Time, tapestries, tribulations & TOPS
TOPS in top form; photographed by Tess Roby.
Some artists/bands/imprints/et al. are in a school, self-styled class all of their own. These rare aesthetes are the ones that virtually had their own blueprint from the beginning and stuck to their well designed script — perfecting it at every turn, with every release, presentation, unveiling, event, performance, showcase, opening and so forth. Their proliferation and presence initially materializes seemingly out of the ephemeral plane of the ether and goes on to influence and inspire thousands to millions of their contemporaries, fans, aficionados and everyone else in tune to their own palatial pop world of fine arts.
For over a decade, Montréal, Québec’s beloved TOPS have become an artistic intuition. A group that has lived up to all the hype and more, from word of mouth buzz among their fellow artists to gaining a worldwide following — the group of Jane Penny, David Carriere, Riley Fleck, and Marta Cikojevic have delivered an EP of universal healing and hope with the lauded Empty Seats via their own imprint Musique TOPS. Through an economy of five songs, the quartet paints portraits of our fractured world in all of its turbulent transitions. TOPS with their trademark sophisto-pop of grace and signature suave elements surveys the bad, the good, the anticipation, the hopes and prayers of our universe teetering on the brink of both perdition and a bountiful beauty beyond the measurement of standard metrics.
Empty Seats is ultimately TOPS achieving peak TOPS form. While it may be tempting to describe the EP as being the group's most realized sound to date, it might be more accurate to describe it as their post perfected aesthetic yet in a discography of 'realized' works of aspirational/inspirational import. The opener "Perfected Steps" skewers the glamorous hubris and failed valor of North America's increasing decent into nationalist tribalism with some of the most smoothest, elaborate and elegant compositions since the mid-70s to early 90s MOR-masterpieces heard on radio stations self-christened with nicknames like "The Breeze." Band leader Jane Penny shared the following on the inspiration behind the song’s concept:
“Perfected Steps” is about some right wing aging loser clinging to their glory days, values out of sync with reality. It feels like for some reason people like this still have an enormous presence in everybody’s lives and it’s super irritating. We thought that maybe if we write a song placing this mentality in the past where it belongs we could bully this vibe peacefully out of existence.
The culmination of TOPS’ talent for stitching fine tuned hooks seamlessly into time-splicing retro radio wizardry burns like a rich azure flame on "Janet Planet". A song about confronting the barriers we put in our own way that keep us stuck in ruts and unwelcomed cycles is delivered with a subdued yet opulent escapist ultra-abandon greater than a treasure trove of shining 80s adult contemporary compact discs. In Jane’s own words on the song and Anthony Martino Maurice’s video:
“Janet Planet” is about feeling trapped inside of your own head, trapped by your thoughts, trapped by everything, looking for an escape, and all of the misguided ways I’ve tried to dispel these feelings. I wanted to make an intimate performance video which captures the sense of frustration and the bliss of escapism. I decided to channel the videos that inspired me as a kid, where a woman forcefully inhabits the screen and gives all of herself to the moment as she performs her song. We chose the color blue as the guiding visual theme because of its mystery, depth and otherworldly quality and used this color to take me in and out of two different modes: exasperation and fantasy. I’m proud of the way that the video succeeds in having a strong artistic direction while also capturing the energy of our live shows in a very direct way.
Like the title's allusion to a vacated world, a desolate boulevard where the lights are on in the otherwise familiar pubs and haunts, yet nobody is home; "Waiting" draws upon the drama and incessant indolence of life and progress being at a tedious standstill. The prom pomp and circumstance of "Party Again" takes the contained and bottled energy spent sequestered and that longing to return to a world of happiness, happenings and soirées full of the sweetness of reunions with those we have missed. The track sways with an aching saudade, like a number that could have been a throwback from a classic film about school dances taking place in a lonely and vacant ballroom. The practices of patience, faith, anticipation and longing are explored in the moving melancholy of "Future Waits" that meditates on the perpetual gravity of time. Empty Seats seeks out the substance in a world that feels absent from itself against the wind of life’s persistent unpredictability.
Over a long distance Zoom talking 70s iconoclasts, one hit wonders, recording in isolation and more:
Time, tapestries, tribulations & TOPS—by Jane Penny
Rom-Com Songs
We had this idea of “rom-core” that we developed which I guess was like a guided concept that was basically like “There She Goes” by the La’s or “I Love You Always for Ever” by Donna Lewis kind of thing, it was this desire to make music that’s super poppy and comforting and there’s this undeniable quality that it has. It’s like a good song feeling, so even though a lot of these early 2000s [songs] or whatever we definitely depart from them in terms of the production style which is super cheesy and stuff and in a way there’s not too much to glean from it, but then its this early 2000s rom com soundtrack, one hit wonder quality that I really like.
I was also listening to that song “You Get What You Give” by the New Radicals a lot, it’s like a dopamine machine you know, I feel like there was a lot of that on the EP, was just us trying to create that energy and feeling that we wanted to have that was a little bit more difficult to access and we kind of had to manufacture good feelings.
In a lot ways it was pretty aspirational when we made it and looking at it from this time now it is kind of funny to be like, ‘oh, we made it!’ We also had this playlist that I was looking at the other day with the song from Sixpence None the Richer “Kiss Me” from She’s All That, that’s a great movie.
Touring / America in general
We had all these canceled tours and stuff as you do, as we did, or whatever and “Waiting” is definitely very much about that feeling of looking out the window of your van and also feeling very nostalgic about the beginning of us being a band and some of our very first tours and missing that first time feeling. You know, when you do something for the first time or experience something for the first time and it already has this built-in romanticisation for you and it’s a really special feeling and it’s something I feel less and less as I get older or it’s more rare to have that kind of thing like going to Europe for the first time, or playing shows and touring for the fist time so there’s that. I just really love America and it felt like not being able to go there and be there and witnessing this tragic chapter in America’s history since I have been alive, it was a little heartbreaking and really affected me. Also “Perfected Steps” is very much about that which is not something that I normally do as a songwriter to really have something that is outside of my emotional reality that I am experiencing and be like, ‘I’m going to make a song about this.’ So I put myself in the head of a fictional southern man, kind of like a freewheeling Lothario type that is living on borrowed time, in the song he is giving all this advice but its all kind of backfiring and nothing is going as planned and he’s the failure sitting on the barstool with so many things to say. Because I felt like this certain figure is a pretty fair reflection of the way America was handling things.
I feel like even the west coast has this weird cosmic mixture of extremes and intensity that is also to me a very aesthetic beauty to that like Vegas with the shiny lights and the stars and stripes, there’s something so beautiful and so ugly about it, I’m a big fan of America, or Americana.
The echelon of aesthetic excellence — TOPS; photographed by Samuel F. Houston.
Partying
So the partying thing like “Party Again” is a pretty obvious, ‘I want to party again but I can’t or its weird,’ David [Carriere] actually wrote that one and I feel like he has a way of being very straight forward. When we started writing “Perfected Steps” we were ending a song, the “Perfected Steps” portion of it and then we were like ‘how should we end this’ and I was like ‘well it sounds like the beginning of another song so let’s just make another song and maybe they can become linked.’ Then we wrote the back half and then were like ‘how do we want to kind of join these and have that space feel interesting’ and then I feel its kind of this idea of this empty bottle feeling, also like some dying star kind of energy going down some sort of wormhole of partying. Also because we weren’t partying, we were very much in a very small bubble which was funny because the only way that we could create party sound effects was to fake it and have a couple friends come over, which was fun to do.
We are always kind of borrowing from the future in a way and I think with the EP we were in this present moment trying to make something that was kind of invested in the idea that the future would be better. So it’s funny to me now, I was listening to it and I was walking around in Berlin and everyone is partying around me and I was just having this feeling like ‘we really made it,’ you know and I feel like the music actually does make sense for right now and I was wondering if it would sound out of sync but I do feel like it isn’t, it’s kind of like our little fantasy of now.
Fleetwood Mac
Obviously we are fans of Fleetwood Mac, I think that is news to absolutely no one probably. But the thing that I find funny about TOPS is that it is unavoidable as a reference but also that we have morphed more and more into a resemblance to them, especially with Marta [Cikojevic] joining the band and now that we’re four core members with two guys and two girls. And also Riley [Fleck] our drummer does a lot of the touring managing, although I guess I shouldn’t make that comparison because I think he was a bad manager, their drummer [Mick Fleetwood] spent all of their money on drugs and stuff, there’s all kinds of rumors and stories about Fleetwood Mac.
It’s just funny also because with this record there’s a certain bass track, I think “Gypsy” has the same kind of “dum, duh dum, duh dum” also “Dreams” obviously and what we used in “Perfected Steps” is a really classic kind of basic kick-drum pattern but Tango in the Night and Mirage I feel like there is definitely that, those are cornerstones for this and also just constantly. It’s also funny to me because Marta the other day was like, ‘you know I think Christine McVie is my favorite member of Fleetwood Mac,’ and I was like ‘well that makes a lot of sense because you’re obviously the Christine McVie of TOPS in a way, you know,’ like with her keyboard playing on the new stuff. It’s funny, it’s cute, but I think Christine McVie is the best member, I mean I love Stevie Nicks’ voice it’s always been really inspiring to me but songs like “Seven Wonders” or “Only Over You”…I think Christine has got the good tracks.
Blue / “Janet Planet” music video
I wanted to have this performance video, at first I didn’t think that the whole band would be able do it so I was just thinking about myself and how I wanted to perform and you know the Björk video “It’s Oh So Quiet”, I have this memory of watching that as a kid and I went back and found it and was like ‘oooh, this is a lot more La La Land than I remembered,’ in kind of a cheesy way. But Björk’s performance also in that Lars Van Trier movie [Dancer in the Dark] she has moments of that where she’s using her whole self like this expressive mechanism.
I think sometimes when the camera is pointed at you it can be tempting to not be yourself or to try to go for angles rather than honesty but I have been trying to channel more of an inner actor or an inner persona thing, trying to take different approaches to performance on camera and this was a good opportunity to do that. And then [director Anthony Martino Maurice] was recovering from his COVID vaccine and he had this fever dream about the color blue and you know the international Klein Blue, Yves Klein made his own really deep blue, also Krzysztof Kieślowski of Three Colors: Blue, the color movies. So we just started thinking about what if this color saturation was a big element of it, because I wanted to do this performance thing and I want the world to react to my performance in a certain way. I wanted it to be instead of the relationship between me and something like another person, I wanted it to be me and the environment and so the blue comes in and out in this way.
I’m also just really happy to have a video where we’re performing the songs, obviously we’re not usually on a soundstage with the crazy lighting and stuff, but maybe all of our shows should look like that video, that would be sick! But I do think it does capture our live show vibe in a way that is really nice to have, I mean we tour a lot, music is so international and there are so many people that don’t really get to hear and see us play but I think that is a really important part of the whole EP too, even though we made it remotely and stuff it was very much aspiring toward when we would be able to tour again and trying to make songs that are stripped down in a way that are easily transferable to live sets and stuff.
Empty Seats is out now via Musique TOPS.
Catch TOPS on the following dates:
May
21 - Amsterdam, NL @ London Calling @ Paradiso
23 - Birmingham, UK @ Hare and Hounds
24 - Bristol, UK @ Exchange
26 - Liverpool, UK @ Jimmy’s
27 - Manchester, UK @ YES
28 - Glasgow, UK @ Stereo
29 - Leeds, UK @ The Brudenell Social Club
30 - Nottingham, UK @ Bodega
June
1 - London, UK @ Village Underground
3 - Groningen, NL @ Vera
4 - Utrecht, NL @ Ekko
5 - Brussels, BE @ Botanique
6 - Paris, FR @ La Boule Noire
8 - Lyon, FR @ Sonic
10 - Barcelona, ES @ Primavera Sound
13 - Bologna, IT @ Covo Summer
14 - Zurich, CH @ Komplex 457
15 - Munich, DE @ Strom
16 - Nürnberg, DE @ Stereo
17 - Prague, CZ @ Underdogs Ballroom
19 - Berlin, DE @ Berghain Kantine
21 - Copenhagen, DK @ Pumpehuset Byhaven
22 - Gothenburg, SE @ Oceanen
23 - Stockholm, SE @ Hus 7
24 - Oslo, NO @ John Dee
26 - Malmö, SE @ Plan B
28 - Opole, PO @ Klubokawiarnia
06/29 - Warsaw, PO @ Poglos