by Giliann Karon (@lethalrejection)
Motorists aren’t reinventing the wheel. With their fuzzy hooks and shimmering guitars, the Toronto power-pop trio unabashedly pays homage to alt-rock greats like R.E.M.,Teenage Fanclub, and Sloan – the bands they bonded over together when they began playing music as teenagers in Calgary. Their self-assured sophomore album, Touched by the Stuff, applies bold production techniques with the vulnerable DIY sensibilities that graced 90s college and commercial radio.
I chatted with members Matt Learoyd (bass/vocals), Craig Fahner (guitar/vocals), and Nick McKinlay (drums) about the uniquely collaborative album process, 90s nostalgia, and the future of Canadian independent music.
photo credit: Kyle Berger
GILIANN KARON: What’s your musical upbringing and how did you meet?
NICK MCKINLAY: I met Matt when I was 15 and he was 16, so we’ve been playing music together for over 20 years. The fact that we’ve been playing in bands and singing together for so long informs our process and sensibilities. I think he was the first person I ever sang harmony with.
You came over and I put together a barbecue from Home Depot. Then we went to an open mic at A Bar Named Sue in Calgary and sang “Pen Pals” by Sloan.
This question unearthed a very sweet memory. We both learned about music together, but also about the things we value deeply.
CRAIG FAHNER: Matt and I both moved to Toronto around the same time. We already knew Nick. When our original drummer, Jesse Locke, moved to Vancouver, it was a natural transition because Nick shared many of our sensibilities.
GK: What about 90s alt-rock resonates with you so much?
MATT LEAROYD: We were all born in the 80’s, so the 90s was our first exposure to popular music, especially Canadian alt-rock. Sloan is a big touchstone. Big shiny tunes and radio rock hold big places in our hearts.
Like Craig said, it’s been present throughout our various musical adventures. Some 90s touchstones have made a comeback, but nobody’s bringing back Canadian alt-rock. Somebody's gotta do it.
NM: There’s a romance about that era of bands because they loved being in bands together. We met at least once a week while making the new record, so it was just as much social time as it was creative. That process felt old school compared to making records over Zoom.
CF: That production style was an exciting path to a stripped-down, jangly, DIY sound. My reference point is REM, who transitioned from a jangly, DIY, college rock band to a bigger production style. The three of us have loved them throughout our entire lives and it’s interesting to follow that sonic trajectory with this latest record – taking the same melodic songwriting formula but applying a bigger production style to it.
GK: It was the last era before social media, so there’s nostalgia for exclusive word-of-mouth communication.
ML: Definitely, You’d have to hear about bands or read about them in zines, rather than being able to access this information at any given moment. There’s a mystique to that era because it’s the last era before we knew everything all the time.
GK: The album is cohesive instead of sounding like a smattering of whatever you were feeling at the time of recording. Can you talk about pinpointing a specific aesthetic and building a world around it?
CF: It’s like what Nick said about committing to meeting on a regular basis. We spent two years building it together.
A collaborative songwriting experience is super unique to me. We evolved these songs together over a very specific period of time. In 2021 and 2022, the world felt open and we were excited to commit to creative pursuits.
NM: We are committing to this larger sound. We worked with our engineer, Jesse Turnbull, who I’d worked with previously. He’s great at letting things shimmer. We felt like we had permission to make things sound larger than our punk brains initially let us.
CF: Speaking for myself and likely Matt, our recording experiences in other bands were almost entirely DIY. The studio experience was pretty new to us. Making a bigger-sounding record was on the table right from the beginning.
ML: Jesse was a “yes” person. We asked to make it bigger, add another layer of guitars, or double the vocals again. And he said yes.
GK: How did you channel such an iconic and popular sound without turning the album into a pastiche?
CF: We’re not trying to write a Stone Temple Pilots song. We’re still writing from the heart and keeping a DIY, jangle pop sensibility in mind.
ML: Lots of bands reference other ones in an ironic, tongue-in-cheek way. A winky face, “I know we sound exactly like Nirvana, but you’re gonna like it anyway.” Maybe they sound good, but I wanted to sound like us.
GK: You’re Canadian and based in Toronto. The Canadian music market often lives in the shadow of the American one. Were there any unique challenges you encountered breaking through?
ML: We actually haven’t played in the states that much, but when we have, we’ve made good connections. Craig lives in New York now, so that’s helped us extend our reach.
There’s a type of Canadian rock band that stays in Canada and only plays to Canadian audiences and caters their sound to Canadian markets. We didn’t want to present like that. We’re always interested in branching out.
Our sound is niche enough that it's more important to form relationships with like-minded bands wherever they live. We played some Europe dates last year with The Smashing Times from Baltimore. They could’ve been from Australia. Our approach is more broad than attempting to “break in” to a specific regional market.
CF: There are specific material challenges to playing in the US and I don’t think that process is well-understood. An American band can play shows in Toronto and Montreal without a problem.
But if you’re a Canadian band that wants to play in the US, it’s very restrictive. It was an uphill battle to tour there after we released our first record, Surrounded. The visa process is tricky. We have to apply six months in advance with the Department of Homeland Security, which costs money. Then we have to get our musicians’ union licenses and visas.
Then we have to figure out where we’re going to play because we don’t have the same connections as we do in Canada, but we want to establish them. There’s a lot of red tape.
ML: A lot of green tape. That’s what we call money.
CF: That prevents a lot of Canadian bands from touring in the US. Toronto's close to a lot of American cities, but not a lot of bands we like go down because the cost of both getting visas and sneaking over the border is too high.
That’s why there's a lot of US influence in Canada, but the border literally keeps a lot of Canadian culture from coming across.
NM: You said something about things growing in the dark shadows. The fun thing about a dark shadow is weird stuff can grow. Best case scenario, you focus on what you're doing and instead of the more linear parts of a career. It forces you to make your stuff and see what happens.
GK: “Barking at the Gates” keeps your formula of fuzzy 90s alt-rock but departs with a spoken word interlude and a choral section, all from the perspective of a dog running along the side of a highway to rescue its family from a burning home. How did that storyline and the different components materialize?
ML: The lyrics were inspired by a dumb YouTube video of a police dash cam of a dog running full-bore alongside the highway. The police were like “what the hell is this dog doing in the middle of the night?” and then follows the dog to a burning building.
The dog had the wherewithal to lead the authorities there, which I think is the perfect analogy for the state of the world. People are always trying to bring attention to the multiple converging crises facing humanity. It’s about them dogs.
CF: It evolved between how it started and how it wound up, even down to the spoken word part Nick does. We kept wondering who's going to do that part.
ML: We work well together because whenever we're working on a song, we get into the twists and turns, adding things here and there, all the embellishments.
GK: What did you watch and listen to while recording Touched by the Stuff?
ML: I watched the “Get Back” documentary several times, which is why I brought so much toast to the studio. One of the members of Friendship has a band called 2nd Grade. They’re an awesome power pop band from Philadelphia.
NM: King of the Hill.
CF: I immersed myself in Frosting on the Beater by The Posies, which reminded me of Big Star and Marshall Stacks.
GK: What are your favorite types of venues to play in?
ML: I’ve been thinking about this – definitely a DIY/art center sort of place. JT Soar in Nottingham sticks out. Phil Booth, a recording engineer who’s worked with Sleaford Mods, runs it. They use a plywood room as a recording studio, but they clear it out for shows. They have a cool community-oriented business model.
When a venue isn’t just a room, but a place where communities gather, you feel that when performing.
NM: It makes a difference. We’re two guitars and a drum set, so we’re very low-maintenance.
ML: The most memorable shows are the scrappiest.