Patrick Watson on ‘Love Songs for Robots’ : “There is not one prog influence on this record”

Patrick Watson has heard the advance buzz on his latest record, the expansive Love Songs for Robots, but he isn’t buying it.

“There is not one prog influence on this record,” he reveals during a recent interview at his Montreal studio. “I don’t think we ever even thought about prog when we made it.”

The early comparisons to progressive rock likely stem from the fact that Love Songs for Robots is a stark departure from Watson’s previous album, 2012’s intimate Adventures in Your Own Backyard. An eclectic, science-fiction themed album bursting with meticulous ethereal compositions and Beatles-esque harmonies, Love Songs for Robots may not fall into official prog-rock territory, but it is definitely a record best experienced with an open mind and a proper set of headphones.

The Polaris Prize winner and prolific film composer is just beginning a long day of press at the band’s Plateau studio when we catch up with him mid-morning, killing time by enthusiastically demonstrating his newest toy – a virtual reality phone headset that Watson predicts will soon completely change the way we relate to media.

We sat down with Watson and his band (Mishka Stein, Robbie Kuster and Joe Grass) a few days after they debuted the new album in its entirety at a pair of surprise hometown shows to discuss the sound of the new record, the Montreal music community, and why Katy Perry is like Frank Zappa.

Bad Feeling: Love Songs for Robots seems to have a much more expansive sound than Adventures in your Own Backyard, which was a very intimate album – it seems like a headier record. 

Patrick Watson: Headier, eh? It’s more visceral than the last record, by a landslide. It’s definitely not headier, that’s for sure. I can just tell from the audience reaction. If we do a song like “Hearts,” or we do something like “Good Morning Mr. Wolf,” it’s like an immediate response. No record we’ve done has ever done that. In the sense there’s so much drums and bass, and it’s so much more groove-orientated, it takes away all the headiness. Even when I play it for people that didn’t so much like the other stuff because it was a bit too like, “ladi dadi,” for them, it’s the first record they really love. Maybe you’re not wrong though; I’m just saying from my experience, it’s been the opposite.

Mishka Stein: That seems to be people’s reaction though. French people call it “prog.” You call it heady, they call it prog.

BF: The only thing I had heard prior to listening to the record was that there were a lot of prog influences on it. 

PW: There is not one prog influence on this record, I don’t think we ever even thought about prog when we made it.

Joe Grass: I was just thinking of King Crimson the entire time (laughs).

PW: They’re stories, right? Like some forms of art in the old days, where you start with a story, the story expands, and wherever the story ends, that’s where the song ends up. We’re not going to try to make the music complicated, we’re just trying to tell a story.  In “Hearts,” it starts off as a story, then it gets pretty violent, and they’re turning in circles at the end trying to figure out where to go. And the same thing with “Turn Into the Noise,” there’s kind of one minute inside the story where there’s the explosion that starts the story off. I don’t think it’s prog music. It’s not about like, sections.

JG: It doesn’t start with a classic verse-chorus formula at all. It starts with a musical idea and a story, and then it kind of does what it has to do to accommodate that.

BF: I think often people call anything that was made to be played on headphones “prog music.”  There’s just more of a benefit if you listen closely. 

PW: I guess the only reason I get defensive about that is because for me, when I make a song, it’s definitely music to communicate with people, it’s not just music to communicate with musicians, in a way where prog has that history of being music that only musicians get because they’re going to do this in a crazy time change colour. And I’m not saying prog music always does that, I’m just saying it has that reputation. I like making music for people, more than musicians. I want people to get something out of it, even if they don’t know anything about music. There’s a difference.

BF: You’re not trying to impress music nerds, you’re trying to communicate to as many people as possible. 

PW: I’m trying to communicate a story. And it’s funny, because I was listening to a lot of music on the radio – I have kids, so they would make me stop at like, super pop stations, like Katy Perry and stuff like that, and I was actually amazed at how wild the arrangements are. But since it’s kind of in the format where you have really loud drums and it’s up-tempo, people just think it’s easy, because there’s this huge driving beat that carries everything. But if you actually sit down and listen to the arrangements, it’s like Frank Zappa. It’s fucking insane. Just crazy colour changes. The Beatles would go to crazy colour changes, like with “A Day in the Life.” If our music is prog music, they’re like, super space prog. “A Day in the Life” is my favourite Beatles song. I love the construction. I like how it takes me through a day, and it takes me through two different characters. That song I find very touching for that. But it’s not prog music to me. So I think [Love Songs for Robots] is closer to that concept of writing than I would say prog.

BF: How does the writing process work in the group? Is it lyrics first, or are you working on pieces while music is being written within the band?

PW: Lyrics we finish just right before we go mastering (laughs). Like, “The record’s done, but I’m missing four words!” I have trouble getting the right words all the time.

BF: So do you try to match what’s happening lyrically to the music?

PW: There’s three different ways of constructing a piece. If I narrowed it down to make a precise answer, we have one where like, with “Hearts,” Mishka brought in this awesome chord progression, where I heard it and just started singing. And I had some words, I had more of a feeling, and he had his own feeling about what it was about. And then slowly, it just built into a film, and as we played the piece, the film became more clear, and then the arrangement adjusted, and the lyrics adjusted – they adjust together.

And then you have a song like “Grace,” a Joe and Mishka combo idea, where they brought it in and they had a really strong musical idea of what they wanted to do with it. And then you have a song like “Turn Into the Noise,” which was the first demo I made for a film thing, so that was something I built like a world, and then we jumped in together to see what we could do with it. So those are like the three different ways we can construct songs. It takes me a long time to find what I want to say.

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