Friday, April 20
This is an interview that ran in the Swerve publication as a feature on my new album. Chris was great to chat with and we enjoyed some tea at Beano and talked about music.
By Chris Bowerman/Swerve-Calgary Herald
Just sing: Drop the songwriter act, do some covers, be hot, y’know, like Alanis, Dido, Sheryl Crow, and we’ve got something. That was the strategy pitched by major labels several years ago, following Anita Athavale’s debut CD, The First Time, but not one the plucky, independent Calgary musician was thrilled about. “I was trying, but it worked like two north magnets,” she says, now simultaneously acting as Talent, Manager, Marketing and President of her own Vacation Records. The Indian-Teutonic beauty’s “slow burn” of a career should be stoked by her stellar sophomore release, Into the Noise, a crisp new recording produced by Chixdiggit drummer Dave Alcock that showcases the singer’s bread and butter–a soaring, full-bodied voice that lies somewhere between Belinda Carlile and Brandi Carlile–but also potent originals like the lead track “Grace Is.” Her strategy now? More Calvin and Hobbes than The Matrix: “You put stuff in, it gets mixed around, and it transmogrifies.” Simple, honest and true.
Athavale stayed true to herself–a musical omnivore, into books, Beck, k-os, metaphysics and Thai curry, waitressing to pay the bills. But she had her doubts. “Making the album, I was in a place where I was about to put music down: try something else, be normal, make some money, buy a house, whatever else I was supposed to do. That song,” Athavale says, referring to her elegant cover of Rush’s “Subdivisions,” “made me think about choosing that other life.”
Ten years ago, just out of high school, Athavale was playing open-mic nights at laundromats in Vancouver. “I’d have to stop mid-song and wait while everybody’s machines would go on spin cycle.” Now, going on 10 years, she’s here, into the noise and ready to play. There’s a certain grace to that.
Posted by anita under Interviews.
