An Interview with dreampop band Closeout: “To feel energized, to feel excited, to feel welcomed”

Étienne Lavallée documents London’s current art scene with The Honey Dip Archives, a series of interviews with bands that performed at Honey Dip’s one year anniversary celebration. Here, he meets Daryan (vocals), Andrew (guitar), Beck (bass guitar), and Oliver (drums) of “Closeout”, a London Ontario-based dreampop/ shoe gaze/ dreamo band. 

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Closeout audio interview:

Étienne Lavallée: How does this thriving but localized Southern Ontario underground scene, especially between London Hamilton and the GTA, shape the grit and dreamo atmospheric tones in your music?

Daryan: For me, when I first moved here because I’m from Saint Thomas originally, I started coming to shows here and in the GTA, and I feel like just seeing more and more emerging artists in those areas is what inspired us to do this. I never thought I’d be in a band but here we are, and it’s been really nice to participate in and see more artists come out doing that.

Beck: I agree. The community amongst the scene is just so amazing and being able to have access to so many different things and different music from different people – it’s, like, really inspiring for sure, like, in all aspects.

Étienne Lavallée: You guys have played some dynamic high attendance bills alongside other stuff, southern Ontario acts. So what is the primary vibe or feeling you want a first time listener to experience at a Closeout show?

Daryan: There’s no particular feeling, I would say I just want people to get into it. We saw tonight that we could get the whole crowd to participate and dancing and moving and I feel like that’s what’s most important to me.

Andrew: What I want when people first come to our show, I really want them to feel it, they’re inside it. We write pretty emotional music, that’s what a lot of my influences are from, so I want them to be able to dance, and also be able to cry.

Beck: I’d say I want people to feel energized, and to feel excited, and I want them to be able to get into it and feel welcomed.

Oliver: I play drums sometimes, I’m not an official member, but as a dear friend of these people I think the ideal experience is to live in these wonderful songs that these three very talented people write and just enjoy how good of friends they are, how much they want to be your friend, how kind they are, and what amazing music they they write.

Étienne Lavallée: Tone is a huge part of shoegaze and alternative rock. What does your pedalboard setup look like and how do you achieve that kind of signature warping atmospheric guitar sound? 

[Effects pedals are used to add effects to sound. A pedalboard is the array of effects pedals used in shoegaze and alternative music to make the tone more blurry, psychedelic, and textured. ]

Andrew: My pedalboard is really simple. I use the big muff. The Big Muff (The Electro-Harmonix (EHX) Big Muff Pi Distortion Effects Pedal) is great, and obviously the signature shoegaze guitar– the jazzmaster with the glide strumming. And then I use Electro-harmonix Canyon delay pedal, as well as a memory toy (analog delay pedal) and then Beck’s and my tones combine beautifully. What does Beck have?

Beck: I also don’t have much, in terms of a massive pedalboard, but to achieve the sound we go for, I have a SansAmp, just using it as sort of an overdrive. I have that on all the time and I have a Big Muff, and that’s pretty much it. I used to have a delay pedal but I got rid of that– if you know, you know. 

Étienne Lavallée: South Ontario has a really rich history of spawning some very iconic bands. Which local or regional artists have influenced your sound, and who are you listening to right now?

Daryan: We really dig The Neverminds, those are friends of ours. Personally, I listen to a lot of calmer stuff like, The Sundays, that’s where I get my writing inspiration from.

Andrew: As far as the local bands are go, some of the bands here tonight definitely inspire us, like Status/Non-status, they sound incredible live. We’re striving to achieve that. The Growlits are friends of ours, like their live performance is so good. We kind of take from everybody, lots of friends of ours.

Étienne Lavallée: I wanted to talk about your recent single, Together. What inspired the emotional core of this track and how did the band know it was the right song to introduce your current sound to the world?

Daryan: I write about a plethora of things, lyrics-wise — anything that’s making me mad or upset at the time. I can’t honestly remember what in particular it was, but I’d like to write very pretty, and I think on that song the verses flow really well into the chorus and like impacting that emotion and anger.

Andrew: I feel like Together we chose to record first because it’s the first song we wrote as a band and not just a demo.

Beck: Among the songs we started writing, that was a favourite of ours, one we were super proud of. It felt whole. It was fun jamming out the parts together. It was the beginning of us learning each other’s musical worlds. 

Étienne Lavallée: I really enjoy how your music blends heavy, driving rhythms with dreamy, floating melodies. How do you all collaborate to make sure the heavy parts hit hard while still giving the melodic elements room to breathe?

Daryan: I feel like we struggled with this for a little while, we wanted to be loud and energetic.These two (Andrew and Beck) write mainly together, and then I do all my melodic stuff on my own. Our focus now is instead of having constant energy, we want it to flow, we want people to feel the depths and the calmness of the course, and then be able to jump into it. 

Andrew: I feel as we continue writing more songs, and we always knew this, but we’ve realized that like Daryan’s vocal parts are so awesome and they’re probably the parts that should stand out the most. We’ve been, like, writing with that in mind.

Beck: With what Daryan was saying, the depth of things throughout the song – we wanted to keep this in mind now, as we continue to write more and I feel like we’ve adapted it in ways that I’m very proud of, but just like having more drastic dynamics so that the sound is a lot more quiet and calm and then that’s kind of how we make like the heavy stuff hit so hard.

Oliver: I think rhythmically, especially to pay credit to Andrew, from the beginning Andrew was writing a lot of these parts, and programmed them in demos as well as the recordings. He writes these very interesting grooves that when I play, I expand upon but fundamentally and inherently it’s very Andrew. I think rhythmically a goal moving forward is to be more expressive, and more fun, and more dynamic. Daryan is the best singer I’ve ever known in my life.

Étienne Lavallée: Working closely as a band always changes how you create. How has your songwriting process evolved now that you’ve been playing and growing together for a while?

Beck: As we’ve done, it’s easier to introduce ideas and to have them be taken. It’s easier to work upon those ideas, and to work with each other. It’s becoming a lot easier and I also just want to mention we’re going to be releasing a bunch of new music.

Étienne Lavallée: That’s a perfect segue!

Beck: We’re going to be releasing a bunch of new music in August. We’re doing a whole EP of 6 songs and we’re super proud of this stuff. It’s definitely in the direction we’re wanting to head into and also just in terms of being free in like a very creative way with one another.

Andrew: I feel as we’ve started writing a lot more again, I feel trust has been been a big thing, we just really trust each other now, to work out each of our own parts, we know Daryan’s going to come up with the coolest stuff on vocals, we’re never worried about that. Beck and I work really hard together on like making sure our guitar and bass parts are in line and even drumming – Beck and I both write the drum parts together and it’s really fun and flows really naturally.

Daryan: I feel like we’ve finally like found our groove in terms of working with one another. I have never felt that any ideas are bad, we’re able to talk everything through and write a bunch of new stuff that we’re really proud about. We’re proud that we’ve been able to experiment a lot more with it and just really excited to start releasing more and have people see that.

Étienne Lavallée: You’ve got music coming out in August– so what about upcoming touring plans?

Beck: We’re doing as many shows as we can throughout the summer in July, August, so we’ve sort of been clumping that into an Ontario tour. We’re playing Montreal, Toronto, and we’re hoping to add more dates in August, like Kingston and Ottawa but we’re happy to be playing all over Ontario. I think we definitely strive to get out West and even to the East Coast, so we’re hoping to plan that soon.

Andrew: We will be playing a whole lot of shows more every year. We’re just trying to get in there as much as possible, we know we can make it happen. We’re going to be playing in Europe someday, going to be on the East Coast next year, we’re gonna be in Asia. It’s all happening.

Étienne Lavallée: Before I wrap this up is there anybody else artistically you wanted to give a shout out to?

Beck: Yes, a lovely artist based in London right now called Moses Symington is going to be coming out with the record soon and I highly suggest people keep their eyes out for that.

Oliver: Yeah I hear that that fella is a right twat. La Rent is coming out with a record soon, good friends of ours. Me, Jeff from La Rent, and Soph from Film Critics and Goon are working on a record as well. Jeff from La Rent just released a a record, which is very good, Thank God for the Rain. Good friends of mine from Toronto have an EP out that I recorded. Pickpocket, my friend Lucas Joe, everybody who played tonight go listen to their music, go support them.

Daryan: I feel like they covered it, but shout out to you two (Beck and Andrew) because I never thought I’d be in a band, and this has been the most fun I’ve ever had.