Louder AAA
“This band operates on a teeter totter of utter calculation and winging it,” Brass Camel’s guitarist/vocalist Daniel Sveinson says, with a laugh. “Everything on this new record is pure happenstance. Some days we’re a rock band putting a proggy spin on things, other days we’re writing shorter, funkier songs, or a zany Zappa one.”
The Vancouver natives are a heart-on-sleeve band. They romanticised the golden era of rock, and, along with a healthy dose of funk, let that bleed into their music. Their self-titled third album masters the delicate balance of hero worship and fresh originality, gleefully refusing to stand in one place as each member puts their stamp on its strutting compositions. It’s a reminder that, above all else, rock’n’roll is meant to entertain.
“When I was a child, I had a VHS box set on the history of rock,” Sveinson recalls. “I remember seeing [Yes bassist] Chris Squire in the wing suit, and Jimmy Page in the dragon suit. Then George Clinton from Parliament comes down out of his spaceship, and he looks like an absolute demon. I knew Batman wasn’t real; they were as close to a superhero as I was gonna get.
“Maybe this isn’t a healthy mindset,” he adds, “but I don’t have a backup plan if music doesn’t work out.”
Sveinson wrote the band’s 2022 debut album Brass on his own, and also played most of the instruments. It wasn’t until he found keyboard player Aubrey Ellefson playing Genesis music on a piano at a party that they locked in their full line-up. Their bond was instant. With it, Brass Camel were born anew. Brass Camel is also their first album working with a producer, Kevin Comeau, of prog duo Crown Lands, who encouraged their “less thinking, more doing” approach.
“He caught us at a show in Toronto, we felt like kindred spirits,” Sveinson says. “We agreed that a lot of modern rock has lost the fun factor – like, whatever happened to grandiosity?
“We stopped by his studio on the next tour to do some live sessions. When we showed him the songs we were working on, he was like: ‘Damn, do you want to make an album instead?’”
So they did. Brass Camel gleefully mixes up 10cc, Rush, Parliament and Led Zeppelin into a great big melting pot, and there’s the spice of chaos in every drop.
“Half of us are musically illiterate, but we can all play. It’s a fun balancing act,” Sveinson says with a smile. “When the red light goes on we’re flying by the seat of our pants.”
“We have a dumb, destructive energy,” says Ellefson. “I think people respond to that. Rock shouldn’t be polite; it should grab you by the collar.”
