A Chat With: Derrival
Vancouver's Derrival have steadily gained traction recently with their incredibly catchy singles like "Ice Cream" and "Ghosts of our Past." Last week, the buzzed about band released their self-titled debut full length, laden with dreamy and upbeat pop melodies and addictive hooks. In celebration of the album release, we chatted with the band to get to know more about them; from their influences to the stories behind their music videos and what we can expect from Derrival in 2018, tune in below!
Derrival is Adam Mah, Glen Jackson, Dan Kozlowski, Deven Azevedo, and Shane Stephenson
Congrats on your album coming out last week! How does it feel to finally have it out into the world?
Thank you! It feels like this huge weight has been lifted off of us in a way. We’ve had it done and under wraps for so long that it’s exciting to finally share it with everyone and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, which is great. Every band only has so many albums and this is our debut so it’s a milestone for us.
How was the process of writing and recording your debut? Any songs particularly that were your favorite to write or record?
The process was different than our past recordings in a good way. In the past, most of our songs were jammed out in a traditional garage band sort of way. With this record we were very conscious of the sound we wanted to achieve, which was more polished and clean and pop forward. So I spent a lot of time working on skeletons of songs with Shane (keyboardist) in Ableton and then we would bring the ideas to the rest of the guys to create parts separately. One of my favourite songs on the record is Hollywood, Shane stuck this quote from Audrey Hepburn in the middle of the song that just fit perfectly so we had an actress friend of ours named Carmen who spoke the part overtop for us and she nailed it.
I love that the album starts with a David Bowie quote. Besides Bowie and that quote, where else did you find yourself drawing influence from when writing the record, both musically and non-musically?
I found myself drawing influence from other art I was consuming at the time, mostly films and books, many of which took place in the 1950’s/60’s and centered around old Hollywood. That’s why the record is so heavily immersed in it. I think a lot of people romanticize that time, myself included.
I also love the duet with Sarah Jeffery on “Ghosts of our Past.” How did that opportunity come up to work with her, and how was it working with her?
A couple of us went to high school with Sarah for a bit and sung in choir with her. We needed some female vocals for some harmonies on a handful of songs from the album so I was looking through my Facebook friends list and she came up. We had her come in and she nailed all the harmonies. I was blown away and wished we had a song that featured her on the record but we were nearing the end of recording. Me and Shane wrote the basis for Ghosts of Our Past over the next couple days, sent it her way and then recorded it. Sarah has been amazing to work with, she’s so talented.
The video for that track is also really great and cinematic. How involved are you in the concepts for your videos, and what’s the story behind this one?
I got inspired after writing the track and started thinking about music video concepts. I came up with a rough concept for the video and then we approached Nelson and Graham Talbot, who we’d also gone to high school with and they took the concept and fleshed it out. I was really excited and we weren’t sure if it was going to happen because Sarah was in the middle of shooting the X-Files but we did it over the course of a couple days. I think it’s my favorite video we’ve done so far.
If you could collaborate with anyone else, who would you pick?
It’d be really cool to collaborate with Kimbra, she’s got such a unique sound and is an amazing writer.
What are some of your favorite parts of the music scene in Vancouver? Any insider secrets you can give about the best venues and maybe the best local bands?
I feel like it’s a very tight-nit community in Vancouver, it’s like every band knows each other. One of our favourite local bands is We Are the City, we’ve been long-time fans and they’re always doing crazy/unique things. Check out the film Violent that they made if you haven’t yet.
What are some albums you’ve had on repeat lately?
I started digging into the new Son Lux record “Brighter Wounds”. It’s pretty great, also the Black Panther Soundtrack.
Do you have any plans to tour soon in support of the album?
We are in the midst of working on it as we speak! Our album release show in Vancouver is March 17th at the Biltmore Cabaret.
What else do you have planned for 2018?
We’ll be playing JUNOFest in Vancouver, releasing more music videos and lots more. Stay tuned.