Moist frontman says timing right for reunion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/11/2014 (4300 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

DAVID Usher has released more solo albums than Moist albums, but there’s a generation of ’90s CanRock fans that will always think of him as the frontman of the multi-platinum, Much-Music-dominating alt-rockers.

After an unofficial 12-year hiatus, Usher is once again at the microphone for Moist, which is back with a new album, this year’s Glory Under Dangerous Skies — the band’s first since 1999’s Mercedes 5 and Dime — and a new record deal with Universal Music Canada.

Moist is a project that Usher, 48, always saw himself returning to — he just didn’t know when, or how.

“We always called it a hiatus,” he says from Montreal. “We never said we had broke up. We’d always talked about doing another show, another this, another that. But it was never a guarantee. I think that’s why we wanted to do it now. We knew if we didn’t do it now, it would never happen.”

The band — whose current ranks include original guitarist Mark Makoway and keyboardist Kevin Young along with newer members Jonathan Gallivan (guitar), Louis Lalancette (bass) and Francis Fillion (drums) — had no carefully orchestrated, PR plan for some splashy return to the Canadian music landscape.

The timing is right though; a cursory scan of this year’s concert bookings reveals that ’90s CanRock is having a major moment, with Big Wreck, the Headstones and Gob all having played shows in the city over the past few weeks. (The Tea Party is here Dec. 2.)

No, it started as most things do in the Moist universe: a conversation over beer.

“We’re lucky that way as a band — we’ve remained friends for all these years. Every year, when we get together, someone says, ‘We should play a show this year,’ and someone else says, ‘Oh I can’t this year.’ This was the first year that everyone said, ‘Yeah, it’d be fun to play some shows.’ I think I woke up the next morning going, ‘What did I just agree to?'”

In November 2013, Moist went on a small run of shows dubbed the Resurrection Tour — a reference to its 1996 single of the same name. The mood during the weeks leading up to the tour was one of nervous excitement.

The shows sold out, giving Moist the encouragement it needed to start entertaining the prospect of a record. “It became really obvious that we wanted to keep going. Everything came together from those six shows. We re-fell in love with the project. We wanted to see what music we could make together. Again.”

Usher says the writing process for the new album took him by surprise. The band had moderate expectations.

“We decided to get together to work on a few songs and see if we could get a single or maybe an EP. And then the songs started rolling out. We did about four days in Montreal to start writing. Writing can be an extremely painful process… The last Moist process with Mercedes 5 and Dime was brutal. It was one of those excruciating processes that makes you not enjoy music very much.”

This time, the band wrote four songs in five days. “Clearly there was something going on,” Usher says. Two weeks later, those songs were recorded in Toronto by Makoway, who produced the new album. And the process went on much like that until the record, released last month, was completed.

“It feels totally surreal,” Usher says of having a new Moist record out. “You really never know how things are going to be, but we sent the first single to radio and they completely embraced it. All you can do is believe in the music and you believe you have something to say, and then just hope people find things in the music for themselves.”

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca