About Me
Praised for its swooning guitar, piano melodies and lo-fi soundscapes, Memphis debut, I Dreamed We Fell Apart was described as the perfect late-summer album in August 2004. I Dreamed was a collage of melodies and sound. melding pedal steel guitar with perfectly pitched electronic beats, fusing jazzy reverberations and the occasional thunderstorm to pop song formats. Like its music, Memphis is also study in contrasts as Torquil Campbell and Chris Dumont, the Canadian-American duo, pour their diverse and musical backgrounds and their longtime friendship into Memphis unique sound.Back in the early Nineties, Chris Dumont, originally from North Carolina, had a fortuitous meeting in New York City with Torquil Campbell. The two formed a band with Campbells childhood friends Chris Seligman, James Shaw, and Adam Marvy and for a few years they worked on their song craft playing small clubs and Irish pubs around the city. Later, Seligman and Campbell formed Canadian sweetheart pop group Stars, Shaw went on to become one-half of synth-duo Metric, while Dumont dreamed his days away to the sounds of the carousel in Central Park.With the indie success of Stars there would, it appears, be little time for another musical project, especially one that re-visited the lambent sounds of youth and relied on far-flung friends; but one summer Campbell invited Dumont to Vancouver BC and Memphis was born. Campbell, who writes pop songs with a poets eye for detail and an actors ear for cadence, would weave his words to Dumonts clean guitar hooks and bossa nova harmonics. Over the course of summers 03 and 04, Dumont and Campbell met in Vancouver and recorded I Dreamed We Fell Apart. The record was released late that second summer by Paperbag Records.Musically IDWFA was lush and expansive enough for Campell to improvise as he described the visual and emotional landscapes of frustrated love and adolescence. Dumonts simple, classic jazz-inspired compositions were gentle and delicate, and this delicacy was echoed in Campbells lyrics. Although Campbell describes his songwriting influences as two parts New Order, one part Beautiful South, one teaspoon of Lou Reed, stirred with some sexual perversity and a few good jokes, lyrically Campell is more interested in shades of darkness and the sublime rather than raunchy sex and post-punk nihilism. The evolution of the duos transcendental approach is highlighted further in Memphis latest album A Little Place In The Wilderness (August 15, 2006 Good Fences, EMI).Produced by Chris Dumont, ALPITW was recorded in a hotel room in Vancouver and at Studio Plateau in Montreal in the depths of winter which may explain its many references to snow. The record features long time friends to the world of Memphis, James Shaw (bass and trumpet), Erik Hove (saxophone), and Jon Hyde (pedal steel guitar). The albums first track, a reference to the bands debut album entitled I Dreamed We Fell Apart, is ghostly and hypnotic with its references to winding country roads, dreams and times velocity. The song is also an appropriate introduction to a record about ghosts, dreams and the wilderness of the heart. In Ghost Story, a haunting violin accompanies a tale of gentle inner demons that both terrify and protect its beloved. Fleshier than Memphis premier album in terms of musical range, with gentle horns and strings that swell in almost every track, ALPITW is evocative of innocence and the sprawling daydreams of childhood. The summery sounds of the natural world, coupled with the wintery imagery weave the many layers of this album together. Dreamy and foreboding, complex and yet straightforward, A Little Place In The Wilderness is an intricate record from a South-meets-North duo that is the ideal soundtrack to finding a peaceful place amid chaos.
