It always amazes me how musicians can turn from the really nice, down to earth people I tend to meet into the sort of egotistical pricks that Johnny Borrell and those Muppets from Kasabian have become. Most of the musicians I have ever met have been so nice and had such genuine enthusiasm for what they do that it seems almost inconceivable. Mind you, who knows what a couple of years of unqualified hero-worship would do to anyone, really. It must be hard to resist.

Back at this rather less stratospheric level of things, I exchanged quite a few emails with Ryan Elliot of Montreal’s Maple Falls on the weekend, when I was in work late and fed up. She started out with a couple of compliments, which always helps when talking to a gentleman so susceptible to vanity and preening as myself, but we talked about the mechanics of running a blog, then I listened to their tunes, which I said I thought were very country, and she had this to say, which I thought was interesting:

“I guess our songs do lean towards the country side of things but we’re just starting out and are still writing and kind of figuring out our sound. It’s weird when you are writing a song because for me personally, I don’t really have any predefined notions for what I want it to be, or sound like. I just start out with a very basic idea and melody and go from there. It’s interesting to hear someone say that it is actually country!”

Not knowing anything about the mechanics of actually writing music, this hadn’t really occurred to me before, and it makes perfect sense I suppose. I can’t really imagine anyone thinking ‘Ah, now to commence writing a three-minute country ballad!’

Anyhow, it’s hard to try and plug a band who are so new that they don’t have anything much for me to urge you to buy, but there are gigs to go to if you’re in the Montreal area, listed on their MySpace page. Their music, actually, is not really my thing entirely. I love country ‘influenced’ stuff, but a couple of the tracks on their player (all downloadable, so off you go) are a bit too country for my personal taste. Penny, on the other hand, has all the country-noir broodiness that I love in so many bands, and I think it’s superb. The lonely trumpet is wonderful, and Ryan herself executes, as I described it at the time, ‘the perfect Gothic country wail’ right at the end – brilliant song.

Anyhow, I’ve no idea where they are going from here, and I hope they don’t let the random views of an inveterate internet pervert influence them too much and continue to write the songs that they themselves like. But they seem really nice people, Penny is a great song, and Ryan cheered me right up on a very long, depressing evening stuck at work, so I think they indisputably deserve their own post, and your full attention.

Maple Falls – Penny