Freshly Pressed – Laughing In Slow Motion “Cabin Fever”

Ottawa-based rock band Laughing In Slow Motion have recently released their latest single, “Cabin Fever”, a song about overcoming struggles and obstacles. We caught up with the band to chat about the new song, their musical influences, and their favourite – and least favourite – things about being musicians. 

From The Strait: Tell us about the new single, “Cabin Fever”.

Laughing In Slow Motion: Kiel, our lead singer, wrote this song in the first leg of lockdown for the covid 19 pandemic. It was the first time he and anyone he knows had ever experienced a global shut down and panic of this kind. With little to be sure of, the waiting and the fear were hard on everyone in the world. To a degree. The hurt to businesses and the economy as a whole, and people being careless and selfish, putting higher risk people at deaths door. This was all weighing on him after over a month of uncertainty (and little did he know, over 2 years more to come). This song poured out of him after he made the conscious decision to fight back without trampling the rights of others, and do better through it all… a decision to work hard to persevere and overcome the ensuing hardships, the fear of the unknown and just live his life free from toxic people and media fear mongering. Misinformation was, and is rampant everywhere, about everything… but there is nothing more harmful than misinformation based on science and the health and well being of many different peoples bodies and the varying reactions to things every individual has… many people don’t care what damage they cause when they choose some ridiculous hill to die on for a cause they barely understand. For many it’s merely about being right. And in their mind they are… even if they’re not. And that is a scary reality to face with billions of other people around them on the planet.

It’s not always about being right. The best thing you can offer others is understanding. Being an active listener is about more than just listening, it is about reciprocating and being receptive to somebody else. But that doesn’t happen much anymore. Everyone just wants to be right, or offended, or a combination of both…
The battle will never be over, and for us these events solidified the concept that humanity will always choose to be divided, because we always feel we have to choose a side.

FTS: How did Laughing In Slow Motion get together?

Laughing In Slow Motion: Alex and Kiel our guitarists/Vocalist came from a band called The Superlative that had gained some traction and done some awesome shows over the course of 10 years as a band and 3 albums.  We knew the other guys from the scene and after a few years of down time decided to piece together a band in fall 2019.

FTS: Who were your musical influences growing up, and how do they differ from your current ones?

Laughing In Slow Motion: We all come from very eclectic musical backgrounds.  One music genre we all agree on is punk and rock.

Our bassist Jason and singer Kiel are really into bands like Fugazi, Sublime, The Clash and other such classic bands.

On the other and Kiel and Alex are into bands like Chastity, Moneen, Alexisonfire, Sunny Day Real Estate, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Thrice, Silverchair, Coheed and Cambria,  Jimmy Eat World and other more post grunge, emo and modern rock.

A lot of people tell us we are like a punk/experimental version of Kings Of Leon and we definitely don’t take offense, but none of us can say we’ve ever listened to a full record of theirs.

To say our tastes haven’t matured would be an understatement, but to say we’ve snubbed much of the relevant music to our upbringing  would be a lie.  Although we all still continue to find great new bands (mostly in the underground), we never gave up on anything that wasn’t merely driven by teen angst.

FTS: What’s your favourite – and least favourite – thing about being a musician?

Laughing In Slow Motion: My (Kiel – vox/guitar) favourite thing is the creativity.  The challenge.  The ability to express myself through something under the disguise of melodies and ideas that can be interpreted by the listener however they see fit.  A well written song is a song that can be something to most anyone.  Something that can be translated to many meanings, for many varying situations.  Music has always been there for me, and all of us, whenever we fell down and needed a crutch to get back up.

What I don’t like about music, especially in the modern age, is everyone has become an “expert”.  I’d rather have people be self proclaimed experts on music genres, gear, history, etc… that be an “expert” about science, health, etc…

I think we live in a time where we are too connected.  I think on one hand it’s a great thing to hear there are something like 100,000 songs being added per week to streaming services.  But on the other hand 95% of the artists releasing those songs haven’t got anything with any substance, any meaning, or anything really.  Even really dumb pop songs have hooks and things that make them so popular.  But if anyone had the ability to properly sift through the releases each week, they’d see that the vast majority of it is dribble… and I’m not saying our music is some be all end all, or that I think people shouldn’t release things they are passionate about or that they believe in… but I think the way the vast majority of these hobbyists need to be less competitive or spiteful. 

I think the rock bands, hip hop artists and such that spend weeks recording and arranging songs.  Writing meaningful lyrics and putting out higher quality music deserve the front pages, more so than the glimmer synth projects, or SoundCloud rappers with beats they stole online. Haha

FTS: If you could time travel to any different time period to be a musician in, what would it be?

Laughing In Slow Motion: 70s 80s or 90s.  Most likely the 90s as most of us in the band grew up in those times.  Really I’d just sort of like to go back to the time when people bought records and appreciated albums as art forms.  Which would pretty much be anytime before the smartphone or even the early 2000s age of Napster and so on.  Most of the bands that influence us had the most success in the 90s.

I think we are burying the value of music as a full form of expression from an artist, to pander to the convenience of having singles and mixed playlists.  A part of me gets it about the convenience factor, and we are guilty of the single by single release strategy, but nothing excites me more with consuming music, than listening through an entire album and hearing the timeline of the artists creations.  The ups and downs.  The visual art that they chose to go along with their creation, something that tells the story of the recordings.

Even if it’s not meant to, and even if the story isn’t in plain sight, it is there in the music and it is truly what helps the artist and the audience feel something.  Songs have that effect too, but for the most part I would argue that I’ve had more valuable experiences over albums as a whole than individual songs.  Basically I can’t wait until we have our full album out hahaha!

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Check out “Cabin Fever”, the new single from Laughing In Slow Motion!

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