Joel Plaskett - La De Da - Release Date: Out Now
It's a long way to Arizona, and it's a longing that carries Joel Plaskett home to Halifax. His new album, La De Da, is about what happens when you know you have to go away; what happens when you know you have to go home; and what you do on the road in between.
Plaskett recorded La De Da far from home, in Phoenix, AZ, when a fan made him an offer he literally couldn't refuse.
Although Bob Hoag first invited Plaskett to record at his Flying Blanket studio about two years ago, at first the seasoned indie rocker didn't do anything about it.
"But when I was thinking of making another record," says Plaskett, "I e-mailed Bob and said 'What are your rates?' Toying with the idea. He e-mailed me back and said 'I'd love to have you here. I'll record you for free and you can stay at my house. My wife and I, we've got a pool,'" says Plaskett, laughing broadly at his own good fortune.
By the time he got to Phoenix, Plaskett had driven clear across the continent in his old Suburban truck. The trip was something like the travelogue described in one of his best new songs, a lazy, panoramic riff-rocker called "Natural Disaster: "I left Nova Scotia/ Headed down the coast / Tore a strip off Memphis/ Before I left for Roanoke / I punished Pecos County/ And headed for Las Cruces." Not to mention the barren badlands, and a Texas tornado.
"I didn't have all the songs done, and I wanted to present myself with a challenge," says Plaskett. "A chunk of time on my own where I would just be traveling and thinking about the record. But when I got there, I still didn't know exactly what I was gonna record."
Which left a lot of room for spontaneity (like vocal asides, thuds and clunks).
Even if Plaskett did play almost all of the instruments himself. "With my last album, Truthfully Truthfully, I demo'ed everything and was going for a kind of 'modern rock' sound," says Plaskett. "But with this record, I didn't know what I was doing!" he adds, laughing. "I'd never played 'Lonely Love' for anybody. I had no idea how it was going to go, and I wrote two of the lines as the mike was on. I tried to let the ideas flow through and not second-guess them. The album was recorded in about two weeks."
Although it contains his travels, La De Da is bookended by songs rooted in Halifax, and in Plaskett's memories of his good old early days: The mid-'90s, when he led Thrush Hermit - alongside Sloan, Eric's Trip and jale - to glory, as the then-booming Haligonian scene went from local to international.
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