By Jim Barber
Sometimes it takes a while for a band to find its voice – the essence of what makes them special, the telltale, identifiable uniqueness that is crucial for creating music that not only satisfies them, but touches the hearts, minds and spirits of music lovers. Once attained, this ‘voice’ becomes a reservoir of confidence and self-assuredness for the artists as creators and performers, which soon becomes a launching pad of exciting and fulfilling things to come.
Such is the case for Sudbury-based indie-rock band Casper Skulls, whose new album Kit-Cat sees the tightly knit three-piece elevating their musical game with a potent and memorable collection of songs that is indicative of their evolutionary maturity.
Kit-Cat is an undeniably exuberant statement by a band who has indeed found their voice – and it’s one that at times celebrates the quirky ironies of life, lobs a few not-so-subtle jabs at the vagaries of modern society, and puts their own spin on the meaning of adulthood and parenthood without sacrificing any of insistent energy and sublimely catchy melodic hooks for which the band is known.
At the heart of Casper Skulls growing prowess as a creative enterprise is the solidity of the relationship between the three founding, core band members: the husband-and-wife team of Melanie St. Pierre-Bednis and Neil Bednis (both of whom play bass and guitar along with singing), alongside their Toronto-native pal, drummer/bassist/violinist Fraser McLean.
A couple for nearly 15 years, Melanie and Neil moved to the Toronto area when Melanie enrolled in art school at Sheridan College and soon decided to explore the idea of creating their own music, and building a band, launching themselves into the hustle and bustle of the Toronto music scene when she graduated in 2015.
“We moved from Oakville into Toronto proper because, for Neil, it was his chance to really try doing something with music. And I had always loved music and always wanted to do that as well, so doing it together just made sense. As soon as we started writing together, it really clicked; we discovered our writing styles worked well with one another, so we were like, ‘okay, I think we’ve got something here,’” said Melanie.
The band came together relatively quickly with a few members coming and going but always anchored since 2018 by the core trio of McLean and the two Bednises. Kit-Cat is the band’s third full length album to go along with an earlier EP and a handful of singles.
While it makes sense that there would be a closeness in creative vision between a married couple, both Melanie and Neil say that Casper Skulls is an equal, three-way democracy, and that McLean’s contributions are integral to the band’s success, the quality of their recorded projects and energy of the live shows.
“Fraser is such a fantastic musician. Everything that he has brought to the table, especially on this record, was perfect for what the songs needed. And we all like the same type of music. Since we’ve been in a band for 10 years, we know what type of music each other is into and what vision we’re going for with our own music. He just gets it. With his drum parts, he knows immediately what the song needs, and from song to song it differs. He knows that and he changes things out to match each song, which is great and really was effective for this record.,” Neil said.
As with any enterprise of significance, it sometimes takes a while to find its footing, as eluded to in the introduction to this piece. For Casper Skulls, like many bands, it’s rare to get one’s particular ‘formula’ right out of the gate.
“It took us a while to get here. When we first started the band, we were a bit louder and more intense but then we cooled off over the years as we started introducing some slower songs and finding a comfort zone where the music just started flowing more easily. So this record feels like its exactly where we want to be right now,” said Melanie, with Neil picking up the conversation.
“In terms of the transformation for this record, on previous records, we’ve always written and recorded as a four piece in a room together and then sometimes would go out and tour those songs and get really tight with them before going into the studio and recording them. For this record, we did a lot more demoing. So Mel and I would come up with ideas, send them to Fraser and he would add different instruments to them, like drums, bass and stuff, and send them back. And we had never played any of these songs live before recording them, which is pretty unusual for us. The first time we played them live was at our album release show. So that was a whole different process for this record.”
When real life changes, it’s inevitable that the way creators create necessarily has to change, and so too is the nature of what comes out at the end of the process. Moving back to their hometown of Sudbury, closer not only to family and friends but to nature, as well as having their first child, Molly in 2023, naturally means perspectives and priorities are much different, for Melanie, Neil and Casper Skulls as a whole.
“A lot of the songs were written before she was born or before Mel was even pregnant. But on songs like ‘Dying in Eight Verses,’ there’s mentions of coming up with baby names and things like that. When I wrote that song, I definitely knew that I wanted a child and that I knew it was going to happen. By this time we had bought a house and got married and all that stuff, so I knew it was coming. In that song, you can hear that I was definitely picturing myself as a parent,” said Neil, of Molly’s impact.
“Before, when we were just a band without a child or anything like that, we’d be able to just pick up and tour whenever we wanted, for as long as we wanted. Obviously, we can’t do that now. It takes a lot more planning for that kind of thing, and for really everything to do with being in a band.”
Not that it was pre-planned or had anything to do with the lifestyle and scheduling adjustments required by a new baby, but, amazingly, Kit-Cat was recorded over six days from start to finish. Six days!! And it’s not like it had to be, it’s just that things were coming together so well, the performances were so crisp, yet so infused with energy and vitality and the band was on a roll, so the proverbial tape kept rolling, few takes were needed and boom!! A new album was born.
“We knew what we wanted. We produced the whole thing with our friend Matt Weiwel, who runs a studio here in town called Deadpan Studios, and it’s a great studio and holds up really well when you compare it to the ones we used in Toronto. He just got the vision of what we were doing and helped us just bang it out. I think it’s the easiest record we’ve made, which is also weird. For the other ones, the process was so rigorous: they were a lot more work. So, yeah, this one came together really nicely,” said Melanie, returning to the theme of the band being in a headspace where they knew exactly who they were, where they were and what they wanted to say, without equivocation.
“We just understood it, and it was easy to execute because of that. Whereas before we were probably navigating through different styles and sounds of music because we just weren’t sure where we were headed.”
Neil believes that with the band officially being a three piece with him, Melanie and all of them are in synch, the process was naturally going to be more efficient.
“I don’t know how this will come across, but having less voices in the band made things run smoother. We have always been democratic, every voice counts, but when there’s four, there’s a lot more discussion and debate. As a three piece, and with us already so much on the same page, there was less, you know, voting on things. We were able to pick out snare sounds quickly, guitar sounds quickly, agree more quickly on a vocal take, that sort of thing,” he said, reiterating that it also makes the songwriting process a lot more streamlined, as evidenced by the seamlessness of how songs came together for Kit-Cat.
“For me, it’s usually a guitar riff first and then I will write the vocal melody and then they do the lyrics last. At that stage I will demo it and send it to Fraser. Occasionally I may have a few lines of lyrics written down which will be a good jumping off point for a song and I will try to fit it with a melody I already have and then go from there and finish the lyrics. For the musicality on a lot of the songs, Fraser brings in a lot of ideas. The song ‘Spindletop,’ for example, sounded totally different before we sent it to Fraser. He wrote all the guitar lines and bass lines. For the song ‘Kihl,’ which Mel sung, he added violin and cool old school Casio keyboard sounds. And Mel writes a bit differently from that.”
“Speaking of ‘Kihl,’ I had that song title for a long time and I knew I wanted to write a song called that. So that actually helped me to write that song. I have a lot of song titles that I know I want to write the rest of the songs to, and often I know what the song is going to be about, and what the style or vibe is going to be based on the song title. It’s fun. I love prompts like that,” said Mel, picking up the story.
“I am also a visual artist [she did all the artwork for the album, as well as for all the singles and the band’s merch] and I remember having art classes where we just had simple prompts and we’d draw off those and I loved that. So I used the same technique for music most of the time. But I’m also the type that will plunk around on the guitar and come across a cool riff and then write off of it and then do the same thing that Neil was describing like putting in the melody and lyrics after. But, I will say, I do use the song titles as a prompt a lot. It’s usually my first approach. I am so open to writing a song differently, which I think can open up a lot of really cool possibilities. I know there’s some musicians who do vocals first, but I’ve never done that, even though I do lead vocals on many of the songs.”
Speaking of vocals, there are some tracks on Kit-Cat where one or the other of Melanie or Neil takes the lead, but there are also many songs, and parts of songs, where they’re sharing the lead as well as harmonies.
“In terms of the way we did vocals, I think we lost the plot a bit on our last record [Knows No Kindness]. It made sense to trade lead vocals from song to song because it was a concept album about being raised in Northern Ontario. But we felt like we lost ourselves doing that, and this is what people come to our band for. They come to it for both of us. They like the fact that Neil and I are both on a song and we trade parts here and there and that we write together in that way. Now with this new album, we even sing a couple of songs in unison, which was cool. We did that for the first time. But that’s our band,” said Melanie.
“You know how there’s different voicings for different bands and it makes the band unique and interesting? Some bands just have it in their own voice. Well, I don’t feel Neil and I have very interesting voices separately. Like, we can sing, it’s fine, but we don’t have that easily identifiable voice that some singers have where you know it’s them. But when you get a song that sounds like us, or when you hear a song off this record or our first record, you know it’s our band right away because of the stuff that Neil and I do vocally together, and because of the way that our guitars and things like that sound together. We have a very specific sound when we’re doing something together. Those are the things that make the band this band. And those are the things that we will continue to keep and cherish.”
A stand-out track on the record, and one with resonance for many, is the sentimental but still quite serious ‘Numbing Mind’ which takes a sharpened look at the way technology has inveigled itself into every facet of society – and how that’s not exactly a good thing.
“’Numbing Mind’ is about having a relationship with television and streaming and all our devices and what that does to us. There’s so much screen time, and we’re always online and even though most things have been online for years, since the pandemic it’s been cranked up to 11 where you can even have full band shows online. I feel like a lot of this record is putting all sorts of things under the microscope, which we did sometimes on a lot of our older songs, but this one specifically had a lot of those things,” said Melanie, with Neil chipping in.
“You’ll just be hanging out with someone and then they’ll constantly have to look or check their phone. I guess that’s kind of what inspired the song. And I don’t know if this will be true or not, but I read somewhere that in like, 50 years from now, society will look at how we use phones as like what smoking used to be. That it’s an addiction and harmful and socially unacceptable.”
Another of the aspects of life being put under the microscope, in song at least, is the complicated and often conflict-ridden nature of families, and what happens behind the scenes – sometimes not very far behind – at significant family events like weddings. Or funerals.
“’Petty At A Funeral’ is about when you go to a funeral and you see all the terrible behaviour and pettiness that families can have behind the scenes where they’re asking about wills and putting themselves first in those situations, instead of celebrating or mourning the person who just died,” said Melanie.
“There was a situation where we saw some of that unfold and it definitely inspired the song. And it sucks to see things like that because you know you’re there to honour someone, to hear speeches and stories and all of that. It’s supposed to be so lovely to take in and pay tribute to this life. And then later on, maybe not even necessarily during the funeral, but not much later, you hear about all this nasty stuff from other family members. It’s crazy. This song is sort of saying, ‘dang, what I thought was this beautiful event had all this weird stuff going on behind it.’ It’s just such life stuff, like nothing is really sacred and beautiful anymore.”
As serious as the discussion on the Casper Skulls’ evolution as a creative entity and the depth of the collaborative spirit between the three band members, it’s not all super serious. There is room for some indulgence, if not outright fun. Not afraid to drop a few cultural references, fans who purchased a physical copy of Kit-Cat will, upon opening the package, see a large painting of the professional wrestling legend, the late great ‘Rowdy’ Roddy Piper, and that the second song on the record is indeed named for the kilt-wearing, feisty, fisticuff brandishing former nemesis of Hulk Hogan.
“We really do like wrestling. We have another couple that are good friends and we all got into watching it together a few years ago. And of course we watch mostly the new stuff, but I do remember watching some of it too when I was young. I just didn’t retain a lot of it, but I did remember that Roddy Piper was this really strange person. Even later in life when he was making comedy appearances or whatever, he’s such a character. One night we were watching a documentary with our friends and it talked a lot about him and the Hulk and what went on between them. It was just so silly and funny and neat and I remember leaving their house that night and saying to Neil, ‘we’re going to write a song called Roddy Piper. We’re just going to do it,’ So, back to the song title thing again,” said Melanie with a laugh.
“Neil was like, ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about? What? What? No, we’re not. I don’t even know how we make that cool.’ I said, ‘don’t worry, we’ll figure it out.’ As soon as we got home I came up with this really cool shoe-gazey riff and we were off. We decided that I would be the one who would try to write the melody and stuff for it. I was going to try to sing over that riff. But then one day Neil sat down at the computer and he had written a few verses, but I had the chorus figured out. So we managed to put it all together, and the lyrics all came together at the same time in that one session. I decided that we needed to sing the song together since it was such a collaborative effort. And it’s not like the song is about Roddy Piper on the nose. That’s not great songwriting and it makes it really kitschy. I thought it would be cool if it was about something else that could allude to wrestling. So it’s really about a couple that’s having this battle, this disagreement and trying to find some common ground. Once again, song title for the win!”
What is also attention grabbing in a visual sense is the eponymous ‘Kitty Cat’ clock on the front cover of the album as well as the main image in the cover for the single ‘Spindletop.’ Another creation of Melanie’s fertile imagination (there’s actually quite a lot going on within the bounds of the cover – well worth a couple of long looks to spot everything.)
“I think it served a really good purpose for this album. But with every album we have a different sort of visual thing to hang our hats on. For Mercy Works [2017] we used a bat. I think we’ll definitely be making a lot of merchandise with the ‘Kitty Cat’ clock because it’s so cute and fun. But we’ll probably hone into a whole new iconic image next time. I just really love the world an album can be,” said Melanie.
It stands to reason that with Molly now an integral part of Melanie and Neil’s life, touring plans need to be meticulous, well laid out, and flexible. After a few dates in late April and early May, Casper Skulls hit the road again for three shows in Ontario: May 23 at Maud’s in Sarnia, May 24 at the Palasad in London, at Meteor in Windsor May 25 with Bitters, and May 31 in Kingston at Musikki as part of the annual Spring Reverb Festival. They’re also participating in the popular Springtide Music Festival in Uxbridge, Ontario on June 14, and July 24 at the River & Sky Festival at Fisher’s Paradise in West Nipissing.
For more information on the band, visit https://www.casperskulls.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for more than 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he works as a communications and marketing specialist, and is an avid volunteer in his community. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
