Sailboats Are White on the Cover of Eye!

05/05/06

With a recently inked UK Poptones deal, heavily bruised Hamilton punks
Sailboats Are White are set to make their maiden voyage across the Atlantic—that is, if they don’t sink themselves first
BY NICK FLANAGAN

Hamilton is harsh. The smoke belches. The flames of industry are visible to all who drive past. Whispers of an overall violent temperament permeate discussions of the city, and those afraid of the working classes refuse to set foot there. As such, from Teenage Head to Simply Saucer, Hamilton has long been a hotbed of distinctly feral rock ‘n’ roll that can only emanate from a wastebasket escarpment-based urban civilization in North America. In short: Hamilton is a bastion of ever-precious “I don’t give a damn” music.

Sailboats Are White bassist Matt Bourassa’s sole quote of my interview with his Hamilton-bred spazz-punk band summed up the city: “Hamilton is a unique city because the gasheads use the same bag twice.”

Guitarist Kevyn Wright—who co-founded Sailboats along with lead singer Kevin Douglas—has a much more positive take on his hometown: “I don’t plan on moving from here. I love it.”

When I first saw Sailboats Are White perform live two years ago, although unaware of their Hamilton roots, they clearly embodied the city’s nihilist spirit. They were reckless. Kevin careened and caroused about the Drake Underground environs, while the rest of the band bashed through a lightning-fast set. Later on, I heard they had lost their drummer and replaced him with a drum-machine. That intrigued me, because it could’ve been seen as a somewhat opportunistic electroclash-bandwagon move, but it came at a time when electroclash had collapsed so fully, the term no longer had any worth to capitalize on.

It turns out the drum-machine makeover was ultimately an act of desperation; the band was going through lineups at a furious pace, and Kevin and Kevyn found themselves alone in the band at the time of recording.

But Sailboats’ 2005 debut album, Turbo!, proves the switch worked to their advantage. The digital drums allowed the band’s sound to bounce around in an even herkier and jerkier manner than I thought possible. It sampled a buffet of genres—Germs-ian gutter-punk, Fall-style rant-rock, Boredoms-like prog squall—but still felt unique. Plus, they knew the right time to yell “hey!”

Sailboats (who now also include keyboardist Joel Smith) would go on to play many a party and impress attendees with their pants-down shenanigans and beery antics (often followed by the smoking of pipes, literally and figuratively). Long-time fan and band associate Ryan Mounsey sums up their appeal:

“They are sincerely violent and dirty and allow the audience to be as well,” he says. “They’re like a pretty girl who’s just gonna use you for drugs and booze money and fuck your friends and lie to you. You know it’s all gonna go horribly wrong, but it’s just so damn cute, you can’t help smiling.”

Beyond devotees like Mounsey, Sailboats attracted the attention of Oliver Knutton, who released Turbo! on his Let’s Just Have Some Fun label (distributed by fellow Hamilton stalwarts Sonic Unyon), which in turn attracted the attention of former Creation Records guru Alan McGee and his current UK-based label, Poptones. A Poptones A&R rep was so excited by Turbo! that he checked out a Sailboats show last year with AIDS Wolf at Hamilton venue The Underground. The rest, says Kevyn, was history.

“[The Poptones rep] was staying at Oliver’s, and while they walked home, Oliver got punched in the face and got his nose broken. That sealed the deal.” (For his part, Knutton counters, “The reason they got signed is because they’re a great band, not because I got punched.")

The deal: a 7-inch for album cut “Let’s Set Up North on Fire” due in June and a UK release of Turbo! come September. (The Poptones activity will be preceded by a US release on Let’s Just Have Some Fun this month.) That’s a pretty good boost for a recording that Kevyn claims would make any engineer worth their salt laugh in his face: the instruments were recorded on a mid-’90s model Compaq PC, and the vocals were captured in the attic of the Sonic Unyon warehouse and mixed by their friend Sean Pearson, whom Kevyn credits with shaping the album immeasurably. It’s an impressive feat when a band with an entertaining but shambling live show manages to capture their sound in recorded form.

Kevyn sees the onstage anarchy as a reflection of their offstage behaviour.

“Compared to the social outings we have together, our shows are pretty tame,” he says. “I think some things are overblown, and it does repulse me to an extent that people just like us because they get to hurt Kevin [at our shows]. We treat our music as something special, and I fear that due to our chaotic live presence, people may just pass on listening to the album, thinking it won’t be any good and that we’re just a live band. As we get older and drunker and a little more beaten, I think the shows are getting tamer. Which is fine. We ain’t no freak show. I’d personally prefer it if more people danced than moshed… does anyone say ‘mosh’ any more? Was that a faux pas?”

Despite the band’s claims of calming down, scraps still occur. Rumour has it that some blood was shed on Sailboats’ recent trip to South By Southwest in Austin. Kevyn confirms it, but stresses that the violence stayed within the band.

“Alcohol is cheap in Texas, and you start drinking pretty early, so by 3am you’re really wasted,” he says. “When you’re falling all over the ground and your friend is trying to pick you up and calm you down, it’s only natural to punch him in the face. When this friend has already been taking a lot of your shit the whole drive down there, he has a lot of anger to release in the form of several shots to the face, resulting in a boxer’s fracture of the hand, leading to the cancellation of a show the next day.”

It’s proof that you can take the boys away from Hamilton’s harshness, but you can’t take the harsh out of the Hamilton boys.

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