Audio By Carbonatix
We’re just walking around looking for a bong hit or something,” says Nicholas Diamonds of the Unicorns.
Unicorns. The word brings to mind a myriad of images: cute, cuddly toy horsies for little girls; the noble, doomed creature that didn’t make it onto Noah’s ark; valiant knights and their mystic, one-horned steeds questing across uncharted lands in search of spellbound damsels or holy grails. Or in this case, the most mythic indie-rock band to ever gallop out of Campbell River, British Columbia.
“We’re in Tucson right now, cavorting around in a random town with random strangers looking for random drugs,” says Diamonds. “This is a weird place. It feels irradiated. I feel like the sun is boring into my skin. But some person named Carla just loaned me her sunglasses, so that should help with the radiation.”
Despite the band’s Canadian origins, the mirage-laden atmosphere of Arizona seems as appropriate a setting as any for the Unicorns. Feverish and hallucinatory, the group’s music is a trippy concoction of lo-fi pop and neuron-warping whimsy that recalls the psychedelic shimmer of the Shins and Of Montreal as much as the sublime, helium-pitched surrealism of Ween and They Might Be Giants.
The trio — made up of J’aime Tambeur on drums and Diamonds and Alden Ginger trading off on vocals, guitars, bass and keyboards — just released its first proper full-length, Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone? Throughout the album’s thirteen tracks, Diamonds and Alden croon, cough and even rap their way through subjects such as birth, death, love, hate and, of course, being a unicorn. There’s also a trilogy of songs about ghosts (“Tuff Ghost,” “Ghost Mountain” and “Sea Ghost”) and a desperate plea for popularity dubbed “Let’s Get Known,” in which the singers suggest (presumably to each other): “Say, let’s get known/If we work real hard/We buy can some matching clothes for our live show/What do you say?”
But matching clothes are the least of it. The musicians have created a buzz across North America with their outlandish, fantastical live performances, which often incorporate costumes, skits and stunts to provide the perfect conceptual backdrop to the music. The band — which, according to Diamonds, has been relentlessly touring “since basically August of last year” — was able to parlay some of that irreverence into a recent concert at Austin’s South by Southwest music festival, an annual industry event that most acts use to shmooze and whore themselves out to A&R reps and sponsors.
“We were late getting into Austin because of problems with our visas and stuff,” Diamonds explains. “And when we finally did get in, we only managed to make it to one of the shows we were supposed to play. It was this Fader-shoes, Levi-fucking-jeans party. I mean, it was okay, ’cause we got free jeans and shoes out of it. But it was kind of weird. It was one of those things where you’re kind of, you know, a shill, a corporate shill.
“But we made fun of them pretty good into the microphones, so hopefully that made up for it,” he continues. “Basically, I kept stopping the songs to thank Wrangler jeans and Martha Stewart Living magazine.”
The Unicorns’ eccentricity can probably be traced to the backwater pasture where Diamonds and Alden were foaled. Though now based in bustling Montreal, the two began playing music together in the isolated hamlet of Campbell River. “It’s like this remote little fishing village,” remembers Diamonds. “It was nice, though. We went to this tiny high school, and we started making music because we were bored. High school, boredom — those were our influences.
“I was more into drawing and writing before I tried to play music,” he adds. (His bizarre cartoons grace the covers of all of the Unicorns’ releases.) “And we had lots of different incarnations before we were the Unicorns. We played with different friends under different monikers — a lot of silly names like Mad Daddy and the Pattie Stackers. That was more of a goth band. I guess that name might seem really inappropriate. Then we were in an industrial prog-metal band. It was called the Stanley Milgram Project.”
Milgram is the behavioral scientist who conducted the famous psychological experiment in which ordinary people were found to be willing to administer potentially lethal electric shocks to an unseen stranger in another room, as long as the action was ordered and condoned by an authority figure. “It was basically to see if the Germans as a group of people were crazy, or if they were just being programmed to hate the Jews,” Diamonds explains. “We also were totally into Skinny Puppy and sacrificing dead animals. Not sacrificing, but vivisection, you know, cutting them open.
“You just go through these phases, you know?” he adds. “Now we’re a pop band.”
Of course, the Unicorns play pop like Frank Zappa played rock and roll. The group’s ubiquitous hooks are fragmented and stuck back together with a gluey paste of synthesizer, toy piano, accordion, glockenspiel, trumpet, clarinet, cello and penny whistle. And while Who Will Cut Our Hair? haphazardly follows the blueprint laid down years ago by bands like the Flaming Lips and Pavement, the record’s convoluted arrangements and haywire sense of humor set it way to the left of indie-pop’s mainstream.
“Pop has always been in my blood,” Diamonds enthuses. “I grew up with it, like Paul Simon and stuff. It’s what makes the world…” Here he breaks off, as if afraid of getting too caught up in all the pomp and importance often ascribed to pop music. “Actually,” he confesses, “it makes the world no better or no worse of a place. It really has no effect on the world at all. It doesn’t mean anything to anybody. But it’s fun to pretend that it kind of lifts your spirits. Pop music just sounds good. It’s easy to listen to — all the melodies and stuff.”
Diamonds, though still a studied amateur in his approach to musicianship, must have had some kind of pop ambition at an early age. “I used to sing on one of those little Fisher-Price karaoke machines when I was a little kid,” he admits. “I never actually played music, and my parents didn’t play it, but it was definitely a part of my life. I didn’t have one of those karaoke machines myself, but I’d go over to other kids’ houses who did. I think I sang Raffi songs, and Fred Penner. Do people in the U.S. know him, or is he really Canadian?”
Um, he must be really Canadian. As it turns out, Penner — like Raffi — is a Canuck singer-songwriter of children’s music, and a staple of kids’ TV north of the 49th parallel. In light of the Unicorns’ distinct, if twisted, air of pre-adolescence, it all makes a sick sort of sense. On top of that, Penner is famous for the chorus of puppets sometimes accompanying him in song; the Unicorns, too, have been known to pull a few strings here and there on stage.
But puppets are the least of the Unicorns’ gimmicks. Live, the group’s escapades have become almost legendary. Besides the various costumes and uniforms the bandmembers have donned in the name of weirdness, they once staged a fake fistfight that ended with Diamonds and Alden facedown in pools of fake blood. Even better, for one special performance they hired two homeless men loitering outside the venue to impersonate them on stage.
Just as bizarre are the Unicorns’ fans, some of whom show up at the group’s concerts decked out all in pink, with homemade T-shirts, unicorn horns and even custom unicorn earrings. And when Diamonds and company come to town on April 1, there’s a chance that their acolytes in Denver will be rewarded with a particularly over-the-top performance.
“I didn’t even realize we were going to be playing there on April Fools’ Day,” claims Diamonds, when asked about that show’s potential festivities. “We try to keep things spontaneous, but that’s a good tip. We’ll try to come up with something exciting. But I don’t want to get anybody’s hopes up. Sometimes the hype machine tries to make it sound like we’re this insane live band, but when you’re playing every single night, it’s really hard to make every show magical. It’s hard to maintain that standard of insanity. But we’ll try to come up with something out there.
“You know, when I think of Denver,” he says, shooting off on a tangent, “I think of John Denver and gold nuggets and snow. But I don’t think of cowboys. I think my vision is skewed a little.”
When informed that Denver, rather than being some arctic wonderland, is actually pretty desolate and brown, he replies, “Cool. I like brown things. Pink goes really good with brown, so hopefully we’ll match. We’ll make a good team: Denver and the Unicorns.”
For the moment, though, Diamonds is still trying to keep it cool on the blistering streets of Tucson. “It’s hot here,” he reiterates, “and I’m kind of freaked out. We’re going to look for a basketball court and then maybe take a dip in a pool after that. And ice cream is definitely on the menu at some point today.”
Ice cream…and maybe some magic grass to feed the Unicorns?
“We’re still walking around Tucson looking for drugs. Some people we just met on the street are taking us to some crackhouse or something,” confirms Diamonds with a laugh as full of hope as a unicorn’s horn itself. “Every day is an adventure with us.”
