Mind to Mind, Body to Body: Interview with TOPS

Interview by Ashley Opheim / Photographed by Claire Milbrath

The first thing I notice when entering TOPS’ studio is the two vintage hardcover books guitarist David Carriere is using as a mouse pad: The Last Tycoon by F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Man Who Died by D. H. Lawrence.

It may be because I am a writer that I am drawn to the books, but there is a pattern that has become apparent to me since I’ve begun observing TOPS through the lens of writing an article about them: they are an incredibly resourceful band.

Picture You Staring was released on Arbutus Records in early September and recorded in a small former storage room off the side of the Montreal-based Arbutus office.

“The time I get to spend making music with David, Riley and Madeline is the most important thing to me,” Jane Penny says. “The most important thing about TOPS is our ability to create sensations in other people through our songs and shows and to communicate feelings.”

Their studio is located in an old jute factory, across the street from a Hasidic primary school for boys, atop a bakery (which fills the stairwell with a wonderful, sugary scent) and right next door to the infamous Lab Synthèse, which was where Arbutus Records got its start. A hotspot for young, restless, creative minds, Lab Synthèse was a multi-purpose loft space and venue where many successful Montreal musicians and bands played their first shows.

The Arbutus office, with its piles of cardboard boxes full of merchandise lined along one wall, has the spirit of collaboration and friendship imbued in it. It is decorated with a vast array of paintings, records, art, books and artifacts that friends of the label have left behind. This presence of artifacts is something that permeates the TOPS studio as well.

Lining the walls of TOPS’ studio are melancholic relics: goofy vintage photo booth pictures of Jane and David; a Nine Inch Nails spread from a vintage magazine; a Miracle Fortress set list from August 25, 2013; a psychedelic Bataille Solaire album insert; a set list from a past TOPS show circa Tender Opposites; a strange pencil drawing by Airick Woodhead (Doldrums) that says ‘we’re getting old’ on it; and a magazine profile on Blue Hawaii, which Jane explains showed up in the mail at the office one day. It was the bands’ first print profile for their latest album Untogether. “We thought it was cute!” Jane laughs from under some colourful Christmas lights.

This is an important quality of being in the presence of Jane and David — there is lots of laughter.

I take a seat on their disheveled couch and observe the abundance of gear and road cases that surround me. David explains how pretty much everything in the room had been abandoned or left behind by Sebastian Cowan (founder of Arbutus Records, who is currently living in London) or various musicians and friends to the label. Instead of remaining in the studio unused and collecting dust, TOPS made use of what they could, cleaned up the room and got to work on Picture You Staring.

This is something I admire about the album and TOPS as a band in general — their sheer resourcefulness. They make use of what is available to them, re-claiming things that have been left behind in the absence of others: abstract things like memories and feelings, and physical things like their studio and gear.

“Everything I’ve ever done as a musician has been made from my ideas, the ideas of my bandmates, and whatever we can get together to make it happen,” Jane says. “I have nothing, but if I practice playing different instruments, sing, and write songs, I can carry that knowledge with me wherever I go, I can build on it and I won’t lose it. It’s the best bet that I have to express myself, to advance as a human being, and I truly feel that the success of that is based on its authenticity. Mind to mind, body to body, that’s when music is working.”

“The record came more and more into focus, and now that it’s out I can really see it for what it is, how it fits into world,” Jane responds when I ask her if her perspective on the album has changed since its release. “We’re working on new songs now, and they’re quite different already. I feel like we were able to conclude some of our thoughts on pop music that we’ve been developing this whole time, and now all the goals and preoccupations are different, which is sweet.”

When I ask Jane about her songwriting process she tells me about her notebooks and how she likes to doodle funny, dark and gross things. “I write a lot. I get melodies stuck in my head, I fantasize about fragments of songs becoming complete,” she adds. “Often I’ll play parts of a song and sing and then write for a while silently, go back and forth between the two. We practice songs with the band before there are lyrics, so I’ll jot stuff down. Oftentimes the lyrics keep changing, they aren’t settled until the vocals are recorded.”

I met Jane in 2008. She had just moved to Montreal from Edmonton (where three of the four TOPS members are from) and was playing in a band with David and Sean Nicholas Savage called the Silly Kissers. The Silly Kissers were to the Montreal weird pop scene what the Grateful Dead were to the San Francisco acid scene. A sort-of resident band to Lab Synthèse, their songs were fun, catchy and danceable — a quality that is still present in their music today in songs like “Blind Faze” and “Superstition Future.”

Following the rise of certain Montreal bands and artists you’ve likely heard of, many people from our tight-knit yet vast community fled the city to redefine themselves, give up on art or pursue their work more seriously in a different city. The result of this was a sort of social fissure in the Montreal community. This, in juxtaposition with the assault on the loft scene by local police, made it so that our community was confronted with a stark end to something so beautiful that we had experienced and created together, yet at the helm of something new — something else.

That something else is simultaneously imagined, realized and encapsulated on Picture You Staring in a way that feels authentic and personal, particularly on songs like “Driverless Passenger” and “Destination.”

When I ask Jane to describe Montreal she describes it as being a creative oasis. “Montreal is a low key place that shelters many types of people, and gives enough space to dream without offering the illusion that they’ll be rewarded for it,” Jane says.

“It wasn’t raining but the sky was really inky grey-blue,” Jane says of the first time she heard the final mix of the album in Brooklyn. “We all left the studio to listen separately and I walked through McCarren park with headphones in. It was May and it felt like everywhere I went the world was revealing beauty to me: there were trees covered in flowers, the kind whose petals fall off if you touch them, there were tree-lined streets covered in moss and new leaves. I ended up on a pier near the studio and the sun was setting, Manhattan was starting to glow and the clouds were swirling around in thick dark blue layers, I’ll never forget that. I have a lot of memories of the way the sky looked when I was making certain songs, ‘Destination’ for example, another inky grey blue sky.”

David pulls out an old poster from a corner of the room of Michael Jackson wearing a canary yellow sweater, an elaborate sparkly brooch, white paints and a yellow bow-tie. “This is the only thing that’s missing,” David says, regarding my interest in taking a visual inventory of their studio. “He’s judging you. Every time we were jamming we’d look up and be like, he’s not happy,” he adds with a laugh. The poster recently fell off the wall and hasn’t yet been put back up. It’s not the only thing that’s missing. I notice the floor to ceiling tropical-themed curtain I am used to seeing in the studio has disappeared.

Aside from Jane and David, TOPS is also composed of Riley Fleck and Madeline Glowicky. “Riley is very open and warm,” Jane says. “He makes friends easily and has lots of good friendships. He’s really open to other people and doesn’t exert his self over others.”

Glowicky, a student of Philosophy and muse to many, is the newest member of TOPS, having learned bass to join the band a little over a year ago. “Madeline is really social. She has a really distinct sense of who she is,” Jane says.

“There was always disagreements, in every song,” Jane says when I ask if there were many disagreements amongst the band in the making of the album. “You have to talk through a lot of small things together, discuss small details. In the end, once everyone got a chance to step back, we found that everyone felt the same about what had to change.”

Aside from the small disagreements, when asked what other sorts of obstacles that had to be overcome during the making of the album David is quick to point out the “people executing really bad music really well” in the jam space below them. “Like Rage Against the Machine funk-rock bands,” he adds, laughing.

I wander to the window and observe a sea shell and a tambourine resting on the windowsill. The sun is setting outside. I can hear the kids playing in the playground across the street. Their studio has an ideal sunset-viewing location. I gaze off into the empty field that is currently being developed by the University of Montreal for a campus expansion. The sky is pink and orange.

“I feel like this area is going to irrevocably change. Obviously within 10 years its going to be completely different,” Jane says of the changes.

Throughout the rest of the interview Jane folds white t-shirts that she plans to screen-print before heading on tour. I ask her about what new music she is excited about and she unflinchingly mentions local band She-Devils. She is also anticipating the new Ariel Pink and Peaking Lights albums.

“My favorite contemporary female musicians all have really distinct, haunting voices — Jessica Pratt, Jennifer Castle and Angel Olsen. Oh man, I love an arresting female voice,” Jane says.

Our conversation switches over to the horoscope — Jane is a Capricorn, David an Aquarius — the Polaris Prize awards, the 4chan celebrity nude scandal and music videos.

“I wanted to make something that encapsulates the feelings of isolation that are on the record, so it’s just me dancing to a song alone in a room,” Jane says of their most recent music video for “Outside.” “I have a long list of videos with women performing their songs, just being themselves, they’ll dance and move but it’s the way their personalities come through that make the videos compelling, they’re not doing awe-inspiring stuff or anything. I guess it’s my attempt to assert myself alongside these women, to join them somehow. And also to make something beautiful and visual out of my body, an extension of the music.”

When I ask Jane about how she would define beauty she says that she equates beauty to energy. “Beauty can be transmitted from anything but only exists when a person feels it take hold of their senses. It’s the closest thing to magic that I can think of.”

David has finished the mix he’s been working on during our conversation (which you can listen to here), Jane has finished folding t-shirts, my MacBook has 4% battery left, the sun has set. I give Jane and Dave hugs goodbye and wish them well on their American and European tours, knowing I won’t see them again until the new year.