The Neckers

if you wanna party you have to have a chorus

By Jesse Keith

Most independent music that comes out these days is meant to be taken seriously, very seriously. Part of the pretense of indie music is that it’s supposed to be considered not just as music, but as art. And while it’s undoubted that much of music is art and should be taken with a measure of seriousness, it’s hard not to notice that the members of Radiohead and the Arcade Fire are never smiling.

For a decade now, veteran Calgary rockers The Neckers have made it their lot to bring some of the good times and sociality that rock music seems to have lost. With the release of their third album this month, the band’s goal is no more and no less than to ensure that you are dancing and having a good time.

“We like to show people a good time and have a party. We like to drink. We like other people to drink and dance, and that kind of thing,” explain band members Brendan Tincher and Bil Hetherington, speaking in between one another. “Originally, we all wanted to be rock stars and now we realize that that’s never gonna happen. We wanna kick some ass and party. Kick some ass musically.”

While The Neckers aren’t big on seriousness, they certainly take what they do seriously. After recording three albums, playing countless shows and dodging a few borders so they could play in the States, The Neckers have been around long enough to know what they’re doing. Not only do they want to kick ass musically, but they have developed a foolproof method for doing it.

“To kick ass musically you have to dance,” explain Hetherington and Tincher, listing off the needed ingredients for putting musical foot to ass. “You have to smile. Play loud. Drink beer. Not be boring. You have to point. Kicking is needed, kicking in the air. Catchy choruses are a must. You have to write good songs, and songs have to have choruses. I think that the most important thing that musicians are forgetting now is to write a chorus in their songs. If you wanna party you have to have a chorus. If you just wanna chill-out well then it doesn’t matter.”

Having been around for a decade, it hasn’t been all parties and good times for The Neckers. They’ve seen their fair share of adversity. Adversity to the tune of 13 different bass players.

“One of our bass players just left one day out of nowhere,” explains Tincher. “He just took off, and we didn’t know what happened to him. That was like four or five years ago. Then last year I went to Australia, and ran into him there. I videotaped him, and told him he should say hi to the Neckers back home and then I was like, maybe you should say bye to them first. And he said ‘Oh, I guess I never said bye, did I?’”

With adversity comes introspection, so along with the party tunes on the new album The Neckers have stopped to take a look inside themselves.

“Some of our songs are pretty introspective,” says Hetherington. “There’s one story on the new album that we made up. It’s about this chick that has an affair with this guy who has a wife, and the guy’s like a rich guy with a Porsche and everything. The girl just kind of got roped into it, she was kind of at a low point in her life. Then it talks about me and how I like her, so I save her from the low point in her life by stealing the dude’s Porsche and driving off into the sunset with her. It’s called ‘Steal That Car’ and in brackets ‘Baby, Baby, Baby’. We need the ‘Baby, Baby Baby’s so people can just hear the song and sing along right away.”