Seated at a table next to his bandmates a couple of hours before taking the stage, Brooke Gallupe gestures around him at the cozy confines of Toronto's Cameron House. "While we were on tour with New Pornographers I was kind of craving the unpredictability of showing up at some random venue like this," he says.
Moments later, that sentiment is put to the test. With another band on tonight's bill launching into its soundcheck, we move to the only quiet space we can think of - a back stairwell where the stench of garbage is so overpowering that we immediately seek refuge elsewhere. But the next corner of the venue proves little better: As all three members of Immaculate Machine perch on another set of stairs, and I hover awkwardly over them, we have to move out of the way so a gentleman can carry assorted boxes and furniture up to his apartment above the bar.
There are other rising bands who would take umbrage at such conditions. But guitarist Gallupe, keyboardist Kathryn Calder and drummer Luke Kozlowski - all of whom share vocal duties - take it in stride. Gamely (if a bit shyly) answering questions and gently poking fun at one another, the fresh-faced Victoria natives display the same unaffected modesty and lack of pretentiousness that makes their latest disc, Ones and Zeroes, such a delightful serving of ear candy.
Opting not to follow the lead of other super-sized Canadian indie bands, Immaculate Machine has kept it small - the three high school friends not even bothering to employ a bassist, with Calder handling that duty on keyboard instead. "Each of us is so integral - puts in so much in terms of playing and writing and singing and all the boring business stuff - that it would be weird to have a bunch of people who showed up five minutes before you played and hit the bongos a couple of times," Gallupe says.
The result of their collaborations is that their third album sounds like a less ambitious (but potentially even more fun) version of the New Pornographers - possibly more than a coincidence, since Calder is the niece of head Pornographer Carl Newman and sang with the elder statesmen on their last album and tour. But she calls the similar sounds "a happy coincidence," contending that she'd somehow avoided ever seeing her uncle's band live before the first time she played with them.
The inevitable questions about their connection to that other, more established B.C. band have evidently gotten a bit tiresome. But for now, they have a bigger concern on their minds - the reaction they're going to get from their parents when they return to Victoria for the first time since leaving university to commit to the band full-time. "I just quit school - well, I just graduated - but we've all decided to make it a full-time thing," Gallupe says. "Our moms aren't going to be happy."
