For a band trading in dance-rock designed to get audiences moving - and one that recently opened for Death from Above 1979 to riotous British audiences - you would expect a date in front of notoriously docile Torontonians to be less than enticing. But with Controller.Controller set to play a homecoming date tomorrow night at Spin Gallery to celebrate the release of its debut full-length CD, X-Amounts, singer Nirmala Basnayake purports to be enthused.
"It's getting better," she says of Toronto crowds, which she admits have a horrible reputation. "And honestly, I feel like if they're not dancing, that's not the end of the world. I'm happy that they're not throwing stuff at us and that they're actually coming to our shows. So far as negativity goes, that's really limited to a small group, and if they want to traffic in bitterness that's just them."
Which naysayers she's referring to isn't clear, although she returns to the theme again. ("There's always going to be people who are bitter or just don't like you," she says of certain other members of the local music scene.) But the bubbly Basnayake mostly seems to be riding high these days, which makes sense. While drawing rave reviews for their high-octane live shows, the general consensus was that debut EP History didn't quite capture the same spirit. Reviews of X-Amounts, however, have been more positive, the band having fused its live dynamic with a more refined studio sound - and even thrown in a few uncharacteristically quiet moments, most notably on the ballad Rooms.
"I think it was something that was subconscious," Basnayake says of the newfound musical diversity. "It wasn't something where we sat down and said 'Okay, we need more slow songs.' One of the slow songs on the record was actually around when we recorded History - but History was an EP that we wanted to be, in some ways, more singular."
Considering that the dance-punk revival may already be losing its lustre, shifting away from an easily branded sound may be the smartest thing the band could do. Basnayake is aware the genre may be cooling off. ("I don't even think we're fashionable - the sound that seems to be overtaking right now is the more Montreal-based Wolf Parade, Arcade Fire sound.") But she doesn't think the band was part of a movement in the first place.
"I don't think we jumped into it like, 'we're going to totally ride this revival,' or 'this music needs to be revived,' because by the time we really gelled, there were a lot of bands doing dance-punk, dance-rock, whatever," she says. "It was just more that this is how the chemistry works.
"Definitely, when the band came together there was an idea of what the sound was going to be like. But the idea of being trendy - I mean, does any band really feel like that? You just kind of work out your sound organically."
If Basnayake has her way, Controller.Controller will eventually be free from such labels altogether. "I like when the record's described as general rock," she says. "I really just like the idea of people listening to the record without knowing what the genre is and then deciding for themselves."
