SPILL FEATURE: DICTION, LANGUAGE & FLOWERY WORDS – A CONVERSATION WITH COURTNEY CARMICHAEL & NIKKI ST. PIERRE OF SUNDAYCLUB

DICTION, LANGUAGE & FLOWERY WORDS

A CONVERSATION WITH COURTNEY CARMICHAEL & NIKKI ST. PIERRE OF SUNDAYCLUB

There’s some great, howling shoegaze coming out of Winnipeg, and its sound is the direct consequence of the push and pull between the two members and driving forces, the genial and friendly pair of Courtney Carmichael and Nikki St. Pierre, who I meet one sunny (yes, really!) Winnipeg afternoon. They come from almost completely different approaches: Carmichael would “play in my uncle’s band, or busk with my sister”, in her own words, whereas St. Pierre was much more solitary, finding solace in self-teaching the guitar, having found it in his grandma’s closet at the age of eight, before going on to learn producing techniques “when EDM got big,” to coin his phrasing.

Already in very different worlds, then, how did their two paths cross? Carmichael picks that up: “Well, my sister and I, we were trying to get into the Winnipeg Folk Fest Young Performers Program,” she explains. “We needed some demos, and St. Pierre was like, “I’ll produce them for you,” and then we just never stopped making music, really.”

So became sundayclub; a name, if you were wondering, formed from a name on a t-shirt seen during a weekend wander through the shops, following several abortive attempts at naming the band. “We were walking through H&M one time,” St. Pierre explains. “We saw a shirt that said Sunday Club and thought ‘hmm, that’d be a funny name,’ but we kind of dismissed it as stupid. When we were walking later in the evening, though, it started to sound better! My friend always said try not to find a name you love, but one you don’t hate, and it was time.” He smiles.

PURCHASE SUNDAYCLUB VIA BANDCAMP

They’ve since navigated an ever-shifting landscape to navigate, not least of which is navigating the vast orbit of their diametrically opposed influences; Carmichael talks of growing up with country music, pop, and 80s hair metal, while St. Pierre cites Motown, hits, and hooks, with a vast ocean in between their formative influences. That crept into the band at first, as St. Pierre explains: “We didn’t really have inspirations or anything, because we didn’t share much, we didn’t grow up listening to the same things,” he says. Carmichael concurs: “We didn’t really, no, but once we met and the more we got to talking about music, I think we landed on the same page eventually, because we were exploring stuff like indie music together, for the first time.”

What you can hear, though, is a commitment to a few things: infectious hooks, strong songwriting with a personal bent, and an unmistakable contemporary sound. “I always gravitated towards the hits, or the tracks that just have that hook, and I think you hear that in our music,” St. Pierre explains. I also, being a British writer, posit that there’s something about their sound that sounds quite British – very reminiscent of the jangly gloom-pop of the late 80s. They seem pretty happy with this, exclaiming: “People over there love our sound! They reference it all the time. It feels like they reminisce about some British bands when they hear us.” It’s not hard to see why, because I did too – in this modern era, they cite everything from the Smiths, to the 1975, to Pale Waves as potential favourites, and all of that’s audible in their records.

Enough of the past, though, what of now? Well, they’ve been writing, refining, and demoing songs almost since they both picked up guitars, which they estimate is around six years at this stage. That’s led to an upcoming album, SUNDAYCLUB, that somehow contains both newer tracks and tracks as old as one of its leads and strongest tracks, “Sad Summer”, which, Carmichael explains, was on the fated demo reel for the aforementioned Folk Festival all those years ago. “Sober,” “Sad Summer,”…I’m not sure which we wrote first, but they’ve been around a while – since around Fall 22 or 23,” Carmichael says. “We sort of ended up redoing the whole record when we were supposed to be mixing it,” St. Pierre admits. “It took us a while to have an understanding of each song, and how to find a throughline through all of it. In fact, we had to stop listening to music entirely for a while, because we were just hoovering up influences all the time!”

What comes out is an album full of pathos, honesty, and emotion. While it isn’t a concept album, the band does describe it as something of a piece taking snapshots in time throughout the evolution of the record, with each piece of time, experience, and growth all forming part of the eventual mixture that is the record. “We’ve made this over such a long period of time, during a very formative time where there’s been a lot of big life changes,” Carmichael explains. “We’ve been through university, deaths in the family, new friends, old friends…I kind of chuckle because I’ll reference the good old days, and it’s like, hang on, you were a child when you wrote that! What are you reminiscing about?” Nodding vigorously, St. Pierre picks up. “Absolutely, when you look at the whole, you really see a picture. Read between the lines, and look at the lyrics, and you really see us just growing up,” he finishes.

Their first full-length is their follow-up to last year’s well-received EP Bannatyne, which actually ended up being some songs cut from the album that offered a portent as to the future sound of the band. They combine homespun lyrics about places close to them – with street names like “Corydon Avenue” a particular favourite – to songs like “Sober”, which feel as though they could tell anyone’s story from anywhere in the world, such is the truthful bite of their lyricism. They’re proud of this, as well as their ability to keep their local roots alive too: “I like to paint a picture. There’s a lot of sarcasm or backhanded things in my lyrics, but that’s sometimes the frustration of capturing something so ephemeral, a feeling or aura that’s so fleeting, and I’m trying to capture it the right way. I love diction, language, and flowery words, but I want to use them in an appropriate way,” Carmichael explains.

All of this – all this melting pot of emotion, sarcasm, pathos, joy, growth, etc. – has given this dynamic duo a whirlwind of a life so far. It shows no signs of slowing down either, as post-album release, the band expect to be out on the road, with a Canadian tour touching Alberta, Quebec and Ontario the highlight. You can expect to see them overseas, too (especially after I spent a while trying to get them to Britain!), but more than anything, expect to hear more music. It’s what they do. “We want to get started on the next one,” they tell me. “We’ve got that creative energy, and you’ve got to bottle it up, corner it, and wait for it to explode. We’re ready for that.”

Indeed they are – and explode might be the key word. Because for each inch of historical influence in their music, there’s something urgent and contemporary, too. At the moment, they get to be Canada’s best kept secret, but if I were you, I’d get down to that tour – I don’t think you’ll get to keep them to yourself for long.

Artist Links

Photo Credits: Evie Maynes