Interview by: Alex Bloom
The Boom Booms are a Vancouver-based alternative-soul band. They won second place in the 2011 Peak Performance Project (not associated with The Peak newspaper), garnering a $75,000 prize. They spent the summer touring and just released their third LP, A Million Miles on September 21. The Peak spoke with lead vocalist, Aaron Ross.
Ross talked about the therapeutic effects of music, and the message of their new LP: “. . . [A] theme of the record . . . certainly seemed to be about letting go, saying goodbye. I think that was kinda where I was at. With making this record, I think I just had to let go of certain things, or had certain experiences and was feeling like [I] wanted to wrap those up. I needed the catharsis or something. So that kind of expresses itself on the record.”
From the mournful sound of the opening track “Song For Noni,” to the more upbeat tracks such as “All Day All Night” and “Masterpiece,” the theme of moving on carries through.
The cover of their new album features an image of a naked alien woman lounging on top of a table reading, yet it tells a deeply human story. As Ross explained, “The genesis of the idea was actually really simple. There [was] this piece of art, it was probably from the seventies . . . We just thought it looked awesome.”
Inspired by ‘70s artwork with its bright, saturated colours and funk vibes, the band created their own image, an alien adjusting to life on earth.
“. . . She’s got the Earth and whatever kind of drama that’s unfolded [as] you would normally see in a movie [has] all subsided . . .” Ross said. “[N]ow she’s just caught up in the mundane, daily stuff, and this alien is just checking her cellphone in her living room, and making tea . . . It’s [a] metaphor for being a human we’re all kinda like strangers in a strange land in a way. Everybody feels like an alien sometimes.”
As Ross mentions, there’s no clear-cut formula for writing an album, and inspiration can strike at any time. Sometimes it is in looking back that the music takes on its meaning. “I find there’s a lot of discovery that happens when you’re writing music . . .” Ross commented. “I’ll often find that when we’re writing songs, or writing an album, that something is revealed to me [and] I only realize what it is later.”
Since recording their debut album, Hot Rum! their style and their artistic process has gone through an evolution. For A Million Miles, Ross wanted to challenge himself to be more vulnerable in his writing. As he elaborated, “I think there’s more maturity in our writing and playing. That was our first record, and we kinda didn’t know what we were doing honestly. We were pretty green . . . [but] I think people really connected with the energy on the album . . . there was no affectation or anything, it was honest or something . . . That album came from us driving around Latin America, [and] I think you [can] hear that.”
The Boom Booms also used their winnings from the Peak Performance Project to travel all the way down to Panama, visiting several countries on the way. They even made a 24-minute documentary in Brazil called Boom Boom Brazil, documenting their cultural immersion in the country as they learned about local music styles.
Apart from all the music they encountered on their extensive travels, the Boom Booms are inspired by an eclectic mix of artists and genres. From classic rock, to funk, to hip hop. They have been influenced by the likes of Bob Marley, Bill Withers, James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Manu Chao, Fugees, Popcaan, and Elton John to name a few.
On getting into music and his advice to an SFU student trying start their career, Ross said, “There’s this great Michael Jackson quote where he’s talking about being a scientist and he’s like ‘be a scientist, take apart the music, really get in there and see what makes it work.’ I would say that . . . Take apart all your favourite music. If you take apart all the music that you love then you can steal the powers of your heroes, and hopefully make your own great music . . . And just play, play a shit-ton.”
The Boom Booms will be playing at the Vogue Theatre on October 20 as part of the launch of A Million Miles. You can listen to it through iTunes (and Apple Music), as well as Spotify.
