Advertisement

Music

Fiver

FIVER and TIMBER TIMBRE at the Royal Cinema (608 College), Wednesday (November 13), 8:30 pm. $15 adv. RT, SS, SR.


Simone Schmidt named her debut Fiver solo album Lost The Plot (Triple Crown Audio) because it’s a departure from the relatively straight narratives of her lyric work with her other musical projects, psych country outfit the Highest Order (whose members also play in Fiver) and the more traditional country One Hundred Dollars.

“But also, Lost The Plot is a discussion of a feeling of insanity and also quite literally losing the plot in the songwriting process,” Schmidt says on the phone from her Toronto home. “Not losing it fully. It’s still there enough to pull things together, but it’s not as neatly contained as on the more traditional records I’ve made.”

Warm production and freewheeling but tight performances keep the nine songs dynamic. Fiver’s sound is difficult to pin down: rock ‘n’ roll that draws heavily from American folk wrapped in thick layers of tremolo and Schmidt’s upfront, husky drawl.

Heavily influenced by Gene Clark and the music of Twin Peaks, the songs came out of a period of personal distress. Schmidt’s former job as a screen-printer working with toxic solvents in a poorly ventilated shop had started affecting her mental health. She’d also recently given up a career in activism and speech facilitation to nurse her partner through cancer. In the midst of all of that, another close friend died from cancer.

“I think oftentimes the person who gets cancer has a lot of say over how their cancer gets discussed,” Schmidt explains. “Which is only right – it’s their body and their sickness. The caregivers often don’t have as much of a voice even though they’re impacted in profound ways. So this record was an offering to people who don’t have a very heroic or idyllic experience of caregiving. Who maybe have negative emotions about what it is to be leaned on. And positive ones, too.”

The singer/songwriter was careful, however, not to make a confessional record. Her characters are fictional, and her process involves journalizing them and then culling found poetry from these ramblings to rework into verse.

Undertaker, for instance, is based on the WWE wrestler, whose life story about losing his family when his brother, Kane, allegedly burned down the family’s funeral home fascinates her. Or Rage Of Plastics, about a woman asked to run for a cancer fundraiser despite the fact that she works at a plastic factory that’s caused her own husband’s cancer.

“[Songwriting] offers a degree of escape from my context, but also maybe a way for me to lean a bit more into what I’m feeling.”

carlag@nowtoronto.com | @carlagillis

Advertisement

Exclusive content and events straight to your inbox

Subscribe to our Newsletter

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

By signing up, I agree to receive emails from Now Toronto and to the Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.

Recently Posted