Spend a bit of time walking through downtown Toronto and live music will jump out at you: from buskers, from small stage matinees, outdoor events, open second-floor windows and from somewhere else, rumbling up above where you can’t see it.
Having been around now almost five years, The Key Frames have been all of those bands at one point or another.
A borrowed van and rented trailer got them to Halifax and back last August to promote their full-length debut, “Out On The Point”. With fourteen gigs in just nine days, the band was working literally day and night. Both the tour and the album were a tight but varied exploration of what The Key Frames do best: rootsy, banjo-inflected rockers; gutsy, Everlys-meet-Stax vocal harmonies; soaring, classic pop hooks next to lonely late-night laments.
One listen will tell you that guile isn’t really their thing. Finding the depth and contrast in simple and appealing melodies, however, is.
“There’s kind of a startling transition between one day finding yourself with a couple of songs and a couple of bars to play them in, and the day when you wake up in a camper on a club-owner’s front lawn, drive four hours, play a record store and a bar, and do a local TV spot,” explains guitarist and singer Rob Webster. “At that point, you realize that something nobody expected is being built, and it’s walking and breathing, and you and four of your friends are at the control panel. It’s not like you’re getting paid, really, but artistically you’re standing up straight, and the stakes are just a bit higher. So what do you want to say?”
Building on the enthusiastic audiences, blog and alt-weekly love, and college radio chart forays they garnered the first time around, The Key Frames are back in the studio this spring with veteran producer Josh Finlayson (Skydiggers, Gord Downie) and mixing engineer Don Pyle (The Sadies, Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet) working on twelve new songs for an album that still has no name. The goal is to have it ready in time to borrow another van this summer.
“Out On The Point” is available through iTunes, Bandcamp, and other online retailers, and at select record stores. The Key Frames’ complete gig listing and more is available at thekeyframes.com, as well as on Facebook, Myspace and Twitter (@thekeyframes).