Braids weave stunning success out of unlikely beginning

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This article was published 15/09/2011 (5485 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If you saw Braids on a festival stage this summer — and there was ample chance of that — just think: You might not be hearing them at all if they hadn’t played one such event just four summers ago.

There might not have been a European tour like the one bassist/multi-instrumentalist Taylor Smith says he’s “a little stressed” about prepping for, on the day he takes our call.

The four-piece might not have released its debut album, Native Speaker — which would have meant no spot on the 2011 Polaris Music Prize short list; no breathless reviews of the band’s sound, a primordial haze of looped instruments, punctuated by singer Raphaelle Standell-Preston’s howled reflections on lust and love.

Because that time Braids played the Calgary Folk Festival, they weren’t even Braids yet. They weren’t even technically a band.

They were high school friends. Braids’ lead singer/guitarist, Standell-Preston, had entered a young songwriters contest, Smith explains. She won. The prize was to play a club showcase, where she’d compete with other musicians for a slot at the city’s folk fest — and it was a prize she opted to share with three of her pals now in Braids: Smith, Katie Lee (keyboards) and Austin Tuft (drums).

“We’d started playing together as a band, and sort of arranged that song as a full band thing,” Smith recalls. “It was kind of our first show ever, playing this one song for this folk-music contest. And she ended up winning it, so we got to play the Calgary Folk Fest. And that was our second show.”

Just being on the folk fest stage and winning that contest was a game-changer for the then-teenagers. “I think it gave us this sense of legitimacy, that what we’re doing is worthwhile,” Smith says. “I think it just got us excited to do this band thing, and have that be a legitimate option. At the time, we were all considering going away to university, so having that really get the ball rolling was huge in making what we’re doing worthwhile for us.”

Most of the band members still left home for college, though — enrolling at McGill in Montreal. They’re no longer shelling out tuition every semester, although they stayed in the city, where Braids pursued another form of higher education: teaching themselves the finer points of home recording and creating the acclaimed Native Speaker between 2009 and 2010. The LP was released in January of this year.

The band has been touring those seven tracks — a collection praised by The New York Times, Pitchfork, Spin, and others — nearly constantly since then. And though their run of Canadian festival dates was followed by a fuller North American headlining fall tour fall that brings them to Winnipeg on Friday at the Lo Pub (tickets are $10 at ticketworkshop.com; $13 at the door), Smith says Braids has also finished recording a new song, Peach Wedding, for release.

“It’s for a seven-inch that we’re going to put out,” he reveals. It’s a split release with Purity Ring on Fat Possum records, due for release Oct. 2. (Hear the track here: http://p4k.in/rtceUa )

Hide, the contest-entry song that gave Braids their start, wasn’t exactly considered for inclusion.

“No!” says Smith, in something approaching breathless incredulity. (Incidentally, he describes that old track as being a “very soft, very folky, Feist-influenced” acoustic number.) “I don’t think it’s something we’d play now, that’s for sure,” he says. “I mean, it’s a good song, sure, but it’s definitely not what we want to be making now.”

What would he be proud enough of to enter in a contest, if he had to today?

“Probably some of the new stuff we’re playing, stuff that’s not on our latest record,” Smith says, explaining the “three or four” unreleased songs in Braids’ catalogue are new-ish, at best — each crafted a little more than a year ago, right after the group finished recording their debut.

“Musically, we’re definitely trying to incorporate a lot more electronic stuff,” says Smith. “Something we’re really trying to focus on (is) writing really strong melodies that stick out. We’re trying to write songs that capture a different feeling than the ones we’ve written on Native Speaker.

“We’re definitely most excited and proud of what we’re doing now.”

— Postmedia News