SNAILHOUSE PLAYS THE DRAKE HOTEL UNDERGROUND (1150 QUEEN W) WITH TUSKS AND ALLISON OUTHIT JULY 3. $8. DOORS 8PM.
WHO ARE THEY?
Though occasionally a band, Snailhouse really is Montreal’s Mike Feuerstack, one of Canada’s most agile and affable songwriters. Emerging in the mid-’90s, Snailhouse gives Feuerstack an outlet to write artful rock and folk music, whose fragility — however angst-ridden — doesn’t quite suit his other long-standing and celebrated band, The Wooden Stars. On his dynamic new album Lies on the Prize (Unfamiliar/Sonic Unyon), Feuerstack collaborated closely with drummer and good friend Jeremy Gara (Arcade Fire), creating the most accomplished Snailhouse effort yet. “Jer’s generosity in involving himself even though he’s so busy meant a lot to me, so every time he had an idea I let him run with it,” Feuerstack says.
“He also [doesn’t have] a huge ego; he wants to try ideas out but he’s not injured if I need to strip things back to how they were before. It was nice to discover that I almost always wanted to keep what he had in mind.”
SO HE’S SPENDING MORE TIME ON HIS OWN, THEN?
Not exactly. Feuerstack is an experienced and skilled diplomat, and being both a gifted musician and a swell guy, he’s parlayed these attributes into sideman work with Kepler, Bell Orchestre, Islands, Angela Desveaux and the Harbourcoats among others. In these cases, Feuerstack is primarily an instrumentalist, which is an aspect of his repertoire that he’s excited to develop.
“It’s only been in the past few years that I’ve [developed] special talents that people might actually want me to offer them,” he laughs. “Being a songwriter myself, I have a unique perspective when I play with other songwriters because I know what it’s like to try to lead a band — the weird mixture of asking for their input but also wanting them to back off when your vision is strong. I have a unique sensitivity to that in other people. At least I assume so; why else would they want me involved?”
Filling his dance card has enabled Feuerstack to redefine his approach to Snailhouse, too. “When I’m playing my own songs, I’m not playing them as a guitar player, I’m playing them as a singer. But when I play with other people, I get to be just a guitar or lap-steel player or whatever. It’s a different type of composing where the core of the song is there and I get to dress it. The skeleton; I get to put the skin on the skeleton.”
THE WRITE STUFF
Lies on the Prize is the best representation of Feuerstack’s songwriting gifts. He composes slyly earnest lyrics, where sincere romanticism mingles effectively with playful black humour, and he marries these to unique soundtracks on what is ultimately an intricate guitar/voice record. “It’s one of the mysteries and special things about writing songs,” Feuerstack says of the relationship between lyrics and musical arrangement, “the more accomplished you get at it, the more you can play with those things.
“On this record there was a sweet song, ‘Tone Deaf Birds,’ and so we gave it a pretty sweet treatment. ‘They Won’t Believe You’ is a dark, cynical song lyrically and the instrumental treatment is really rumbling and eerie, too. So, I don’t think I’ll ever be bored of trying different approaches and having those things be a foil or a support for one another.”
Armed with a record he’s proud of and touring with a new three-piece version of Snailhouse, Feuerstack feels fortunate to keep his moniker going more than a decade after starting. “My love for making music and records has grown every time I’ve made one. As I get older and make more records, I want to keep doing it and I want to make it feasible, gaining the audience that I know is there. It’s really that simple.”