Still from "A Lot of Humans", by Neil Corcoran
A trust fall naturally requires audacity, a degree of courage. At a point in our interviews for "Fall Down Laughing: The Story of Majical Cloudz", vocalist Devon Welsh compared the project's essence to one of those drama class prompts—an exercise in unadulterated vulnerability, in making oneself totally seen. Majical Cloudz's music on 2013's Impersonator and 2012's Turns Turns Turns EP suggests as much, but in my time with Welsh and Cloudz co-conspirator Matthew Otto for this Cover Story, it was affirmed: their openness and willingness to put themselves into situations of considerable uncertainity, in music as well as in life, is perhaps the most potent factor in what makes them great. Majical Cloudz are radically honest.
When I visited Montreal last August, to spend time with Majical Cloudz as they frantically prepared for an unlikely tour of North American arenas with Lorde, I had an illuminating conversation with one of Welsh's best and oldest friends, Neil Corcoran, at their shabby Mile End apartment. Among walls lined with cut-out magazine collages, classic movie posters, and a sizable VHS collection, I noticed a sketched alien mural on the wall that Claire Boucher (aka Grimes) had made while living there—a relic from a time, some six or seven years ago, when the apartment was host to house shows and parties that had left a portion of the floor caving in.
I'd heard of Corcoran before—a tall, gangly guy with long hair, a seemingly glued-on backwards hat, and an admirable Slacker-esque demeanor: deadpan, funny, and perceptive, like he always knows something you don't. He's tour-managed Majical Cloudz and documented the Montreal scene with lo-fi video footage, but most Majical Cloudz fans will know Neil as the subject of 2012's "What That Was", which ranks among Welsh's most gorgeous songs—an exhuberant love song that is not romantic, about that one best friend who is your person, and the real freedom of being young in a city and feeling infinite. (Welsh often performs "What That Was" a capella to speechless affect.)
In Montreal, Corcoran told me of his plans to accompany Majical Cloudz on the Lorde tour and make a film (which you can now watch below, complete with an original score by Welsh and Otto). He described Devon's teen past as a boundary-pushing class-clown in rural Uxbridge, Ontario, where the two attended high school and met comrade and noise musician/collage artist/poet, Matthew E. Duffy. ("Being the weirdest people in a small town, you're going to find each other and stick together," Corcoran said.) And he also recalled the many collections of scrappy, earnest music Welsh churned out before Majical Cloudz took off, CD-Rs with stapled sleeves that he made obsessively—each in an editon of four or five, with a Mediafire link on Facebook—at the apartment where we sat. I'd heard Welsh's college band, the technicolor Pop Winds, but this sounded like something different. I was intrigued.
Welsh was surprisingly forthcoming in sharing these early experiments in home-recording, a selection of which are streaming here. Many of them feature Boucher. And while the appeal of these songs may extend mostly to existing Majical Cloudz and Grimes devotees, I found my experience with them to be profound in its own way, hearing how empathy, drama, and the virtue of friendship have always coarsed through Welsh's songs. It makes enough sonic sense that Majical Cloudz opened for Lorde last year; Welsh was quick to point to a shared interest in the 1960s pop artist Ed Ruscha—known for his spare language canvases—when drawing a line between their mutual ethic of minimalism. Still, watching these massive performances of some pretty unusual music, it was kind of insane. To say that a band has "DIY roots" today can often feel like a nebulous claim, but hearing these rudimentary Garageband recordings within the context of those enormous stages with Lorde offered a serious jolt of hopeful perspective. This aesthetically- and emotionally-principled band could really be your life.
"Visions" Of the 100 or so pre-Majical Cloudz tracks I've heard since last summer, this is a highlight—a gothy, '80s sounding jewel of bedroom pop (that happens to share a name with Grimes' world-dominating third album, though I haven't investigated any connection). This comes off a 2010 album endearingly titled My Bedroom.
"Everyone Is in my Mind" [ft. Grimes] Of the eight solo albums Welsh made from 2009-2010, my favorite was the dramatically bare and vocal-driven Maximum Empathy. It seems like a clear predecessor to what Majical Cloudz is doing now, though Welsh doesn't articulate it as such himself. "[Devon] really set a precedent in our scene for everyone to work harder," Boucher wrote in an email, "which is one of the reasons that era of Montreal was so vibrant."
"Leonard Codeine" This 2010 track has a "chopped and screwed" Songs From a Room sample on loop. (It doesn't hurt that its title is a pretty entertaining analogy of Majical Cloudz's sound now.) This comes off the self-titled debut tape from Majical Cloudz, back when the project was a more avant-garde collaboration between Welsh and his friend, Matthew E. Duffy. (They now record together as Belave.) The tape was hand-dubbed, assembled, and released on micro-label Number Stations, run briefly by Montreal artist d'Eon (who doesn't even have one of the 50 copies of it anymore himself).
"Francisco" This beatific lo-fi pop song off 2011's II reminds me of Welsh's protective affinity for his one-time home of California (due to an association with his mother). Nearly everyone I interviewed for this story mentioned Welsh's love of California at some point. "Francisco" has this subtle blissed-out feeling of speeding down a highway towards home.
"Feel It" Before Majical Cloudz, Welsh was in the Pop Winds, who released an EP and two albums; in 2010, Pop Winds and Grimes went on an "ill-advised" Canadian tour, playing house shows and sleeping in tents. The music was kaleidoscopic—their admiration of bands like Animal Collective and Black Dice is audible—but Welsh's contributions skewed towards blue lyrics and melodies (though he played guitar, too). A friend of Welsh's, Mark Sanford, recalled his erratic performance style at one sparsely-attended Pop Winds gig: "He was wearing a Dead Kennedys T-shirt that was all torn-up, and jumped off the stage and was singing among us pretty crazily," Sanford said. "He was really making that Dead Kennedys shirt work for him."
"Best Friend" Simultaneously, Welsh was making more streamlined, lyric-driven music, like this cut from Maximum Empathy, exploring themes that anticipate Impersonator. Though more musically-dense, "Down Here" is pretty devastating if you listen close, off Adrift.
"Your Eyes" opened the first proper Majical Cloudz album, II, in 2011. Otto hadn't joined at this point, but the record features guest spots from Boucher and Duffy (aka Jiba-zapz), including the pretty incredible "Deep Dragz". The next time you think about employing the phrase "avant-rap," please remember this surreal, pointedly hilarious, and possibly stoned song. Duffy often writes in a language of his own creation—Devon has compared his writings to the disorienting nature of Renaissance poetry or occultish linguistics—and here, it sounds like he is singing one alongside Grimes' angelic sighs.
"Dont Buzz" The anchor of Impersonator, "Bugs Don't Buzz", first appeared in a much more raw form on the impressionistic 2009 collection, Prayer Position, credited to "Devon and the OD's". The titular phrase of the 21-track album is cop lingo for the shape a person would take after overdosing on fentanyl, a drug used to treat pain. At the time, Welsh had recently altered the combination of his antidepressants and became preoccupied by the notion of overdoses. This seed of "Bugs", back then, was piano-drunk, incredibly droll, and a bit dryly hilarious. Corcoran traces the root of the song—those chords—back to house parties, where Welsh would clown around and play them on piano, dampening the mood for kicks, to the dismay of the jocks. "People would be like, ‘Man, you gotta stop! You’re too heavy, man!’"
"I Won't Let You Down" [ft. Grimes] A sweet, optimistic reprieve off Maximum Empathy with strummy patterns far from what Welsh and Boucher are doing now.
"Mountain Eyes" comes towards the end of that first Majical Cloudz tape, a pained sing-song ode to a failing relationship: "De-de-de-de-de-de-deeeee-de-de-de/ There's a hole in my head and I did it for you," he sings. "Is it still a date if only one of us shows up?" The ethereal, folky "Animal" comes earlier on the tape and, like many of those songs, is quite wistful. Welsh's father, the actor Kenneth Welsh, plays trumpet and flute.
"zar abiant works classic" This track is not by a member of Majical Cloudz, but it's a fitting complement to Corcoran's film—it's by Duffy, who is also responsible for first envisioning the name Majical Cloudz, fusing a concept of ephemerality with his psychedelic linguistic games. This expansive noise track comes from one of Duffy's solo records, and Devon repeated its title to me several times, a poem itself: Fall in Love, and Die a Dreamer.