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i guys, welcome to VENTS! How have you been?
JC: Staying positive through our love of music and the strong friendship we have with each other.
From all the songs out there, why did you guys choose to cover Stevie Wonder’s “Pastime Paradise”?
JC: Stevie Wonder is a musical and lyrical genius. The man is literally blind but sees the world more clearly than most of us. With the current socio-political climate, it seemed like an appropriate ‘classic’ to return to the modern domain.
The people of the world have a lot of thinking to do. We hope this message of hope and truth can inspire some good in these dark times. It’s also undeniably a great song.
What was the approach you guys were after?
NV: The approach was determined by the circumstances. This is the first song we recorded in lockdown. Heavy restrictions kept the band apart, and me on the other side of the planet. So we recorded this song asynchronously, passing demos back and forth. It was a fun experiment, and sonically successful!
How did you go on balancing the original with your own take?
JC: The spirit of the original remains. We kept the same structure and lyrics, but reassembled some of the main hooks. The (big) difference is that we pivoted from the stringy synth-driven original, into a cinematically arranged, guitar-heavy rock tune.
NV: The song has been covered and sampled a dozen times, but never (to our knowledge) by a rock band. So we knew that effective guitars were necessary to bend the song into a new direction. The guitars follow the dynamics of the song, from quivering lows to detonative highs.
How was the recording and writing process?
J.C: We re-worked the music — the riffs, harmonies and rhythms — various times until we felt like we were telling a new story. As Neelesh said, most of the recording process was done during peak lockdown, so we ended up recording the whole thing in our respective home studios.
RS: For bass, I borrowed a fair bit from the Coolio rewrite ‘Gangsta’s Paradise’ and just tried to dirty up the tone and make it a bit more…dangerous?
What role does Canada play in your music?
J.C.: There might be a few Canadian influences that seep into our sound unconsciously. But for the most part, we think of ourselves as a band without a specific national identity. Music is universal, and we’re trying to approach it from that perspective.
NV: I think this knocks on a bigger question of how music reflects its environment. And it definitely does. Coming to Canada from England, I find Canadian music to be, generally, less gritty than British music. Which is no bad thing. It’s just a different flavour. But I agree with JC, we’re an international band with an international outlook. That means we’re not anchored, musically, in any one country.
Does the new track mean we can expect a new material – how’s that coming along?
JC: After releasing Pastimes Paradise, we hope to release an original song that we’ve been holding onto for a while. After that, it’s flooring the gas pedal towards something new.
Any tentative release date or title in mind?
JC: Any predictions should be taken with a grain of cocaine, given the unpredictability of the world right now. But we hope the next track, called ‘Flies’, will be released by spring 2022.
What else is happening next in We The Crooked’s world?
JC: Besides working on new music, we’ll be finding our way back to playing shows in Europe and the UK in 2022.
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