Well, well, if we CULTURED VULTURES haven’t gone and snagged an exclusive little Q&A with Your Favorite Enemies. No, not that person you’ve shared a mutual hatred with for most of your life, but you can’t help enjoying. You know, like The Joker to your Batman, or vice versa if you’re that way inclined. Ignoring the fact that I said enemies plural, not singular. No, this Your Favorite Enemies are a six piece formed out of Drummondville, Quebec in jolly ol’ Canada, and they might in fact become your favourite band instead.
The band released their latest album, Between Illness and Migrations this year and have been doing some extensive touring off the back of it. The album represents Your Favorite Enemies at the peak of their game, jumping genres between prog, alt. rock, goth, metal, punk, and big ass melodies. The Q&A we caught is below, and it’s a pretty in depth one at that with some strong opinions coming across on the music industries, the state of things the way they are, personal philosophies, and the nitty-gritty truth of life in a band fighting against the odds.
Hello there, how are you, and who am I talking with?
Hi! I’m Jeff, I’m the luckiest man on earth being Your Favorite Enemies rhythm guitarist!
For those of our readers who might not be familiar with Your Favorite Enemies, care to tell them a little bit about yourselves? Your sound? What you’re all about?
We like to describe ourselves as being a high level of noise, shoe gaze, prog rock band with a punk attitude! Being from Montreal, we’re right in between Celine Dion and Arcade Fire! We own a Catholic Church which we transformed into a recording studio, quite crazy for a DIY band but no worries, only my mom calls me her angel! Also… we’re 6 in the band, 4 guys, 1 girl, and Sef, our lead guitarist with the long hair and the black beard… We’re not sure if he’s even human, he keeps saying he’s in constant communication with the “Space Gorillas coming from the Center of the Earth”… See… Go figure!
You’ve got a very unique sound that seems to draw from a considerable number of genres and sounds. Who would you say are some of your biggest influences? Where do you take musical inspiration from?
We all grew up having different influences and being inspired by all sorts of different arts and artists. But in terms of music, what instinctively comes to mind would be the chaotic exploration (and musical dangerousness) of Sonic Youth, the gloomy landscape of The Cure “Pornography” era, the early Nirvana punk type of utter melodic let go, the defiance of The Stooges, the raw essence of the Pixies, up to the ethos of Fugazi and the freedom of the Grateful Dead… and I would have mentioned Radiohead because it’s trendy, cool and serious to name them as being influential. But ever since our Canadian pride Avril Lavigne mentioned them in her latest single, I guess she took it all with her… Oh! And Sef (the band’s lead guitar player) would be really happy if I mentioned that he grew up fantasying on spandex shredders like Yngwie Malmsteen’s. Sadly, he can’t wear the same for undisclosed biological reasons…
Honestly, I think it’s the spirit of it all that makes the whole difference for us as a band. The let go, sometimes brutally quiet and sometimes whispery intense. The paradoxical elements of rawness and fragility that truly make something unique and special. Without the dangerousness of taking a chance to let a creation be the live incarnation of the moment, it ain’t worth paying attention for us. It’s just nice ear candies meant to numb our emotional guts off… it’s nothing. It needs to feel like it could be taken away from us at any second. So we need to live it for what it is and make something out of it. Again, it’s based on our degree of commitment to the “let go” nature of the moment…
Outside the band, what are some of your other big passions? What else inspires you in the band aside from music?
I don’t know if it’s cool to talk about this for an English media, but we’re really huge and crazy fans of baseball! Yeah, the sport that seems to last forever and goes very slowly, but at least, what I consider an exciting game can’t end up 0-0! San Francisco Giants is our favorite club, who just won the World Series. It’s like the World Cup, but only in America with American cities facing each other, but still, we’re world champs! We’re also human rights activists, almost extremists! We all come from modest working class families and grew up not being a priority for many people, so we’re a little pissed off but kindly, and we’re using that state of mind together, to not take B.S. from anyone, and to party as if it was our last day! We also like whiskey and bear paw cookies! (sorry… we’re Canadians)
You’re currently supporting your latest album, Between Illness and Migration, how is promotion of it going so far? How has the reaction between to the album on the whole?
For us, we’re here today because of everyone out there who’s been supporting us since the very beginning of this crazy journey! By everyone, I’m not talking about media, outside of Cultured Vultures of course, but our fans, friends, and loved ones having, most of the time, more faith in ourselves than our poor selves! Genuine is key. If it’s stardom you’re after instead of being relevant and faithful to who you truly are, you should have learned to kick a football, to create apps or to attend music business for dummies, as they are the new rock stars.
True recognition, for me, comes in the one and only fact that we’re still together, the six of us, after so many storms, doing what we enjoy the most, sharing it with incredible people night after night around the globe, without being afraid of simply being, and enjoying it to its fullest for what it really is, not for what I would like it to be! And to be able to do it at home, I really take it as a very precious gift…
You recently released the video for single ‘Where Did We Lose Each Other’, how’d you enjoy filming that? How do you generally enjoy going about making music videos?
We filmed that video in Barcelona, Spain! I don’t know if you ever went there, but you should make this city your number one priority as places to visit! It’s fabulous, passionate and filled with great hearted and generous people! We couldn’t film this video anywhere else, since, I see it as Alex’s (lead singer) most personal song ever written… I see it as a description of a very pure enlightenment that probably occurred in the middle of one of those long nights, a moment by which even the contemplation of your own illusions and make-believes aren’t enough to cover the shadows of your self-alienated desperation. It’s about this exact moment where you simply stop walking toward a direction because you know, even if you’re walking toward the right place, you’ll never fully reach it, since freedom isn’t a destination, but a state of mind being deeply rooted into a purity of heart that elevates you and others around you… a simple but powerful invitation to take a chance toward what really matters in life, toward your loved ones or loved one..!
Obviously you’re touring a lot at the moment, how’s it going? Are you coming to Europe and the UK?
It’s been a pretty crazy year on the road for us, and it all started in the UK for an acoustic university campus tour! The kind of tour where we did 25 shows in 10 days from Brighton to Bath, to Glasgow and Norwich! Is there a better way to start a year?! We then toured the UK again, but on a stage this time before heading to China, Taiwan and then coming back for summer festivals in Canada! I’m actually writing this interview in Hannover, Germany, where our new tour is starting tomorrow! We’ll be in the UK from November 14th to 18th playing in cities such as Glasgow, Coventry, Manchester and two shows in London! Since we’re a cool band, all the tour details are on our website!
Are there any contemporaries of yours that you feel we should go check out?
Since we weren’t cute, didn’t have cool dancing shoes and weren’t 11-year-olds brilliantly playing bongos on YouTube for 6-year-old girls to be smoothly led into the cash flow market of pre-puberty, we preferred doing our own things and creating our own world. Being true to yourself might not be sexy in nowadays whore-shipping fake gold digging endeavours, but still, you can do whatever you envision based on your own values and measure of involvement. You can curse all you want at the state of the industry, you can secretly envy all the bands who are pushed and supported by big time corporations, but it won’t change the nature of the business we are in.
There are no equal chances, there are no fair deals, there’s no “may the best one win” there are not even communities of artists. Everything is scripted in advance and you don’t stand a chance at winning and keeping a straight face. That’s why we created our own world. Would we make it, whatever it means? The best of all news is that I already made it, and that everything has yet to be discovered. That’s my point of view. DIY is cool to brag about until you realize your van broke in the middle of nowhere and that you won’t be able to play in front of the 25 people you’ve been able to drag to your show by begging them. But still, it’s the best way to live it if you want to work it out. Otherwise… well, I’ve heard there’s a whole lot of work for anyone able to repair ukulele and mandolins nowadays…!
Finally, and most importantly, if you had a cultured pet vulture, what would you call it?
Go Get Bieber! Strange name but it just came naturally!
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