Hey Rosetta! Makes Music Worth Screaming at People For

Tim Baker, the singer for Newfoundland’s Hey Rosetta!, doesn’t take to sitting still very well. When he walks into the Drake Hotel in Toronto’s west end, he’s rubbing his hands together furiously after standing outside in the freezing cold waiting for the streetcar that brought him here. He spent his holidays at home with his parents in St. John’s, which he says was nice but admits it hard for him to ever relax, because it makes him too restless. Not surprisingly, when Baker does sit down he needs to be equally stimulated which is why he believes in maximizing the ability he coins as "second sight" which allows one to see the world through an alternate light, and build something from that view. “The term second sight comes from the song, "Soft Offering (For The Oft Suffering"), where it refers to the different lens that you see the world through in the night time as opposed to the day time— when your to-do list flies out the window, you're off the clock and don't have this nagging sense of responsibility and time slipping away from you, and don’t need to be productive and all this shit. The night is peace and freedom, and that song is about celebrating that and trying to hold on to it all through the night, until the very last second.”

Coming out January 27th in the US, three months after its initial Canadian release, Second Sight sounds exactly like a Hey Rosetta! record: lush orchestration, gorgeous baroque-pop arrangements, and crescendos that don’t only shoot for the rafters and hit them, but explode straight out of their confines. Hey Rosetta! also happens to be one of those rare bands whose live show is an experience to behold still an experience, altering you through sheer force of will. Maybe more impressively, they’ve always been able to capture that feeling on record, and Second Sight holds up that tradition. As a result we talked it up with the Hey Rosetta front man about the new album, Japanese pottery and travelling overseas to save the seeds with the non-profit organization, Unitarian Service Committee.

Noisey: You’ve said the phrase “second sight” is about “generally nurturing an alternative way of seeing your life.” Why is that especially important to you now?
Tim Baker: I feel like that idea is what all art is about, basically— taking the world as it is, seeing your own experiences in this slightly different way, to pull out something rich, or something deep and more meaningful. Just where you need to alter your view a little bit and to experience something worth singing about. Every now and then it occurs to me how fucked up it is that my job is actually standing up on stage in front of a bunch of people and yelling at them, with my friends playing music behind me. But it's been kind of an M.O. of mine to write things that are worth screaming at people because you have this platform now. So, I try to write things I feel comfortable singing or screaming night after night and something I would like to have screamed at me, as well. I think in order to find those things, you have to look at life a bit differently.

What makes this record different from your previous ones?
The process was different, essentially. We had a lot more time to explore sounds and tones, and the tunes. Marcus [Paquin], our producer, was great. He was tough. He'd just say, "let's get rid of this chorus, I don't think this chorus is good enough, let's write a new one." And that's terrifying. We'd never gone into the studio and done that. We'd always gone in with what we'd created in pre-production, what we'd rehearsed, and it was about getting the best performance, the best sounds. But this was different, it felt like the real deal. We were changing things dramatically.

Can you explain the concept of "kintsukuroi?"
I was trying to write this song for a long time, about this relationship I was in for about a year. And I couldn't. It was really close to me and it just wouldn't come. We'd broken up and I was trying to write about that because it was really big for me. So, I came across the idea of kintsukuroi, a Japanese art form where they mend broken pottery, broken bowls, with precious metals like gold and silver, in a way to fix the broken thing but also highlight the flaws and faults and cracks. The belief is that it's more beautiful having been broken and it was the perfect metaphor for what I was trying. There was this person I felt so strongly about, and felt closer to even more than when we were going out. This traumatic process of breaking up ultimately sort of brought us closer and made our love even stronger in a weird way. We were trying to get through it and we cared about each other so much that we talked about these things we had never talked about. It was kind of a beautiful thing and it reminded me of that in a lot of ways. The song is sort of asking to get back together because of that. It's like this part of our history, this "broken-up-ness," could actually make it, when it's whole again, stronger and more beautiful than ever. Anyway, she didn't go for it. [laughs]

Do you think it’s possible that a relationship can be broken and emerge even better and stronger than before?
I certainly believed that when I wrote it. I don't know.

Or a person?
I think so, yeah. I mean I really do. I firmly believe that, and that song is so close to me that every time I sing it I feel it. I think that is true. I'm no expert on relationships, that's for sure, but I feel like there's a real simple, beautiful truth to that idea.

You’re a big supporter of Unitarian Service Committee and Seeds of Survival. Can you tell me a bit about your experience with them?
I first got to know them when we put out our last album, SEEDS, and I really wanted to put seeds in the packaging for it. A friend of mine, a sort of artisan paper maker made like 5000 sheets of seed paper, which doesn't sound like that much, but it's a fucking huge amount. We cut 'em all up by hand and stamped them and put them in the cases. At the time I wanted to take the metaphor of seeds as hope and rebirth and regeneration, and actually give it to people and make it real, so they could see things grow. It sounds kind of cheesy but it’s a miracle that a tree can grow from 10 seeds, a total fucking miracle. At the same time I was thinking about some things I'd read about the state of actual seeds. When you go from metaphor to what's real, you might learn something about what's actually going on in the world. It's kind of a scary time for seeds. Genetically modified seeds are everywhere and growing all the time. Lobby groups are fighting legislation to label them and gagging scientists. I wanted to put something about that on our website, just to tell people about that, direct them to some things I found really interesting and informative. But yeah [USC] is a really hard working organization. It's kind of amazing what they do with their hands-on programs in the global South and tiny communities all over the world. You can't really say they teach family farmers how to farm, because it's more like they trade information. [Teaching people how to farm] has kind of a colonial slant to it, and it's failed a lot in the past because you can't really bring the homogenous, heavily mechanized, mid-west American farming to the rocky mountains of Honduras or something, it just doesn't work.

How important is something like Participatory Plant Breeding and organizations like the Foundation for Participatory Research with Honduran Farmers in the search for sustainable agricultural practices?
Really important. It's a real grassroots thing, at a family farm level. And maybe my biggest wish is that I could live a life where I could actually grow food as well. But I'm always travelling and my home base is in St. John's, which is not ideal. I mean you can grow a lot of stuff there but not like in Honduras. It was amazing there because the type of success they spread is really impactful. They take a region where people are literally starving, and they make it so the farmers realize the potential of the land and save themselves to create a future. I wish it was bigger and somehow it could impact the huge, multinational food organizations that we consume so much of.

What are some things people can do to promote healthy and sustainable agriculture in North America?
Be informed. Support initiatives about labelling, having healthy food available in various institutions. Buying local, organic food is one of the best ways. I mean I know it can be kind of controversial, the idea that you can buy your way to a better world, but I think if you stand up and be counted for how you live your life, that's ultimately very impactful.

It sends a message, too.
And I think that's the way to get to the big food corporations. They don't care as long as it's profitable. They're only morals are profit and shareholders. So if people buying this stuff tell them they want healthy, sustainable food, then that's what they're going to sell. And also growing your own food.

A recurring theme in your music, through to your concern for the future of agriculture and the city in Honduras you visited (“La Esperanza”) is hope. Why is hope so important?
You just need to fucking see the bright side. I find that really compelling. And helpful. I think it maybe comes back to yelling at people. Something that's going to help people and make them better, and happier and healthier and more caring, nobler and more fun, I think that's what we should yell about… I just find that I want to yell them and perform them and hear them. It just feels good. Maybe it comes out of being a dark, moody person.

There's a pain that comes along with hope as well
Absolutely. That's where it comes from. It comes from there and I try to include all of that, the whole piece.

Do you think the whole process of “yelling at people” and bringing them into it, whether it's painful or not, makes them feel a bit better about everything?
I hope so. I think that's what I would like. I don't think it does any fucking good to be super cynical and wallow and be joyless. It's not going to do anyone any good and it's so tempting. I don't want to do that and I don't want to fucking promote that.

Check out the Hey Rosetta! tour dates here.

Matt Williams is a writer living in Toronto - @MattGeeWilliams