Gloria Song is a music writer for Apartment613, and frontwoman for her own band Scary Bear Soundtrack
Plumes is the new name for the Montreal/Brooklyn band formerly known as Flotilla, but Flotilla fans need not worry: it’s still the same band. Of course, then, the question is then where does Plumes Ensemble fits in? After all, it’s Plumes Ensemble, not Plumes, that will be coming to Raw Sugar on June 14.
Band members Veronica Charnley and Geof Holbrook tried to explain it to me over the phone.
“There’s no real change of membership,” Geof told me. “It’s basically a name change.”
“Plumes Ensemble is extra members,” Veronica continued, “but there are some permanent members of Plumes Ensemble that seem to be naturally sticking around like Pemi Paull, who plays viola, and Louise Campbell on clarinet.”
Yes, you heard right. Not only does Plumes Ensemble feature viola and clarinet – and honestly, I’m of the opinion that pop music needs more bass clarinet in general – but Thursday’s performance will also feature the band’s harpist, Eveline Gregoire-Rousseau, one of the go-to harpists in Montreal for avant-garde projects.
“The idea of Plumes Ensemble is to be unamplified, for Veronica’s voice,” Geof explained, “so that’s going to be interesting. Like a classical concert. But it’s at Raw Sugar, not the National Arts Centre, so it’s more in the pop scene.”
If you’re intrigued by the idea of seeing a chamber music version of the band formerly known as Flotilla, you’re not the only one. Plumes will be releasing their new self-titled LP on July 17, giving the world once more another chance to glimpse into the fantastic magical world of Veronica Charnley and Geof Holbrook. I use “fantastic” in the fantasy-inducing sense of the word. Songs like “Messy Love” could easily have been part of the soundtrack for those children’s films about magic, like Coraline, full of daydreamy soundscapes with a hint of the eerie, darker things that creep below the surface. The eight minute opus “Hero and Leander”, featuring a 35-piece orchestra, sounds distinctly like something you swear you heard off a classic epic movie soundtrack.
I keep bringing up film soundtracks because that’s the only place where most young people will encounter orchestral arrangements nowadays. But if you were the kind of teenager who secretly adored exploring modern composers like Steve Reich while the other kids were blasting Limp Bizkit in the school halls, you’ll be delighted to be reminded of compositions like Reich’s “Different Trains” in Plumes’ “Your Train of Thought, through Tunnels”. I’m not sure if these are deliberate conscious similarities – while Plumes member Geof Holbrook is a doctorate student of music composition at Columbia, songwriter Veronica Charnley has no classical schooling. Despite this, Veronica’s music brings a unique classical twist to pop music.
“It could be that I don’t play guitar in a typical fashion,” Veronica speculates. “I tend to write second guitar parts, but no first rhythm guitar, so you’ve just got two melodies going on instead.”
“Veronica’s songs are kind of abstract,” Geof agreed. “The melodies are inventive and they don’t always sound like pop music. It doesn’t have those pop music licks. And I think that if they did, it would be really hard to play classical harmonization to them. It would kind of sound lame. But because the melodies are the way they are, they remind me of classical composers like Debussy or Bartok.”
The result is a set of melodies that may not be conventionally catchy in the sense of short, simple, repetitive riffs that you learn easily. Instead, the listener is confronted with unusual melodies that never go where you’d expect them to…and yet they settle disturbingly deep into your subconscious and stay with you long after the last song of the album finishes. One simply has to wonder, where do these tunes come from? What exactly is goes on in the daydreamy world of Plumes?
Plumes Ensemble will be performing with Sarah Hallman on Thursday, June 14 at Raw Sugar Café (692 Somerset West). Doors open at 8PM. Cover is $8.
