Wednesday, January 17, 2001
By Stephen Cooke -
Entertainment Reporter IT'S BEEN TWO YEARS since Canadian pop
idols The Moffatts last played Halifax,to a sold-out crowd of
screaming teen fans at the Rebecca Cohn Auditorium.
Like their audience, the four brothers - triplets Bob, Clint and
Dave and older brother Scott - have grown up quite a bit since
their hits Girl of My Dreams and I'll Be There For You first
graced the airwaves. When they perform on Sunday at Sydney's
Centre 200 and on Monday at the Halifax Metro Centre, their set
will include songs from their latest album Submodalities like the
searing anti-drug anthem Antifreeze and Aeroplanes and I Don't
Want You to Want Me, a tale of a one-night stand.
The word "girl" doesn't appear even once in the lyrics
or titles. Clearly the band is moving into new territory, past
the bounds of their previous "teen pop" pigeonhole,
without worrying whether songs that feel dark or edgey will cost
them fans.
"We just write 'em, and then ask ourselves if each song is
as good as the rest, and if it is we're not afraid to put it on
the record," says drummer Bob Moffatt by phone from the
band's log house outside Banff.
With the bulk of Submodalities' songs self-penned (the catchy hit
single Bang Bang Boom is one of the few exceptions), the band is
becoming adept at setting their own lives to music.
"Antifreeze and Aeroplanes is from a true story,"
explains Moffatt. "We were in Prague, and this guy overdosed
on cocaine at a club we were at, and when we went outside to get
a cab back to the hotel, he was lying on the steps.
"Antifreeze is cocaine and aeroplanes means pot, and the
song is basically about how drugs are killing people, and the
song means a lot because it's based on personal experience."
Moffatt feels the audience is ready to follow the band in its new
direction, which beats spinning your wheels in a radio pop rut
that's three years old when music trends can change overnight.
At The Moffatts' Cohn show, fans held up banners screaming "Dawn
loves Clint" and "I love you Scott" and tossed
bras onstage. Moffatt says he hopes for enthusiasm when they play
Nova Scotia, but doesn't expect blind adulation.
"I think the audience has changed a bit over the last couple
of years," he says. "I think on this tour you'll see
that fans still like to go out and have a good time, but I think
they're listening to the music now.
"We've provided them with an album that you're supposed to
listen to and concentrate on what the words mean and what it
means musically. I think you'll see both sides at the show,
having an enjoyable time and listening to the music."
Screaming followers won't become a thing of the past too soon
though. The Moffatts still have a devoted following in North
America and Europe, not to mention Southeast Asia, where their
star rose quickly.
"Our last album was one of the biggest in that market in '97,"
he says. "I think it sold something like a million copies in
that region alone.
"We were in Germany, where we're signed to Electrola, and
our international record reps said we had the number one album
right out of the box in 15 countries. We didn't even know where,
and they told us Southeast Asia, and we had to go there right
away. It was wicked, playing for 20,000 jammed into a mall in
Malaysia or South Korea. It's not something you see every day."
Aside from the changes in sound, the band appearing on the cover
of Submodalities is virtually unrecognizable compared to the
squeaky clean faces found on 1997's Chapter One.
That image has been traded in for one of goatees and leather
jackets, and the band couldn't be happier, although the facial
hair got as much press as their music in some quarters. ("Go
to any high school in the country, you'd find millions of guys
trying to look like that," counters Moffatt.)
"On the last album, the image was laid out by the record
company," Moffatt says. "It was their idea of who we
were, because we were being played in a market where boy bands
were huge and record companies were telling them what to wear and
stuff.
"We didn't like that because that's not what our favourite
bands were doing. I like Foo Fighters and Scott's into Radiohead,
and they just do what they want to do. The provide something
that's not false to their fans. By the end of that album, we had
basically changed our image, working our way up to what we were
gonna be on Submodalities."
Certainly some Halifax fans didn't know quite what to make of it
when The Moffatts launched into Metallica's Enter Sandman and
Sweet Home Alabama by Lynyrd Skynyrd during their encore at the
Cohn, but it was a sign that their next record wouldn't just be
sweet pop confections.
Instead of dictating their direction, their label EMI Music
Canada gave the band latitude when it came to new material.
"We just went into the studio with Bob, and it was our
project. We handed them the album and they said 'Cool, we'll put
this out and try to market it as best we can, even though it's
not something we can push down the same path.'
"Hopefully fans are getting the whole picture now."
(Original text: http://www.canoe.ca/AllPop-Moffatts/010118_halifax-pn.html )