Vancouver-based indie rock group The Zolas are set to play at Zaphod Beeblebrox on March 25. The Charlatan spoke with lead singer and guitarist Zach Gray to discuss the band’s return to Ottawa, as well as the recent release of their third full-length album, Swooner.
The Charlatan (TC): So it’s been four years since you released your last full-length album. How does it feel to put out a new record?
Zach Gray (ZG): It feels cathartic, like you’d imagine. We wanted to release an album when we had the music that we were most excited to put out there. With this album, we sort of made the perfect album for us with Swooner. This is the one where every tone, every lyric, every decision, every melody was exactly what we wanted to put out there.
TC: This is your first full-length album with a new lineup?
ZG: Kind of, yeah. Actually Dwight [Abell] and Cody [Hiles] joined right after Ancient Mars came out, so they’ve been playing with us for, like, four years. It’s hilarious, because it looks like they’re these new guys with the band, but they’ve actually been with the band for years. This is the first album where we recorded it as a four-piece with everyone contributing to writing and everybody in the studio at all times.
TC: Did you find that changed the songwriting process at all? Did you find it a bit easier to come up with new music compared to your last two albums?
ZG: Definitely, yeah. We used to write songs in a real kind of Lennon and McCartney kind of way, where we’d bring songs to each other and work on them together. But they’d be very chords and melody based, all the way up until the recording process, when we’d have a drummer and bass player come and make it a fleshed-out whole band sound. But this time, some songs started with a beat. It makes it a lot easier to make minimal music I guess, because sometimes all you really need is a good beat and a melody and you’re basically finished the song. That’s sort of what we were going for with this album. We wanted to make songs which had as few elements as possible.
TC: It sounds like you incorporated more synth sounds on Swooner compared to your last two albums, especially on “Molotov Girls,” where you’ve got this pop-synth hook. Why did you take this direction on the album?
ZG: Imagine this: you’re in a studio, you have your guitars, but you also have like five different cool vintage synths just hanging out. They look so good, you have to just try them out. So we ended up playing a lot of ARP strings . . . We just had a really good time combining digital and analog. Sometimes I would find a stock arpeggiator from Logic, which is like Pro Tools, and then we would put it through three different weird guitar pedals and see what happened.
TC: What would you say is your favourite song on the album and why?
ZG: I feel like “Freida on the Mountain” is sort of an odd one on the album. There isn’t anything quite like it on the album, and I don’t think there’s anything quite like it out there either in anyone’s music. It’s a pretty weird song. And it’s the kind of song only we could have made—because it sounds very much like us, but in a way that we’ve never tried before.
TC: So you’ve played in Ottawa a few times before, right?
ZG: I think we’ve only been to Ottawa maybe a total of three times. I could be wrong. It’s not always on our list when we go on tour, but it is now. I feel like we’ve finally broken into the hearts of Ottawans and now we can no longer resist going there.
TC: What would you say is your most memorable show that you played in Ottawa?
ZG: We had a really good time at House of TARG. The reason that was really good was a lot of because the venue was so cool. It’s fun playing small venues that get really packed out . . . We showed up early and they were serving perogies, and we got really into the perogies. We’re a very pro-perogie band, so House of TARG really spoke to us.
