With the recent re-release of their 2008 self-titled debut on Dine Alone Records, extensive touring of their explosive live show, and the recording of a new EP, Parlovr have rapidly garnered well-deserved attention in the last few months. Keyboardist and co-songwriter Alex Cooper took some time to speak with us last week, discussing the unique nature of the Montreal music scene, the band's tour of China, and the details of their forthcoming album.

IYS: You’re based out of Montreal, which has such an unusual music scene. How did the city influence your sound and style?

Alex Cooper: The thing with Montreal is, you really have the opportunity to do what you want. It’s so inexpensive here, and there’s a small community of people who make music. The city’s maybe three million people in total but the English speaking community here is really small, and the community within that community that plays music is even smaller, and everyone knows each other. It’s kind of like a high school or something like that. You just do what you want, because your day jobs are pretty ineffectual, irrelevant, and inconsequential. You get home from work, and you just play music with your friends, and you work towards doing something that you want to do. Whereas other people that I know in larger cities, like Toronto and New York, they have to work their asses off to do something like that, and I think it affects the way that they write music and play music. They’re doing it to be successful and to make money, even if they’re not money seeking people. They’re really business oriented out of necessity. Montreal isn’t very business oriented, and it’s pretty free spirited.

IYS: You chose a name that, you had to know, would probably be mispronounced 9 out of 10 times. Has being called Parlor, but spelled Parlovr, been an issue as a band, or has it become a little quirk to help people remember you by?

AC: Well it wasn’t intended at all really. Louie and I, the songwriters in the band, we lived in a loft in Montreal called the Parlour, and that’s where we started playing music. We started out as Parlour, until the manager of a band from Ohio who had the same name called a festival we were playing at and was all angry. We didn’t like the idea of having the same name as somebody else anyway, so we changed the u to a v, in a kind of Roman or Latin classical way. We didn’t really think much of it, and let people pronounce it however they wanted to. We just kind of left it at that. I mean, I pronounce it Parlover too.

IYS: At this point, your self-titled debut album has been out for a couple of years. How do you feel playing the same songs that you wrote so long ago? Do you see a new maturity in the way you play them?

AC: Well actually, with the shows we do now we play about half the songs on the setlist from that album, and the other half is mostly new stuff. It’s not like we play psychedelic jams, and it’s not like we improvise a lot. We’re pretty faithful to the pop structure, so we don’t change it all that much. That being said, I think that we’ve gotten a lot crazier and looser with the way we play the songs. It’s definitely frustrating to have to play material that’s two years old, or to be expected to play those songs at least, but you write a song, and six to eight months later it gets recorded, and another eight months later it gets released. Most songs that are written are at least a year old when people hear them.

IYS: Are you working on a new album now?

AC: Yeah, were finishing all the writing right now, and hopefully we’re going to the studio soon to record it.

IYS: What’s your impression of the songs on your new album, compared to how you felt while writing the last one and as it was released?

AC: Well we finished recording a five or six song EP that’s coming out in the fall, and I feel pretty awesome about those songs. They’re really all over the place, and they have a denser feel to them compared to the album. It’s kind of like the first album in that it has something of a schizophrenic feel to it, where there’s no obvious direction or conceptual thread to it all. I like to think of it as if you’re on the road, and dozing off to a hotel television and sort of flipping through the channels, and there’s all this crazy imagery assaults your senses and you’re kind of just like “What the hell is this?” You know, you turn on CNN and you see cars blowing up and Jerry Springer, and then some romantic comedy… So it kind of has a scattered feel, but a really dense sound.

IYS: I know guys have described your music as “sloppy pop” that doesn’t really have an obvious direction. What kind of experience has it been to play in a band with such a scattered sound?

AC: It’s great, because Louie and I will write the most ridiculous songs. Louie will write a something random, and I’ll write some weird punk song or a Paul McCartney ballad, and it’s kind of all over the place. We don’t really have cohesion, but that’s sort of the point. We don’t want to confine ourselves to one particular sound or style. On the one hand it’s fun to do whatever you want, but on the other hand when it comes to organizing songs to record and play, it’s harder to decide which songs to bunch together. With our next album, we put this filter on our songs so every song has, in our own personalized view, this R&B, sick and twisted, 60’s soul feel to it. That’s the only filter we put on the album, and we’ll see what comes out.

IYS: When your sound is so big, but there are only three people in your band, is it harder to create the songs you want to create?

AC: It’s funny, because people have said we have a big sound but I don’t really think so. What you hear on the album is pretty much what you’ll get live. What makes the big sound is that we let Jeremy, who’s an insane drummer, let his drum kit take up a lot more space than other bands do, and Louie has a guitar that’s split to a regular guitar amp and a bass amp, which sounds like a bass and regular guitar are playing at the same time. I kind of use my keyboard to try to fill in all the gaps between the drums, bass, and guitar. I guess it comes off as sounding big sometimes, but I think playing as a three piece is pretty awesome. For some reason the chemistry just works really well. I wouldn’t want to add another member.

IYS: You’ve toured quite a bit around the world, including recently China, and now you’re headed back to North America for some summer shows. Has any show stood out in particular over the past few years?

AC: Well China was obviously pretty out of this world. If someone told me I’d be playing rock and roll in China a few years ago I’d have laughed in their face. It was definitely the most interesting and captivating tour I’d ever done. The thing with China is that it’s pretty similar to North America or Europe. The kids who go to shows act the same way; the bars feel the same; there are similar characters. It’s a pretty magical universal feeling that Rock n’ Roll appeals to the same people, and that all of these people have this united attitude. Even though China was crazy and different, it was familiar, which is kind of a beautiful feeling.

IYS: How has it been to tour with Suuns, another band whose name is pretty much unpronounceable?

AC: Well we did some shows with Suuns, back when they we’re called Zeroes. Jeremy went to school with their singer, and I was in a band with their keyboardist, so we all kind of know each other already. I really dig them, so I’m looking forward to playing with them again.

IYS: One thing that’s consistently mentioned in reviews of your live show is that there’s always a huge amount of energy in the band’s performance, and that everyone seems to just dive into the music. How do you consistently keep such a high energy level?

AC: Well, I like to play every show like it’s my last; even if there are only ten people in the crowd. You have to give it your all, or it becomes meaningless. The reality is that we’re playing songs that we’ve played many times before, so the only thing you can do to make each show unique is to fall right into it and have tons of energy. I play every show that way, even if I’m having the shittiest day or if we’ve been traveling for ten hours. We all have these reserve tanks, and we just tap into them for shows. Playing shows is one of the best things in the world.

IYS: Coming into the tour for this new album, has Parlovr matured as a band in any noticeable way, or is that not even necessary?

AC: I think that we’re a pretty inherently immature band; that’s just the way Louie and I are musically. We’re a couple of kids, and we’re going to keep writing music with that mindset. I’m sure as musicians, our ears are maturing, and we’re developing; it’s inevitable. But that’s really just a natural thing.

IYS: Are you satisfied with the direction that Parlovr has gone in as a band, and do you expect you’re newest album to change that direction much?

AC: I just want to be able to use the music in whatever way, and just live off of it and keep writing songs. If we’re headlining tours or opening for awesome bands, I’m still very satisfied. With our next album, we just wanted to be able to write songs that we like playing in whatever capacity we can.

IYS: Where do you see Parlovr five years from now?

AC: Well hopefully I’ll play more shows. In parts of Canada we’re called a hipster band, and in other parts of Canada we’re a teenage girl’s favorite band, and in Europe we’re called an art band, in China we get called a weird noise band. I have no idea where it all really fits in. I think we just want to keep writing music that we really enjoy. That might sound cliché, but if we don’t write music that we love this band will go careening of a cliff.