ELLIOTT VINCENT JONES with BERNARDINO FEMMINIELLI, CINDY LEE and JESSE FUTERMAN at the Baby G (1608 Dundas West), Saturday (October 8), 9:30 pm. $10 at the door. See listing.
Elliott Vincent Jones has been touring steadily since his Arto Arto EP came out in the spring via Bad Actors, and when we meet up, he’s enjoying a rare day off home in Toronto. Back when he was fronting the grimy post-punk band Ell V Gore, a string of successful U.S. shows might have offered him an excuse for a rager of a homecoming party, but these days Jones is more likely to decompress with long walks and grocery shopping.
“I’m two years’ sober now, so it’s a lot different,” Jones explains as we enter his local Korean grocery store to pick up some ribs. “Ell V Gore never really toured much because that project was just so all over the place.
“Touring was taking the bus from city to city, not having a contact for when we got there, not knowing when sound check was. It was total chaos. We were always drunk and always having a weird time.”
Cleaning up his life not only improved his work ethic and organizational skills, but also resulted in a major creative shift. His current work under his birth name came out of his attempts to write contemporary pop music that inadvertently turned into 80s-esque synth pop sprinkled with underground dance music elements.
“Ell V Gore was a character stuck with that name and that persona. I stopped using [the moniker] right around the same time I quit drinking. I had to throw it back and leave it in the past. Ever since I quit drinking and doing drugs, my music and day-to-day life have changed, so it felt right to retire it.”
Part of the musical shift came from a change in how Jones writes songs. He originally started out as a guitarist, but most of the melodies on Arto Arto were written on synths, with guitars overdubbed later.
“A lot of how I make music depends on what I own at the moment. I didn’t have a guitar for a very long time because during the Ell V Gore days I sold a lot of things to get money for drugs and things like that. All I had was a laptop, so the songs started with virtual synths made with my laptop’s keyboard.”
Excited by the possibilities of using computer-based sequencing, he downloaded some apps to his phone and continued working on beats and ideas while on tour in Europe as part of Dirty Beaches. By the time he got back to Toronto, he had enough sketches to flesh out into full-fledged songs, with help from Fucked Up’s Ben Cook.
At his show on Saturday, he’ll play brand-new material that he plans to release as an EP soon. This time around he’s aiming for a live-band feel and moving further away from the tight computer-sequenced grooves of Arto Arto. Just don’t expect a return to the deranged darkness of his Ell V Gore days.
benjaminb@nowtoronto.com | @benjaminboles
