It’s not so much a band as a collaboration between three individual artists – at least that’s the message affirmed by Local Creature & Alien Boy, the trio responsible for The Viper Sessions. The forthcoming album features the songwriting of Local Creature (Eric Campbell & the Dirt, No Sinner) and Alien Boy (Vader Ryderwood), performed alongside the violin stylings of Viper (Emily Bach of Dirty Spells). The genre? “Folk-rock from outer space,” says Campbell, resolvedly.
It falls into line that the album is the product of an expertly curated art piece – one with a theme that would make Neil deGrasse Tyson blush. None of the three-piece breaks character on it, either. “It’s as if we were all strangely beamed down into this one location for mysterious purposes,” Campbell explains. “This project has its own weird and natural beginning – a big accident with its own origin story.”
That “one location” is ex-Vancouverite Ryderwood’s new Montreal loft – lovingly referred to as the Mothership – where the three musicians recorded their otherworldly debut. The result is an eight-track collection of well-constructed ballads, some that recall Leonard Cohen (perhaps it’s that Montreal influence), and many of which deal with feelings of being an outsider. How’s that for being an alien?
“Being a band that just hangs around in a jam space isn’t a very compelling story,” Bach concedes. “I felt like I was beamed into a totally different world, because I went to Montreal expecting to just play shows – and I play so many shows with so many different bands – and as soon as it was like, ‘We’re not doing that,’ it was totally different and it was totally amazing.”
For Campbell, the story follows a different vein. “For me, I was floating in the unknown and I had no idea what I was doing. I had come into this structure here [in Vancouver], so I went out there to fall in love with life again, and whatever form that was in would be okay.”
Ryderwood, meanwhile, holds fast to the story of having been beamed into his new hometown. “On the plane, he [Ryderwood] looked at the guy sitting next to him and, in his mind, he just blinked and he asked the guy, ‘Have we left yet?’ And the guy was like, ‘Um, we’re here.’ Five hours of Vader’s life are just missing,” says Campbell, laughing.
“I was done living in Vancouver for a while, anyway, and I was beamed down here pretty rapidly,” Ryderwood acknowledges.
The one sentiment that runs through our conversations, however, seems to be that they “were all aliens in Montreal” in the summer of 2016. The album reflects that theme, with songs like “Closer to the Sun” and “Never in My Time.” “[Never In My Time]… I wrote as kind of a protest song on what I saw happening in the world,” says Ryderwood. “It was based on moving to this new place and not being sure what I was doing.”
Other tunes, such as “Devil’s Easy,” were partially written during the recording process. “We had one microphone, and we would just use that one mic and the songs just wrote themselves as they were being produced,” Ryderwood recalls.
“Just another gift from the mothership!” Campbell chimes in. “We put many thing out there into space and it got shipped right back down to us – immediate response.”
While Local Creature & Alien Boy are currently living worlds apart, the response to The Viper Sessions is shaping up to be nothing less than stellar.
The Viper Sessions comes out Jan. 19 on cassette and CD, and will be available at Red Cat, Dandelion, and Neptoon Records.
