Unpersons, the fourth and latest album from Vancouver, BC-based duo The Pack A.D., is thirteen songs of excellent rock and roll. Opening with lead single “Sirens,” Unpersons barely pauses to take a breather, instead you’ll hear drummer Maya Miller and guitarist/singer Becky Black work together in harmony to create some unpretensious, noisy, rough-around-the-edges rock break up songs that are still accessible and catchy.
With each album, the group has improved significantly towards finding the sound they have now. In a telephone interview last week, Miller told me, “On the third album we did, we kill computers, we were edging towards the change that happened on Unpersons, which is that we became more garage rock and punk, verging on pop at times, and moving away from the blues thing we started out with on the first two albums.” She also noted that, “With Unpersons, we didn’t go in with any plans other than playing what we like playing, and we like playing louder, faster things.”
Unpersons came out last September on Mint Records, the Canadian independent label that has probably released albums by nearly every project Neko Case has been involved with. While taking its title from a term in George Orwell’s classic novel 1984, Unpersons has been a successful album, earning lots of praise from critics, including the site Pop Matters, which wrote, “reveling in the freedoms and limitations brought about by the guitar ‘n’ drums duo framework, Unpersons is stripped-down, high-dudgeon garage from two pissed-off gals trying to hold onto a shred of their humanity in 21st-century America.”
Working with producer Jim Diamond, who played bass in The Dirtbombs and engineered the first two White Stripes albums, was a great experience for the band, with Miller saying, “It was like having a third friend work on the album. We couldn’t have asked for a better producer.” He also mastered the group’s third album, we kill computers. Miller added, “He doesn’t try to change the sound of any band he’s working with. He brings in his own little touches, but he works on enhancing what is already happening, so it’s a really, really easy-going experience.”
Though Becky Black is the band’s singer, Miller said that she writes a lot of the lyrics. Of the songwriting process for the group, she said, “I tend to do a lot of the writing of lyrics outside of practice or tour. We put them in a book and when we decide we’re going to work on songs, Becky will flip through the book and pick out the lyrics that fit. That’s how most of the lyrics happen. As far as the music, it’s usually 50/50 and neither of us can usually remember who came up with what. Some songs will start off with a drum beat I’m doing, or some songs will start out with a guitar riff or a lyric.”
One of the best songs from Unpersons is the second single, “Haunt You.” Of that, Miller told me it wasn’t originally seen as a single but that, “I actually wrote the lyrics when we were recording, which is something we often do. I was writing the lyrics for the next song while Becky was getting ready to record her singing parts. It really felt right when that happened. ‘Haunt You’ started off with no lyrics. I figured out from the point of the chorus what she was saying, which was ‘I will haunt you’ and the build up is saying ‘I die.’ After we had that, it was basically a horror film and really easy to write because those are my favorite types of movies.” Describing it as “just a fun song to play,” she said that many friends released it as a single.
The plan for The Pack a.d. for 2012 is to spend much of the year on the road supporting Unpersons. A tour of the Northwest, including playing at the Tractor on Saturday with Hobosexual and Watch in Sparkle, will precede a tour opening for Toronto rock trio Elliott BROOD.
There will always be a need and demand for bands like The Pack A.D. because they make great rock and roll, and we like it.
{The Pack A.D. plays at the Tractor Tavern on Saturday, January 21 with Watch it Sparkle and Hobosexual, 21+, 9:3opm, $10 tickets available here.}
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