Halifax’s self-described sadsacks No, It’s Fine. might be between EPs at the moment, but that doesn’t mean they’re ignoring you. Rather than loudly crooning a collection of heart-wrought songs, painstakingly crafted for your ears, they’re filling the interim by loudly crooning a collection of heart-wrought songs, painstakingly crafted for someone else’s ears.
Their new album, (It’s Nice To Pretend) We Wrote These Songs, is a loose series of ten songs written by strangers for strangers which your ears will benefit from all the same, thanks to the band’s painstaking double heart-wrought process.
Despite the estranged sources of this material, this collection of covers has been lovingly chosen with all the intimacy of a mixtape. And so, we’ve asked No, It’s Fine.’s Cailen Pygott to spell out his choices for us.
“This album is an idea I’ve been kicking around for a long time,” explains Pygott. “I really love integrating covers into our live sets. It’s really fun and sitting down together as a band and learning something that’s already written is a great exercise in arranging and collaborating.
“When everything shut down last year we were really close to finishing the tracking of our record. After tracking got put on hold for several months and we had to get back to our groove before we could finish our record we realized there was gonna be a long-ass gap between our EP release and anything else.”
The band had initially intended to run into the studio with a breezy 6 or 7 covers, recorded live of the floor, but by the end of their first jam session had rounded out the album to a comfortable 10. Recorded by Palmer Jamieson at Golden Palm Studios, (It’s Nice To Pretend) We Wrote These Songs worked in songs from Metric, Weakened Friends, Courtney Barnett, Modern Baseball and more.
“I’ve wanted to work with Palmer Jamieson on a No, It’s Fine. project for a while,” says Pygott. “Having tracked the second Owen Meany’s Batting Stance release, Feather Weights, with Palmer I knew he was great to work with and brings lots of skill, passion and great ideas to the table.”
With some of Nova Scotia’s finest on the team, including Tori Cameron (Floodland, The Town Heroes, Cameron) on bass, Chris Wilson (Milk Moustache) on drums, and KT Lamond (Like A Motorcycle) on guitar, No, It’s Fine. is already the sort of band to make you envious that you didn’t get the call to audition. Throw in some cover art by Pygott’s partner Sacha Stephan (Pygott assures us that she is the best) — “She’s really creative so I got her to make an illustration for each song based on her interpretation of them and it turned into a really fun flash sheet” — along with a prudent call to a pair of local legends with their respecting cameras, Jordan Haines and Alex Boyd, the operation turned into a spectacular, albeit much-larger-than-anticipated, project.
“By the time we and KT [Lamond] were done talking about it, it turned into a full-on live session deal because again why make things easy when we can make them cool?”
The resulting album has a fun consistency to them. They might have been the sort of songs we’d put on a mix ourselves, but having been pressed through the machine of No, It’s Fine. they’ve come through the other side like cubic zirconia. The process has done a fine of turning a choice selection into a cohesive album that’s entirely their own.
Now for the quick and dirty on the songs, according to Cailen Pygott himself:
Blue Mountains (Diamond Rugs) – KT has wanted to cover this in a band for years but it never worked out until now. Honestly adding this song to the album led me to decide Chris and Tori should each also get to pick a song and that’s how ‘Punks in the Beerlight’ and ‘Blood in the Cut’ came to be added. Fun Fact: Rob Crowell of Diamond Rugs was my R&B Ensemble teacher at NSCC and I didn’t even know he was in this band.
Broken Cash Machine (Modern Baseball) – I’ve talked about this before but Modern Baseball is the whole reason I started this band. I wouldn’t have started writing songs if it weren’t for Jake Ewald. We played this song at, like, our first two shows and had mostly forgotten it when we started rehearsing for this but it’s dope.
Empty (Weakened Friends) – This Weakened Friends song is basically my life right now. I can’t get up, I need a better job, I’m trying really hard to be a better person for my amazing partner and my mom worries about me. Like looking in the friggin’ mirror, bud.
Empty (Metric) – I used to play this song alone in my dad’s basement apartment in Antigonish back in Grade 12. Getting to make it happen now with a sweet band is literally living out a high school fantasy.
Punks In The Beerlight (Silver Jews) – My friend Brandon showed me this song and I love it so much. We actually put out an unlisted video of this and sent it to him for his birthday. I love Brandon.
Marquee Glass (Shotgun & Jaybird) – This song. This is one of the best songs ever. I learned this song years ago because I knew how much KT loved it. At live shows we just play the end tagged onto our song zero bars but hear we’ve extended it. This is one of the songs I’m most proud of for our dynamic range on it. I never thought I could scream like this.
Damn Dumb (Birdcloud) – This song is hilarious and heartfelt in a way I could only ever dream of being able to live up to in my own writing. Plus it’s a great duet.
Pedestrian At Best (Courtney Barnett) – We sped this song up so much and there are so many words it honestly still blows my mind I can sing it. This is another one of those songs that just *gets* me. “Put me on a pedestal and I’ll disappoint you” indeed. We tried pretty hard to get this in front of Courtney Barnett’s eyeballs. I just really hope she likes it.
Blood In The Cut (K. Flay) – I mean, how can you deny in the year 2021 that Tori Cameron is one of the best singers out there? Tori fucking kills this song. I think this is the song we did the best job of taking and making our own. KT did a lot of the arrangement for it as far as how the dynamics played out and that little fucker is a genius.
F.U.U (Dream Wife) – It’s a sick song, dude. KT and Tori’s voices play off each other so well. Chris has great moments all over this record but especially on this song. I just love my band and all I want in the world is for them to be happy.
If feasting your ears isn’t enough, here’s the aforementioned live-off-the-floor video that you can treat your eyes to. It might be the closest thing you get to seeing the band live for a while yet.