SPILL FEATURE: RAW AND UNHINGED ENERGY – A CONVERSATION WITH DEAR ROUGE

RAW AND UNHINGED ENERGY

A CONVERSATION WITH DEAR ROUGE

Drew and Danielle McTaggart of Dear Rouge certainly know how to create captivating dance-rock songs that will have you moving on the dance floor. The husband-and-wife duo have taken Canada by storm over the past decade with their top-notch songs and magnetic and energetic live shows. Their newest album, Lonesome High, offers some of the catchiest and most exhilarating rock songs of 2024.

“I would say lyrically it’s hopeful and optimistic but yet with a tinge of melancholy grime,” states Danielle.

Drew adds, “Musically, we describe ourselves as gritty and glossy. But with that, I would say with the lyrics of hopeful optimism is that it has substance. It’s not cheap writing. It’s substance of our lives.”

Lonesome High marks several new changes for Dear Rouge. “The people making the videos, making everything digitally for an album, producing, and mixing was our first time working with them,” comments Drew. “Second thing is we actually had the title before we wrote any of the songs, and that is actually like really weird, but we kind of used it as a goalpost for us to keep focused in one direction…. The third thing is that we get a lot of comments from people that say, ‘we love your live show and we love the energy.’ So we were trying to figure out, how do we keep that raw and unhinged energy but still make it an album that is playable in the car and easy listening. But we wanted to be a little bit more raw and unhinged and have a lot of fun, kind of like our own personalities. After the past few years, that was like when we were writing the stuff very central to the whole thing because everybody’s spent the past few years inside…. It was exactly what we were feeling and who we were at the exact moment… It was exactly like a snapshot of us in that moment.”

This raw and unhinged live show energy that he talks about is very evident in tracks ‘Goon’ and ‘Wallpaper’. He notes, “’Goon’ is the first track, and it gives us that live vibe of Dear Rouge, but it’s also very listenable. So, it’s a good first track.”

Danielle adds, “It wasn’t a fun situation, but the idea, having something or someone or a situation that is just so sticky that you can’t seem to shake it. I think our brains all do that. We kind of latch on to certain people, certain traumas, certain loves lost, certain ones that got away. I felt like that would be an interesting song to write about for lyrical content. And I got it when I was in Paris with my friend, and we had these two dudes who would not leave us alone. So that’s when I’m like, ‘GO AWAY!’”

“‘Wallpaper’ takes it to the next thing,” he smiles. “We wanted Danielle to have a song to yell about, and we actually knew that before she wrote a lot of the lyrics because she’s like, ‘after each show, what am I gonna be confident in screaming about?’ In nature, that song was especially built live, of that’s going to be so much fun, like when we’re playing the show. It’s just gonna hit hard. We’ll try and play it with more energy.”

SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: DEAR ROUGE – LONESOME HIGH

Danielle says, “We got to work with Steve Bays and Parker Bossley, who are Fur Trade, which was really neat. And Hot Hot Heat, that’s like Steve’s origins. So he started the production of that song… The thought of ‘Wallpaper’ being like this culture right now, it’s either you feel like you can’t say anything because your stuff you say is going to last forever, and it’s gonna be online forever, or there’s like blowhorn type people where they say too much, and it’s a crowded room, and everyone’s yelling. So, like the thought of if you don’t say anything, you don’t get heard. But if you say too much, you also don’t get heard. And the thought of just turning into wallpaper and your voice getting lost.”

“Lonesome High” has a different vibe from the rest of the album as it takes it in a much slower route, almost like a ballad, and showcases the band’s versatility. “‘Lonesome High’ was a song on the piano that Danielle started,” he states. “We only did a little phone demo and then worked it in the studio… We were like, ‘we need a title track,’ and it’s a perfect bookend because at that point in an album, you’re like, ‘a little ballad now would be perfect’ cause it’s a lot of energy all the way through.”

Danielle says, “It’s a really beautiful song to me because it’s basically like the two sides of you, the two sides of life, of like joy and sorrow intertwining all the time. I was in a house by myself… There was this beautiful white baby grand piano, and the house was beautiful. It was in Vancouver. It was like this penthouse. But the thing that stood out to me was there was this crow’s nest on the side of this beautiful home. These crows were coming in and out, and I was watching them fly in and out of the nest, and I was just like, ‘what the heck?’ It’s so weird to see a crow and watch it while it symbolizes something really dark. But then have it feeding its babies, and somehow that’s really precious, too. I was like, ‘that’s such a crazy thing to be watching while I’m writing this romantic, scary, eerie song.’  And it was just perfect for what ‘Lonesome High’ represents.”

Dear Rouge will be playing at The Grey Cup Festival in Vancouver on November 15. “We love anything national like that,” highlights Danielle. “We love that people can get behind it so easily. Music, culture, sports, food, anything in that realm, I’m all for it because people are all on the same page, and they’re joyful for the most part. And I love celebratory settings and we are really good at that. So we’re pumped. Definitely excited to be hometown also because then we get to hang out with all our friends.”

Drew remarks, “Everyone knows about it in Canada, and our name is up there, so how lucky are we to be able to be part of that.”

Recently, Drew and Danielle welcomed a baby boy named Elliott into their life. “We went through a time where it was really hard for us to have a kid,” says Drew. “It does reshape everything… Just like when you get married you have to care about someone else. Or when you have a kid, you have to care about two other people. Or some people come from families of no kids, one kid, or twelve kids. Every bit is different. So it feels like a different colour that we added to our life that we never used before… It reframes how we think about everything because of that.”

Dear Rouge has been a band for over a decade now. “It’s just the best,” says Danielle. “It’s such a wonderful thing to do with a person that you love. We say you end up being married twice because, like, you’re in a band, and you’re also married.”

Drew adds, “It is wild because if you’re writing with anyone, it’s challenging. And being a musician is really tough… I think with writing together and releasing together if it does really well, we get to celebrate the high together. And we’ll like go for dinner and be like, ‘oh, we did this!’ But if it’s really low, we also have someone to walk through that with us who is in the exact same position as the other person… There are so many highs and lows in the music industry, so, yeah, it’s pretty special. It doesn’t mean it’s easy, but it’s very special.”

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Photo Credit: Steve Bays

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