ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON JULY 2, 2008
By Steve Newton
When it came time for Matt Mays + El Torpedo to record Terminal Romance, the follow-up to their self-titled debut of 2005, the Nova Scotia–spawned quartet didn’t mess around. Chris Tsangarides (Thin Lizzy, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest) was hired to produce and engineer, Mike Fraser (Joe Satriani, AC/DC, Van Halen) to mix, and Bob Ludwig (most every rock band in the world) to master.
Of course, all the best knob-twiddlers on the planet can’t make an album special if the material sucks to begin with, but MM+ET had that angle covered. Whether the subject matter springs from an interest in werewolf mythology (“The Hunter, The Hunted”), the pride of crafting wooden vessels (“Building a Boat”), or the sad state of the environment (“Tall Trees”), the music on Terminal Romance strikes a balance between propulsive power-pop and melodic, riff-driven hard rock, with a brief detour into gritty punk on “Rock Ranger Record”.
Guitarist-vocalist Mays currently resides in Brooklyn, New York, but has just left a Manhattan doughnut shop when I connect with him on his cellphone.
“I live in a very musical neighbourhood,” he says. “It’s all people in bands and artists and stuff. I’m always out seein’ shows and yakking around—it’s great.”
The 28-year-old rocker admits that his group went all out when it came to the hired guns employed on Terminal Romance, but also feels the addition of guitarist Jay Smith to the lineup has had a bolstering effect.
“He played in one of my favourite bands of the last 10 years,” Mays says, “Rock Ranger from Cape Breton. All Jay knows what to do is put the pedal to the metal and rock out, so we took advantage of that.”
The cranked guitars of Mays and Smith were the big touchstones for Tsangarides on Terminal Romance.
“We were all big Thin Lizzy and Judas Priest fans,” Mays notes, “but at the same time Chris has done Concrete Blonde, so he’s got a great pop-music sensibility. It was a good match for us, because I wanted to keep the songs there, but at the same time I really wanted to rock them up.”
After Tsangarides put his mark on the music, Mays and drummer Tim Baker spent a week mixing it with Fraser at the Warehouse Studio in Gastown. That’s where a serious brush with greatness occurred.
“AC/DC were comin’ in right after us,” Mays recalls. “They were unloading all AC/DC’s road cases and cigarettes, so it was pretty awesome for us to hang out and see all this going on. [AC/DC drummer] Phil Rudd was sittin’ watchin’ TV, but we were too scared to talk to him. We just kept walkin’ by, lookin’ at him.”
Mays’s next visit to Vancouver comes during a two-week tour of Western Canada with headliner Kid Rock, which includes a stop at the PNE Forum on Sunday (July 6).
“Some people have been taking jabs at us on-line,” he reports. “They say we’re selling out or something, but I don’t know—I really respect Kid Rock. He’s been at it for so long, and the guy can apparently play any Hank Williams song on the acoustic guitar. We want to get seen, and this tour’s gonna be a great opportunity for that.”
