A Conversation With: Arietta (Part One)

With one member of Arietta, to be exact. On Victoria Day, Genevieve and I had lunch with Shehzaad Jiwani, who “plays drums and sing[s] in Arietta.” Tyler Johnston, Arietta’s lead vocalist, was sleeping (apparently) so he couldn’t make it to our meeting, but we had a great time either way.

Just coming off an east coast tour (make sure to check out their video blogs of that here) and currently preparing for an upcoming show at Sneaky Dee’s (on June 1st; for more details, click here), Arietta has a lot on their plate right now. So, to clue us in, Shehzaad gave us the lowdown on the band and the people behind it, while interposing with his seemingly limitless knowledge of music and distracting us both along the way.

This is part one.

You can introduce yourself, if you want.

Shehzaad: I’m Shehzaad, and I play drums and sing in Arietta.

You play drums, and you sing, but you seem to be the most vocal member of the band with regards to blogging, interviews, and all of that. What’s the deal with that?

Shehzaad: Between myself and Tyler, I think we do the interviews because we’re the loudest and most abrasive guys in the band. [laughs] I don’t know. I just like doing interviews, I guess. I wrote for magazines and stuff for a really long time, so the novelty of being on the other side of the interview recorder is fun for me. But I don’t know… The other guys just don’t really bother with it. We’re essentially the loudmouths.

Are you two the PR people?

Shehzaad: Yeah. We’re the most handsome and intelligent guys in the band. Well, Tyler’s handsome and I’m intelligent. That’s kind of how it is. I guess we all kind of take various roles in the band. Tyler’s very much the face of the group, Sean is essentially our manager – we do everything ourselves – and I do the publicity. And we all do the booking, and we run our own label, and so on. We’re very hands on with everything, and I guess we just fall into these roles. And I’ve been around PR stuff for the last six years, so that’s kind of my role. Also, I’m the smartest person. The other guys can’t really form sentences that well. I’m not even convinced that Tyler and Sean can read. [laughs] So, yeah. I guess that’s the reason. It’s more by default than by choice.

In an interview you did last year, you were talking about Arietta’s day jobs. Well, you were in university at the time. Are all your lives still the same as they were then?

Shehzaad: Yeah, essentially. I go to school, Sean is a construction worker, Tyler runs a few DJ nights around the city, Kyle works at Starbucks, and Brian works at a financial or… I think it’s an insurance company. We all do odds and ends stuff to make things meet and then we can go on tour. So I just do contract stuff here and there, and then writing gigs.

Are you in school full-time?

Shehzaad:  Part-time. I want to go full-time because I thought part-time would be better while we were touring, but being an English student you don’t really do a whole lot. It’s kind of… really easy, I guess. I do my essays the day before they’re due and get okay marks. I think that’s also why I end up doing the interviews because they’re like, “Oh he goes to school! He must be smart. Let’s just get him to make the guys look really intelligent.”

Genevieve: You have the almost degree.

Shehzaad: [laughs] Yeah, the almost degree. It’s barely finished.

You told Chart Attack last year: “I wouldn’t say we’re a careerist band.” And you clearly all have different things going on in your lives, other than Arietta. Where exactly does Arietta fit in?

Shehzaad: I think what I mean by that, by careerist, is that as much we would like to make it our jobs I think we’re all… We’re not naïve enough to think we can make it a job in this day and age. For a touring band to even break even after a tour is considered a success. Like, just paying off all their expenses. That is considered to be above average these days, because there are bands that are way bigger than us who come back from tour in debt. Like, bands break up because of this all the time. I think what I meant by that is that we are okay with working jobs as long as we can play music on the side. Whenever we’re on tour, we just don’t want to come back. If we could just all take our girlfriends with us, we would never ever come back home. Like, ever. If we could be on tour the whole time, we would, but financially it’s not feasible.

Has Arietta broken even yet?

Shehzaad: This last tour we came really close. I think the only thing that put us over the limit is that the drive from Quebec City to Prince Edward Island is really long. Really long. It’s a big country that we live in. So we stopped in Moncton and we all got a hotel. That is the only thing that kind of set us back. That’s the only thing we had to pay out of our pockets for. But I think everything else sort of paid for itself. It was easily the best tour we’ve ever done.

Why?

Shehzaad: It was better planned. The promoter we worked with, Chris Smith, was amazing. He did his job really well. And again, when you’re booking something yourself and you don’t have an agent it’s tough to secure any sort of venues. Especially with all-ages markets, which we sort of tend to do better in. We like to play to kids more than we do to people at bars. Just because… you know how it is. You go to a show and everybody is just kind of standing at the back, and they’re there to drink and socialize and not actually watch the band. Which is fair enough, because everybody does that. But when we play to kids… like, we played a couple of all-ages shows where there were a few kids wearing our shirts and singing every single word. And that was just like, “This is what we want to be doing.” So that’s why it was better than our other tours. Because we had a lot of all-ages shows and we did have that opportunity. Some days we were playing two shows in one day. It was just great. We had a lot of fun and everybody was in a great mood. It’s amazing that we could just spend ten days together and still come home and be best friends. Whereas with a lot of other tours we’ve come home and been like, “I just don’t want to see any of you for a while.”

You talk about playing all-ages shows, but in your bio it says that Arietta is a band for people in their 20s; for those who are figuring out what to do after they’re finished with their teen years.

Shehzaad: I think both are kind of the case. I think with bands it’s often the case that the age of the band is maybe five or six years ahead of the audience that they have. Like, most of my favorite bands are in their late twenties or early thirties, and I’m in my early twenties. I think that’s often the case and I think kids can relate to them because I think people don’t give kids the credit that they’re due a lot of the time. It’s ironic. Our lyrics have a lot more to do with being really jaded and being really directionless in your early twenties, but ironically, jaded and directionless people in their early twenties don’t really pay attention to music, so why would they find the time to relate? I guess that is bit of a contradiction. But kids just pay more attention to music in general. I know I did. I paid way more attention to records that I’d bought then. Like, I’ve just downloaded seven or eight albums and I’m still listening to Blur, which I’ve heard a million times before.

Yeah, I get stuck in the nineties too.

Shehzaad: I exist in the nineties. I think we all do.

When did you join Arietta, exactly?

Shehzaad: I joined three years ago.

Are you the newest member?

Shehzaad: I guess by default, I’m the newest member. We had our friend Pat join last year for touring, and he left late last year and that was just for a year. He added some stuff to the live show and he played some stuff on the record, but he wasn’t in the band at that point. Kyle joined four years ago, and he’s our bass player. And then Tyler, Brian, and Sean were the original members. But we treat it as a brand new band. From the time Kyle joined, it was essentially brand new. All the songs are different, the sound’s totally different.

How so? Were you a fan of Arietta before joining?

Shehzaad: I was friends with the band. I was friends with Tyler; we met doing an interview, actually. We just became really good friends.

Did you interview him?

Shehzaad: No. We were both interviewing Thrice, or some band like that. And then we saw each other around, because we just both like all the same music. I was friends with them, and their drummer left, so I told them I would help out and then they asked me to join. I don’t know if I was a fan. I liked their music, but I like the new stuff better. [laughs] Obviously, because I have a lot more to do with it. I was definitely familiar with their music though, from very early on in their careers. Stuff that they wouldn’t want you to hear.

Why wouldn’t they want us to hear it?

Shehzaad: Well, I mean it’s very dated and I guess it’s embarrassing for them. It’s like looking at a picture of yourself from when you were very young. I guess they were all really young when they recorded that stuff. And some of it holds up pretty well. I think that all those guys have really good taste in music so I don’t think it’s too dated. But you know how it is. You can’t be making the same music five years ago now. Except bands still do.

Yeah, I saw the rant you went on about the Strokes on signalmag.com.

Shehzaad: That wasn’t on the band’s behalf. Yeah. The Strokes are not… I liked the first album, I guess. Other than that, I don’t really get it. But that’s neither here nor there. I don’t want to badmouth the Strokes. Next thing you know, we’ll be offered a Strokes tour and then Nick Valensi will be like, “No, hold on. This guy doesn’t like our band.” I think Toronto needs to get over the Strokes, more than anything.

What do you think Toronto needs to get to next?

Shehzaad: I think Toronto needs to get over the Strokes, Toronto needs to get over horn-rimmed glasses, and Toronto needs to get over Broken Social Scene. They just need to get over “indie rock” and they need to get over this retro thing. And they need to get over… this is probably going to be inflammatory, but they need to get over trying to be like other cities. Toronto really needs to start embracing their own music scene more rather than stuff other people already embrace. There are a lot of really talented bands in Toronto that go under the radar. There’s such a great vibrant scene here, but a lot of the stuff that gets noticed in the mainstreamed press is a little bit streamlined.  And it might be a little bit more cultivated, I guess, than what is really representative of what Toronto is really all about. Which is such a great, diverse, talented group of people.  And I don’t think that it’s the musicians. I really think it’s the outside forces streamlining Toronto’s music scene in a weird way.

What do you mean exactly by streamlining? And who are these outside forces?

Shehzaad: Well, I just think that certain things… Let’s say Pitchfork, for example. They’re kind of the obvious target for all of this, and I think a lot of Toronto’s media does this too. But let’s say Pitchfork, for example. They talk about certain bands from Toronto in high regard, but they would never cover a band like… I know they broke up, but I don’t think Pitchfork would ever cover a band like Oh No, Forest Fires. I just think that certain places may cover certain things over what really is going on in the music scene. And it’s kind of irritating. I would imagine like it’s in the nineties, and people would say: “Oh Seattle’s music scene is great.” But the only people they would mention are Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam. When, in fact, you have bands like the Melvins and Mudhoney, and all these other great bands from the Pacific North-West. And that’s how I feel about Toronto. There are so many amazing young bands, and the only people getting coverage are the most obvious ones that are close to the bands that are already big. And I just think that’s kind of lame.

But you also just said that Toronto needs to get over “indie music.” What do you mean, exactly, when you say “indie music.” What is indie music, even?

Shehzaad: Well, that’s exactly what I mean. Toronto needs to get over “indie rock.” I was here with my girlfriend the other day, and we were talking about how that’s all people talk about. Indie rock. I don’t know what that means anymore because it’s like a genre of music, when that’s not what it is. It’s like emo, or something. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s a descriptive tag, not a genre. Phoenix is a great example. I think that people would consider them to be an indie rock band, but to me it’s just pop/dance music, which is fine. There’s nothing wrong with them. But I find that if something has a really straight ahead beat with a smooth baseline and angular guitars and a yelping vocalist, that just means indie rock. But to me it’s just derivative crap.

Isn’t indie music just music that’s independent, or labeless?

Shehzaad: Yeah! It’s kind of like alternative. It used mean an alternative to mainstream music, but it wasn’t a genre. And then it just became one. Like, Nirvana was an independent rock band, and Belle and Sebastian were an independent rock band, and the Replacements were an independent rock band. But I don’t think any of those groups really have anything to do with each other. Like, Cave In and Isis are both independent rock bands, but so are the Balconies, and they don’t sound anything alike. I just don’t understand that tag, and I think people just get caught up in genres than they do in the actual music. And that’s not to say the bands or the fans do that. I just think the people representing Toronto need to represent it a bit better.

Since we’re talking about tags and categorizing music, do you find that people like to categorize Arietta?

Shehzaad: Yeah, and that’s why I think we have a hard time sometimes. That’s because they can’t. Not to sound like we’re uncategorizable, but I find that people… It’s kind of like describing a movie. Like Eternal Sunshine, for example. If you’re describing that movie, it’s really hard to do that because there are so many elements that… Like, yeah it’s a love story at its core, but it gets into a lot of other things. So it’s a hard sell for people. Whereas if you talk about a movie like Wild Hogs, where it’s John Travolta and a bunch of other people who shouldn’t be in movies anymore being goofs, then it’s an easy sell for people. And I think music is the same way. If you say it’s a hardcore band, people automatically know what they look like and what they sound like, probably from just their name and photo shoot alone. Whereas I don’t think that our band is easily classifiable into any genre. I think we borrow so much from a lot of stuff that people find it hard to do. Like, if we play a hardcore show we’re a little softer, or if we play an indie rock show, to go back to that, then we’re a bit louder and more abrasive. And if we play pop-punk stuff there are more time changes and it’s a little more technical than a lot of that stuff. Yeah, I mean people would like to classify us, but I think they have a hard time doing it. That’s something that’s been a problem with the band even before I joined. But that’s something that we’ve embraced because we don’t want to be a band that’s like… We don’t want our genre to speak for us. We want a genre that we’re creating ourselves.

If someone asks you in an interview to describe what kind of music you play, what do  you say?

Shehzaad: I fucking hate that question. That is easily my least favorite question, other than what the band name means. Maybe scratch that one off the list.

Doesn’t it mean short song, or something similar?

Shehzaad: Yeah. Thank you for already knowing that. I don’t know how it would describe it, to be honest. I don’t know. I think it is like a mix of melody and musicianship, to be honest. It’s a mix of technical ingenuity, to sound pretentious, and a mix of just liking pop music. We all love really, almost confrontationally challenging music. But we also love really melodic music. Like, we like Converge, and the Dilinger Escape Plan, and Owls, and Yes, and Hot Snakes, just as much as we like Patsy Cline or the Beatles. We really try hard to work all of that in. Well, the Beatles is kind of a shitty… take out the Beatles. I don’t want to mention them. Instead of the Beatles, just say Tears for Fears. The Beatles are just too obvious. Yeah, so we like a lot of stuff, and everything in between. And now it just sounds like we’re ripping off everybody, but we try really hard to do everything that we like in a given song, but still mold it so that it sounds like us.

One tag that seems to be attached to you a lot is Math rock.

Shehzaad: Well, Math rock is another one of those tags that over the years has stopped meaning a lot. But actually, of all those things, like Post-rock, Math rock, I think that it kind of does make some sense because it is music that is sort of atonal music. It’s music that is challenging and not conventional and the structures and instrumentation… I think the ultimate math rock group would be Slint. And people have compared us to them, which is cool, but I don’t think we sound anything like them. I look at Math Rock as the opposite end to prog rock, kind of like what punk is to metal. They’re both very experimental and exploratory genres. In relation to us, we’re kind of a third generation of this Math rock stuff. Because I would even say These Arms Are Snakes, or Botch, or Polvo would be Math rock bands to an extent. But I don’t think we’re as abrasive as that. I think we have a lot more melody. But that’s one of the tags that I don’t really mind because I listen to a lot of that stuff. We all do. One of the new songs that we wrote is in two different time signatures at the same time. Like, I’m playing in a six and Brian is playing his guitar in a five. If you know what time signatures are. And we’re such geeks like that. I think that’s kind of part of it. We’re always like, “How can we make it as challenging to play, but still smooth is over so people can listen to it?” If someone can listen to it and not even notice that we’re playing in different time signatures, then we’ve done our job. And it’s awesome just watching people try to dance to it and then miss. We really love that. So really the answer to that is that we’re just geeks.

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There’s more, of course. More talk about music, and other things (including LARPing, Baskin Robbins, and why Shehzaad thinks the Beatles are overrated) in part two, so click here to keep reading!

– INTERVIEW AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY SAKINA SHAKIL