar for here is basically thrown away there. Because there is so much of it. Like Stax 45s you can get for 50 cents in decent condition. Here in Toronto I’ll pay ten bucks.Your new album, For Those Who Stay, is coming out on clear green vinyl. How important is it for you to have cool looking vinyl?
It’s funny you ask me that as I pick up this record called Gimmicks. It’s important to me that we have an awesome looking record. It doesn’t matter that it’s coloured vinyl. It’s cool but I like black vinyl just the same. For this colour we worked on it as a team. Like, “What colour would look good?” When Ben designed the artwork we thought of the green hues, because of that photo taken underwater. Whatever colour the vinyl is it should complement the artwork, so that it’s a full package.Where did the shot on the album cover come from?
That was actually taken outside of the studio in Bath, on Lake Ontario. It was in the winter and we were on the shore. Our producer Matt Rogalski was out on a wharf and looked down and saw a door so he snapped a photo of it. It looked really good, and Ben just treated the colours a little bit.You’ve been hiding cassettes of your new album all over the city, as well as places like your hometown of Kingston. Where did that idea come from? And why cassettes?
I can’t take the credit for that. Paper Bag Records came up with the idea. But we’ve been asking them if we can make tapes for a while because tapes are fun. There are a lot of kids out there that like collecting them, so we wanted to get in on that funny trend. The label said to just give them away, so we decided to hide them around town and get people excited about it.Cam Lindsay is a writer living in Toronto. He's on Twitter.
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Noisey: What’s the first thing you do when you go into a record store?
Paul Saulnier: I go to the new arrivals. I look at every single one of them. I have a list of records that I want and for the past few months it’s been everything J Dilla sampled for Donuts. Some of it was surprisingly easy to track down, but there are some that are hard to find. I keep a list, and I’ve had good luck. I have about half of them now.Do you have a white whale record that you’re forever chasing?
There is a 45 by a soul group called Them Two that I really want. The song is “Am I A Good Man” but it’s way out of my reach. I hope to find it digging someday. This record is one of many I want that I will probably never own. There is no one white whale. There’s an entire ocean of whales. But the exciting thing about digging is that I have found stuff that I thought would be impossible to find. Like Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland with the naked ladies on the cover, Dionne Warwick's Just Being Myself, Buzzcocks’ Spiral Scratch EP, the Winston's "Amen Brother" 45, the list goes on and on and will keep growing. Metallica's Creeping Death 12" was also one of my favourite scores.
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No, it hasn't. I use it sometimes to see how much some records I’ve found are selling for, and then I get giddy if I feel like I can make some money. But I don’t ever let go of anything, which is also a problem. I’ve only ever bought one record online. I don’t have a huge record-buying budget either. But I like digging. I usually just find stuff that I like in dollar bins. So I have a lot of weird stuff.On the album there is a song called “Hoarders.” Is that about your record collecting?
Oh yeah. For me it’s most about my records. I have thousands and thousands of records – in a tiny apartment. My girlfriend is okay with it because she has records too. For her I think it was like, “Well, I now live with this record collection. And there’s also this dude here.” I also hoard a lot of childhood toys and dumb papers of random things that I can’t let go of. Benjamin is the same way but he collects more things than I do. Like stuff that seems important to him. He’s really into design, so things that look good. His favourite type of design is the 1990s Blue Jays. He buys a lot of ’90s Blue Jays stuff. And Bauhaus [architecture] stuff. And anything related to David Bowie. Both of us, well, I’m not as bad as I used to be, but TV stuff from our childhood, like X-Files memorabilia. Dumb stuff.The song is also about being paranoid. Like how I haven’t done my taxes in a while and how whenever I try and do that I get distracted by all my other stuff. I feel weighed down in… stuff. It’s also about how I put more value on what other people make instead of what I make. So I’ll make a song or drawing and just throw it away. But it’s mostly about being paranoid. And then the other half of the song Ben wrote, but I don’t know what he’s singing about. We mostly did that song separately.
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I’m always looking for soul music, especially on 45s, so when we’re travelling through the south in America, all of the stuff I’d pay top dollar for here is basically thrown away there. Because there is so much of it. Like Stax 45s you can get for 50 cents in decent condition. Here in Toronto I’ll pay ten bucks.Your new album, For Those Who Stay, is coming out on clear green vinyl. How important is it for you to have cool looking vinyl?
It’s funny you ask me that as I pick up this record called Gimmicks. It’s important to me that we have an awesome looking record. It doesn’t matter that it’s coloured vinyl. It’s cool but I like black vinyl just the same. For this colour we worked on it as a team. Like, “What colour would look good?” When Ben designed the artwork we thought of the green hues, because of that photo taken underwater. Whatever colour the vinyl is it should complement the artwork, so that it’s a full package.Where did the shot on the album cover come from?
That was actually taken outside of the studio in Bath, on Lake Ontario. It was in the winter and we were on the shore. Our producer Matt Rogalski was out on a wharf and looked down and saw a door so he snapped a photo of it. It looked really good, and Ben just treated the colours a little bit.You’ve been hiding cassettes of your new album all over the city, as well as places like your hometown of Kingston. Where did that idea come from? And why cassettes?
I can’t take the credit for that. Paper Bag Records came up with the idea. But we’ve been asking them if we can make tapes for a while because tapes are fun. There are a lot of kids out there that like collecting them, so we wanted to get in on that funny trend. The label said to just give them away, so we decided to hide them around town and get people excited about it.Cam Lindsay is a writer living in Toronto. He's on Twitter.