The Waking Eyes stay true to themselves on latest release
By Lindsey Rivait
Arts Editor
October 15, 2008
 Manitoba band The Waking Eyes has a lot to offer—vinyl records, the farfisa, and using iTunes to its full potential. The band, playing a show with Finger Eleven at the UWindsor CAW Student Centre on Oct. 20, has even more to offer with their new release, Holding On To Whatever It Is.
The Waking Eyes, composed of Matt Peters on vocals and guitar, Joey Penner on bass, Steven Senkiw on drums, and Rusty Matyas on vocals and guitar, came together after the break-up of The Pets and Novillero.
Holding On To Whatever It Is sees The Waking Eyes throwing caution to the wind and embracing their true selves. The band provides a varied musical selection, more in-tune to their iPod generation of fans accustomed to skipping from song to song as the mood hits them. The wide variation in sound on the new album ensures their audience will be captivated a lot longer than they were before.
“We kind of went back to our original way of making music. We got a local producer that we’re really good friends with from Winnipeg, and we went into his studio and had a lot of time there to figure out exactly what we wanted to do,” said vocalist Matt Peters.
The surge in popularity of the iPod has encouraged the band to seek out alternate routes of getting their music to their fans. Holding On To Whatever It Is was released on iTunes back in July. In September, they released their album on vinyl, which also comes with a free download. The actual CD version won’t be hitting shelves until Nov. 4.
Peters says the band has discussed taking advantage of iTunes by releasing singles on it between albums. Albums do not hold the same importance as they once did, and are now often composed of a mash-up of singles instead of one whole unit composed of whatever statement the artist was trying to make.
“I think that now, everyone has an iPod, I have an iPod, and you can listen to the whole record, but it’s too easy to listen to the songs you like then skip to a different artist or a different song. I think the possibility of releasing straight-up singles on iTunes is very appealing because it’s kind of how people listen to music anyway,” said Peters.
Staying fresh while working on their albums is something The Waking Eyes find extremely important.
“One thing we try hard not to do is not get stuck in a rut as far as the way we write our songs,” said Peters.
One method The Waking Eyes use to change up their routine is what they call “The Four Hour Challenge.”
“We have these little projects that we do to make it exciting. We have little song writing challenges that we do. It’s kind of really, really geeky. It’s actually a lot of fun. We all get together in a room and we decide, these are going to be the song titles and everyone gets an opportunity to go into a room and record as many songs as they can, with random song titles, and you have four hours so you try to do as much as you can, write, record, produce it, in that amount of time,” Peters explained.
“I don’t think we ended up using any of those songs for the record, but it’s weird what you can come up with in that amount of time when you really put the pressure on yourself,” Peters said.
Expect a multitude of instruments at their live show, including keyboards, moog, and the farfisa. But most of all, expect to have a good time and let the music affect you. “I think that at the end of the day, you want your music to evoke some sort of emotion, whatever that is, as long as it’s not hatred. You want people to feel something,” explained Peters.
Besides touring, The Waking Eyes have plans to work on new material. “We’re going to hopefully be busy recording new material whenever we have the chance and there will always be things up on our website for people to check out,” Peters said.
The Waking Eyes will be playing at the CAW Student Centre commons area with Finger Eleven on Monday, Oct. 20, $20 for students, $25 for non-students. For more information about The Waking Eyes, visit http://www.thewakingeyes.com.
|
