Andrew Miller: Hi. I'm Andrew. I play guitar.

Heather Ogilvie: Hi, I'm Heather. I play guitar also, and sing.

Jess Barry: Hi, I'm Jess. I play bass and also sing.

Evan Magoni: Hi, I'm Evan. I play drums.

Jess Barry: We're Taupe and we're from Montreal.

Andrew Miller: Here we are at the Water Works Food Hall outside. It's a beautiful, gray day in Toronto. It feels good. It's warmer than Montreal.

Heather Ogilvie: The buds are popping here, and we are experiencing a prolonged winter in Montreal, so this is a really nice change for us. There are children behind us, so you may hear some laughter and squeals of joy. That's not from us.

Andrew Miller: There is joy all around us. It's very nice.

Heather Ogilvie: But we keep it inside.

Absent Sounds: Keeping it inside — it almost feels like a lot of what's on the record is very restrained. Would you say that's intentional?

Heather Ogilvie: I think one of the things you might not put together when you see our band versus how we are as people is that our songs seem kind of serious and sad and pensive at times. But we're really not. We're pretty happy — well, okay. Depends on the day. Depends on when you catch us.

Andrew Miller: Depends on how much Evan's had to eat.

Evan Magoni: I just had a few snacks. Some cashews and some tortilla chips. There was a Cosmic Crisp apple, which was my first time having that. That was pretty good.

Heather Ogilvie: It's a pretty new variety. Kind of like a Honey Crisp, but not as sweet — more of a sour crispness.

Evan Magoni: Yeah, I'm a convert to the Cosmic Crisp. I didn't even hear about it before this trip.

Heather Ogilvie: It's underrepresented in the apple world.

Jess Barry: I think the sound has come a long way from what we conceived of in the beginning. Heather and I were sitting on a balcony being like, "These are the bands that we like — we should start a band," and started writing together. But then bringing other people in, bringing Evan and Andrew in to some of the things that we had written — everyone really owns their own parts in a big way, and it just became something totally different altogether, way more than the sum of its parts.

Absent Sounds: Is there a song on the record that changed the most from demo to now?

Andrew Miller: I think "Truly Authentic" evolved pretty much during recording to become the full version. It was definitely slower in the original practice space version.

Heather Ogilvie: There were changes we wouldn't have conceived of until making the album — like having flute played on it. One of Jess's friends, Claire, played flute. Incredible. And then writing some random midi key parts to add some texture and layer, and some percussion as well. Shout out Scott. It's always a nice exercise to embellish what you've written, because in most live contexts you can't do all of that — like when we're playing a show tonight, it'll just be us and the songs.

Jess Barry: I think the one that changed the most in production is the first song on the record, "Painting," which we haven't been playing live since we recorded it, because it became something so different. A lot more swelly, a lot more vocal production. We really like it, but it definitely feels like the outlier at this point.

Heather Ogilvie: It almost has to be the first song. It's the first song on the record, and it would only make sense opening a set.

Absent Sounds: What's the origin of the song title "Truly Authentic"?

Andrew Miller: It's a type of bread.

Absent Sounds: Are you serious?

Heather Ogilvie: We saw it on the packaging of a bread, like a plastic wrap, and just thought it was really funny. Maybe I added the exclamation point — I think it kind of marked it in a funny way. But also, kind of culturally in the zeitgeist, everyone was talking about authenticity online. I thought it was a poke at that, in a nice way. Honestly, I'm really bad at being online, and I guess that's authentic to me.

Andrew Miller: I like trying to be as much myself as possible, whether it's online or offline. So is that authentic?

Evan Magoni: Commendable. Yeah, I'm running the social media. I'm not a songwriter, but I'm doing it. I like to think I'm being authentic to what I think the band is, but it's constantly evolving from the moment of songwriting to existing live. I think the goofiness comes across online a lot more than in the songs, probably.

Jess Barry: Like, often when we sound check, someone will just be like, "Wow, you are really hyper as a band." We're like, "Uh-huh." Silly and hyper. That's kind of what we're bringing.

Absent Sounds: Are there different roles each person in the band takes?

Heather Ogilvie: I'm the sassy adolescent. Like Daria.

Andrew Miller: It's giving Daria, definitely. Big teen energy from Heather. I feel like the planner — car dad. Unexpectedly, but it's what's happening. I feel like an uncle. But a fun one.

Jess Barry: I don't know. Little sis, I guess.

Evan Magoni: Granddad. It's true — I am wearing the granddad jacket. Maybe hobbit dad or something. I've been compared to Elijah Wood a lot. That was actually my Halloween costume last year. I'm gonna recycle it every year.

Absent Sounds: What is "New Window" referring to?

Heather Ogilvie: I would say "New Window" is a look into something that exists in a new way — or like framing something in a new way. In a new light. For me personally, kind of my life in Montreal in general — I was self-employed for a long time, and then I was like, I don't want to work alone. I don't want to work from home. So I'm kind of integrating back into society, and I have a non-profit admin job now, which is awesome. Everything's changed and new and kind of exciting.

Evan Magoni: I think it ties into the authenticity question. It's like showing up in whatever situation you are — just what you're paying attention to totally shifts the frame of your situation. I think we all probably try to remind ourselves of that and show up truly authentically.

Heather Ogilvie: Sometimes you need that change to think about something new. Like a shock. Something — yeah. Or like doing acid.

Absent Sounds: You know, this week has been Radio Days North America, and I was listening to Amy Goodman from Democracy Now! talk about the idea that the media isn't necessarily changing the full picture — it's just shifting the frame of what's in the shot.

Heather Ogilvie: Yeah.

Andrew Miller: More perspective than full changing.

Absent Sounds: Exactly. And changing gears slightly — how many tabs do you have open on your laptop right now?

Jess Barry: Not very many, because I need to keep it crisp. Although when we were talking about album art, one thing we had tossed around was having a whole bunch of computer windows going on forever.

Heather Ogilvie: I have two windows and probably seven tabs on each.

Andrew Miller: Everything is closed on mine. It's just empty.

Evan Magoni: I don't even have a laptop. As soon as it'll slowly build up to like 50 or 60, I'll just close the window 'cause I'm losing my mind, and then start a new one, and it feels great. It's just continuously oscillating.

Absent Sounds: Do you ever bookmark any of those tabs?

Evan Magoni: Oh yeah. Bookmarks are an underutilized browser feature. People need to get hip to bookmarks.

Absent Sounds: We were talking a little bit about pasta earlier — what is "Pasta Number Three" about? What are pastas one and two?

Heather Ogilvie: Oh, that's the hardest one to answer.

Andrew Miller: You know what I'm really into right now? Those little scoop pastas — orecchiette. Really good. Perfectly picks up the sauce. Not familiar? You should try it out. Or if you're making a soup, put some of those wriggly spinny ones — fusilli? Rotini?

Evan Magoni: I don't even know what the difference between rotini and fusilli is, other than fusilli's name is more fun.

Andrew Miller: I was a big bow tie fan as a kid. Like, constant bow ties.

Heather Ogilvie: On that note, I think pasta is more of a vibe for that song, because it's kind of squirmy and hard to grasp onto at times. The idea of a long strand of pasta that's hard to pick up.

Heather Ogilvie: For us creating that song — oh my, that took quite a while. Hopefully it makes sense to the brain. It's always hard to know how things translate.

Andrew Miller: I definitely wrote a lot of parts for that song that got thrown out. Heather and Jess come up with ideas for songs — usually like a fully fleshed demo, a structured song — and then Evan and I kind of ruin them in some fashion.

Evan Magoni: We'll throw some parts together — drums, extra guitar parts — and go through a few different versions, take input from everyone. It's a really fun, interactive process.

Andrew Miller: When we have a new thing to work on, we just spend a couple hours trying out new parts and seeing what works.

Jess Barry: And for us, the interlocking parts — the counterpoint and stuff — those things really resonate with us. When we're working together, it's like two people going back and forth, then "okay, try this with this." Trying to use space in a way that makes all the instruments into one functioning whole.

Andrew Miller: Even though they're doing really different things.

Absent Sounds: It does sound like one whole functioning organism. Kind of like — my home base musically is in New York. What would each of your home bases be?

Jess Barry: I think we all like a lot of the same music. There's a large centric core of stuff we all really like a lot.

Heather Ogilvie: And we like a lot of local bands too. Like Sunforger — shout out new release.

Heather Ogilvie: We're playing on an amazing bill with Hélène Binet and Good Feeling for our release show. Jess and I are from the East Coast of Canada, so we have some expats in the Montreal music community we play with — Bracelet and Good Feeling.

Evan Magoni: We just played a show with Love Lit on Thursday, and we're playing with them again tonight, which will be fun.

Absent Sounds: "Open Season" reads as kind of confrontational. What is that song going after?

Jess Barry: It's interesting that it reads as confrontational, because I didn't think about it that way — but now I'm like, "Oh, interesting." Not to be sad, but that's a song about reconfiguring your life in grief, and the way grief literally makes you restructure everything. Drawing on a lot of those ideas about frames and perspective, but a very confrontational experience. So it makes sense, actually.

Evan Magoni: A reckoning.

Jess Barry: Yeah, a total restructure. Walking into the unknown. And band stuff and making music has been a really important thing in that — it changes all the time. When you think about new windows into things, you're constantly looking at things from a totally different perspective, and that changes and evolves for sure.

Absent Sounds: If you could place a song from the album in a specific place anywhere, where would it live?

Andrew Miller: I would play "Pasta Number Three" on this island we all go to to camp on every year, because we spend all of our time together there. It's kind of an end-of-summer activity for us, and that song feels so playful to me — that's how I feel about that trip.

Evan Magoni: Five years we've been doing that. Canoe out to the island, being goofy, making up games. Mini golf with improvised objects, baseball with a tennis ball we found in the forest. It gets real goofy.

Jess Barry: Where is "Sweet Bird"? What would Sweet Bird be? I'm feeling like it is set in a school that nobody is in. A lot of hallways.

Heather Ogilvie: I don't think there's anything more terrifying than an empty school.

Jess Barry: And you're just running around. That's where I would put it. That song is about avoidance more than anything. Lots of places to hide in an abandoned school. Lots of routes around the thing you're avoiding.

Absent Sounds: Last question — what does summer look like for you this year?

Evan Magoni: Being outside. Hanging out in the park. Just that Montreal vibe. We had one sunny day maybe two or three weeks ago and just everybody was outside picnicking. Everything life-affirming about being in the sunshine.

Heather Ogilvie: It's kind of like Montreal — and I'm assuming a lot of places in Canada because of our climate — you have this hunkering down in the winter, which was actually great for recording and doing all of that. And now we get to get out, share with the world and our friends, and have fun again.

Absent Sounds: How long did the recording process take? You recorded in autumn and winter?

Evan Magoni: Kind of a gradual process. We recorded it ourselves — Andrew was leading the recording process. We took our time in our jam space in Montreal, doing drums first and then over the course of several months filling in all the rest of the parts, and mixing with Patrick. Shout out Patrick for doing an amazing job on the mix and master.

Andrew Miller: The recording process was one weekend we'll do this thing, it'll feel good, and then getting ready for the next set of recording times. This whole band, we're trying to have a good time and not stress too much. So our recording schedule was built on: does this feel like a good time to do this thing? And mapping around that.

Evan Magoni: Yeah. Next time I want to just go to a cabin and do it in a few days and see if that's more or less fun.

Heather Ogilvie: That is such a cliché, Evan. I would love it though, let's do it.

Absent Sounds: I was reading something recently — instead of thinking about how can I get this done, it's like, what's the most relaxed I can be while doing this thing?

Heather Ogilvie: That's a good way of thinking about it. But you also have to choose where you're going to put your efforts — we decided we'd do the artwork for the album with basically no time left. We spent a whole day and then another afternoon building this structure to house all of the objects within the frame.

Jess Barry: At the end of the day we were like, "We're visual artists now."

Heather Ogilvie: Anything is possible.

Heather Ogilvie: We're Taupe from Montreal, and you're listening to Absent Sounds on CJAM 99.1 FM. Our debut record, New Window, is out now. Go take a listen wherever you get your music.

Jess Barry: Signing off of Absent Sounds. We hope you have a good afternoon, evening, or good night wherever you are. Bye.