knitting's Next Chapter Begins With ‘Souvenir’
Photo credit: Matt Wallace (@citizenblitz)
There are few bands more exciting to follow in Canada than Montreal’s knitting, who made their third Sled Island appearance this year, one week before the release of their new album Souvenir. I had the pleasure of chatting with Mischa Dempsey (guitar, vocals), Sarah Harris (guitar) and Andy Mulcair (drums) for Reverie at Sled Village where we discussed all things Souvenir and more.
I began by asking how knitting is a part of Mint Records, one of the all-time great labels in Canada (or anywhere in the world, some might argue). The label has continued its momentum in the past couple years, with great albums last year from Ribbon Skirt and Heaven For Real, to list only a couple. What do knitting love most about being part of Mint Records?
Sarah Harris shares, “They are such an institution, like internationally, to the point where, when we were over in the UK, we had folks come to our show just because they were a fan of Mint Records and found out about us through that. It’s really a reach that wouldn't be possible without their support.”
The Montreal music and arts scene is also among the best in the world. Mischa Dempsey explains, “We were just talking about how Montreal is such a city that people move to from all over the country. So there’s a real mix of people and a real mix really attracts a lot of creative people, so people are all contributing different and interesting skills and ideas. I get a lot of inspiration from what everyone else is doing and it really makes me want to do more all the time. We’re really lucky.”
Andy Mulcair adds, “Outside of music, there's a lot of different people in different disciplines who are making film, making textiles, making visual art, and it fosters a community where we all end up working together on similar projects or helping each other out in the ways that we have our own strengths.”
To focus on the new album Souvenir (out today), I asked if there was a uniting factor to all of the songs on the album? Mischa Dempsey shares, “I started writing the record with a song that was really focused on memory, and honestly, the name Souvenir came to me when I was like writing an application for funding and I needed like a placeholder title and it really resonated with me and it ended up influencing the direction of a lot of the songs on the record. I thought it was a good jumping off point to look at life as a whole and think about what the things are that are really vivid moments from it or realizations in the context of life being short.”
Photo credit: Matt Wallace (@citizenblitz)
After a positive experience working with the legend Scott Munro from Preoccupations at Studio St. Zo (shout out to Monty!) on 2024’s Some Kind of Heaven, knitting wanted the challenge of making an album on their own this time. “We did all of the engineering and producing in house. I did most of the engineering between my studio in Montreal and we also had a trip last summer to a studio in St. John's, Newfoundland. It's my hometown, everyone in the band came out and we spent about four days in a studio there, basically laying down the drums and most of the bass. We kind of took the reins ourselves on the production, and after we recorded the drums in St. John's, we did overdubs over the course of probably four months at my studio in Montreal, so it was a lot more time spent, I guess,” Harris explains.
In advance of Souvenir, knitting released three truly stellar pre-release songs, beginning with “I Want To Remember Everything.” Mischa Dempsey has discussed the origin of this song of being the “weird kid” and learning how to reconnect with the authentic self as an adult, which I find to be deeply relatable, especially at a festival like Sled Island, which is an entire festival made by and designed for weird kids, in the best possible way. Dempsey elaborated further, “The idea for the song kind of came to me, it was one of the first songs where I was just thinking about the music and movies and stuff that I really liked as a kid, the stuff that really made me feel seen a little bit. It was about the stuff I really liked that maybe other people that I was friends with weren't so into. I feel growing up is a really a specific time when you start realizing differences between yourself and other people, contextually. Being young is hard. You don't really know why things are happening sometimes, or why you feel certain ways. I guess it was a way for me to look back and be like ‘no, you knew. That stuff was good, and it is good and is still good.’ It’s about not trying to have any ‘guilty pleasures.’”
Speaking as someone who likes to talk at length about my love of Ashlee Simpson’s Autobiography, what Mischa Dempsey describes is something I deeply feel seen by. I asked Mischa if they had any other pieces of media they wanted to shout out that brought up those feelings: “I was just talking to Andy about how much I loved the movie Bend It Like Beckham when I was like 10, and I'm realizing all the movies that I liked as a kid had extremely strong gay subtext. There was also Matilda.”
The second pre-release song from Souvenir, “Here Comes” is another winner. Mischa Dempsey described its origins: “I was kind of hoping to get a lighter feeling song on the record. Chad from CJSR earlier was saying it's bummer rock, which I think really sums it up well, so I was trying to get a little bit of a lighter one on there. I thought the riff was playful and anticipatory, and the chorus, it was like this can't be about something sad or depressing. I mean, as it says, ‘Here Comes!’ It’s a bit depressing, but it's more about trying to figure out how to get a good balance on it.”
The music video for “Here Comes” is directed by fellow Montrealer and Reverie favourite, Marlaena Moore. Moore’s video is absolutely spectacular, really evoking the late ‘90s feeling of a video you would find on 120 Minutes on MTV or The Wedge on MuchMusic, where you could envision it being placed alongside Republica’s “Ready To Go,” or Wax’s “California.” How was it for the band to film the video with their close bud and artistic genius, Marlaena Moore?
Mulclair shares, “Working with Marlaena, as I mentioned, Montreal is full of artists who work in different mediums. You know Marlaena because of her music, but she's also an incredibly talented person. She has The Big M Show, her own variety show and is great with visual arts. Marlaena made us feel incredibly comfortable. She set up a studio in her apartment with a green screen, gave us some props, gave us some inspiration, gave us some very good direction, and it kind of just went from there. We each kind of had about a couple hours sitting in the chair.”
“The thing that I found very impressive was that all of the green screen backgrounds were practical. They were special effects that she did herself, with props and cameras,” Harris adds.
The third pre-release song is “I Wasn’t Fully Cooked,” which Reverie had the honour of world premiering its music video directed by fellow Montreal art great Sasha Khalimonova. “It was just thinking about how scary it is to think that you might not be able to see something through, specifically with that being life being the thing that would be scary to not be able to see through. I wrote it about thinking about when I was young and on tour in early 2020, right before COVID hit, and just thinking about what if something happened? How would I be remembered? How I would want to be remembered about me, and are there things I need to adjust? I was just thinking through memory and existential feelings, that was a set of realizations that really came up for me,” Dempsey elaborates.
As Souvenir is set for release, is there a particular song, outside of the three singles, the band is excited to play live? Andy Mulcair singled out one. “I’m really excited to perform the song ‘Sunrise’. I think it’s a great piece of music.”
knitting will keep busy for the rest of the year, doing a string of dates in Ontario and Quebec this July, and looking to tour the rest of Canada in the fall. If you missed out on seeing knitting at Sled Island, do not fret, as they hope to return to Calgary on that fall Canadian tour. In the meantime, familiarize yourself with Souvenir! It is never too late to become a fan of knitting, one of the great Canadian bands making music today.
Souvenir is out everywhere now. Listen on Bandcamp.