An Interview With: Sunforger

Montreal based band Sunforger - FKA 'Mono No Aware' - venture down the jangly avenue of despondent Indie Rock. It's raw - close to the bone, unfiltered and straight from the source. 

Geeky slabs of DIY rock aesthetically akin to a stumble forwards, the way presents itself once the domino of time has been knocked into infinite spin - and no sooner. 

The self-titled Sunforger album would make it's way onto my Top 50 albums of 2023.

Peter: How are you guys? What have you been up to as of late?

Spencer Curtis: Sup. At the time of writing this we just finished a two-week tour of the US. We went down the east coast as far south as Atlanta and back north to Montreal. It was awesome and I’m super grateful to everyone who helped put it together, the bands we played with, and to the people who came to see us. Soon we’ll be going to Calgary for Sled Island Music & Arts Festival. Piper and Chris are going early to see their partner and family respectively. In the meantime we’re back at our jobs, and trying to pull together a smaller tour for July.

Peter: We're approaching the one-year anniversary of your self-titled Sunforger record. What are some things that you learned during the process of recording and the subsequent release process of said album?

SC: We wanted to make an album with the quality and rollout of an album on a mid-sized indie label, but we also wanted it to happen fast so we did everything ourselves. From the process of making and rolling it out we learned just how expensive and time-consuming it is to make something we would consider “pro”. It was a labour of love and we’re thrilled with the results.

We wanted to make the album ourselves and release it asap because it had been delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and we wanted something definitively ‘Sunforger’ out there for people to listen to. We recorded it over three years due to Montreal’s intense, law-enforceable lockdown measures – we took them very seriously and didn’t want to be the reason someone immuno-compromised got sick. Recording over that length of time meant that many years had gone by since the project had changed its name from Mono No Aware and got its new core lineup without releasing new music. Once we could see the finish line we wanted the album out as fast as possible. From April to July 2023 it was a mad dash to track the vocals, get it mixed and mastered, and order tapes and CDs in time for its release tour we were booking with our friends in Me.n.u.

We wanted to make the best album we could so we exhausted our band fund and personally fronted the costs of professional mixing, mastering, album art, and making physical copies. I sent hundreds of emails and messages communicating with the engineers working on post-production; discussing concepts and reviewing drafts with our friend Jono Currier who did the album art, physical layouts, Bandcamp assets, and Spotify visualizers; sending MP3s to college radio stations for airplay; contacting music publications with requests for press coverage; coordinating the online rollout with our friends in The Cooked Raw Label; and applying for work visas so we could tour in the US. Doing an album this way was like having a full-time email job in addition to my full-time kitchen job.

For subsequent albums we’re gonna take more time and do things slower, apply for grants to help pay for recording and post-production, and try to get a record deal with resources for all of the above, PR, physicals, etc. In the end we accomplished everything we set out to do and are super satisfied with the results. We learned that you can totally make a pro-sounding album DIY, but it would be way better to get a grant or shop it around to find label money to pay for it, a PR person to send emails for you, an agency to book your tours, and more than a handful of months to make it all happen.

Peter: Is the process for writing/recording a Sunforger track as off the cuff as the results would suggest? (I mean this in a positive way)

SC: Yes and no. I want to say we put a lot of thought into what we write and record, but it’s more about feeling. When a structure feels good, it’s done. When a recording sounds good and has all the necessary constituent parts present, it’s done. To me music is most satisfying as an iterative process – finishing one project, be it writing a song or recording an album, and moving on to the next one. Then we play those songs live the same way dozens or hundreds of times, and its recorded version becomes an immutable object you can listen to to your heart’s content.

That philosophy on iteration manifests in writing a Sunforger song. I like to do things a minimum number of times for it to be satisfying before moving on to the next. For me it keeps it interesting without becoming overwrought. I also try not to include anything that doesn’t need to be there. A song doesn’t need a bridge and a third chorus to be a song, a song can be anything as long as there’s a beginning and an end and it makes you feel a way after hearing it.

For us a song usually begins as a riff, then more riffs, then a structure, and sometimes we’ll rework a number of repetitions or add a little thing here or there to give it flow. When a riff or structure is brought to the band for fleshing out, the process of finishing a song is very fast. We’ve all been playing music a long time, and Sunforger has been my songwriting outlet for many years. At this point the process has become pretty intuitive.

When recording, we typically do a minimum number of takes of each instrument and keep whatever the best one is. You could spend forever working on the same part to get the perfect take, or you can keep one that feels good and is tight enough to not fuck up the song and it’s probably good enough. The magic is in the feeling it evokes, not it being ultra-precise. Which isn’t to say that we don’t try to be ultra-precise! Especially when we play them live.

I’ve heard Sunforger’s recorded music described as ‘slacker,’ and that some of our songs have a kind of ‘sketch’ quality because it’s a small number of parts repeated a minimum number of times. I like that, as though a song is a drawing from a sketchbook, or in my mind, like a minimalist expressionist painting. In my mind, no matter the medium, when an artist stops working on something it’s done. It’s all about the feeling, be it of completion and satisfaction on the part of the artist, or what it evokes in the viewer or listener.

Peter: You supported the mighty Protomartyr in Montreal on their latest tour. How do you prepare for a support slot? What comes into the equation as you plan it out? Also, how important are support slots to artists?

SC: It’s true, we just opened for Protomartyr in Montreal a few days ago! We didn’t go on tour with them or anything, we were just the local support for their show in our hometown. We want to go on a support tour, Chris has done them with his other band Ada Lea, and some of our friends have done them as well. They are hugely important for small bands. You play in front of audiences much larger than the ones you typically would, for many of whom you are brand new; you get guarantees; the logistics are taken care of, you don’t have to book everything yourself DIY; and the kind of ‘co-sign’ of name recognition, people see your name and the headliner’s together and are more likely to give you a shot. At the Protomartyr show, we played a room four times the size of a typical Sunforger show and we knew like maybe twenty people there. It was a cool experience, and hopefully we get to do more things like that in the future.

We were pretty well prepared for it having just done a two-week tour. We did one practice the day before just to make sure we stayed sharp. At the show itself, I did get nervous on stage lol, but the audience was receptive so it was chill. We were trying to keep in mind that it was just another show – the name of the headliner and audience are bigger, but we just have to go up on stage and do the same thing we always do.

Peter: Who makes it onto your Mt. Rushmore of Indie Rock?

SC: Damn, that’s a hard question. It’s tough to define indie rock, and there have been so many different varieties and eras. If they made an indie rock Mt. Rushmore in 2024, based on their cultural relevance across North American DIY, it would be Women, Duster, and MBV. If grunge counts even though they were all on major labels I would say my Mt. Rushmore is Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, and Alice In Chains. As a teenager I would have said Interpol, Women, The Strokes, and Death Cab For Cutie. Today maybe I’ll say Nirvana, The Ramones, Joy Division, and This Heat.

Peter: You get a chance to work with a producer of your choice for your next record/project/batch of material. Who do you choose, and why?

SC: Later this month we’ll be tracking a new album with engineer and producer Monty Munro. We chose him because he’s an awesome dude, he has a nice studio in Montreal, Piper’s other band worked with him and their recordings turned out great, and we know he’s into similar things we are. He likes to preemptively make sure you don’t do too many takes of any one part which is exactly how we operate. He has cool ideas for mics, amps, tones, and additions like synth. Ideas and input from a producer is something I’ve never had before but want, and I think he’s going to fulfill the role perfectly.   

RIP to Steve Albini, I would have loved to work with him on something at some point but that’s off the table. He worked on some of my favourite music and his iconic drum and bass sounds will forever live in my head rent-free.

Peter: And finally, what are three things you hope to achieve by the end of 2024?

SC: Finishing our next album, getting a record deal for that album, and putting together enough money to afford our next US work visas.

Many, many thanks to the Sunforger fam for taking part in this. Their material holds a special place in my heart.