Sometimes your own guilty conscious can be the mother of invention. Ohad Benecherit, a founding member of Canadian post-rock collective Do Make Say Think and regular Broken Social Scene collaborator, found himself with a hard drive full of half-started musical ideas and a nagging cricket on his shoulder that wouldn’t let him move on before finishing what he started. Spanning almost an entire decade, Years is the result of new musical ideas being brought to life from a cocoon of older ideas that waited for years to see the light of day. Benecherit chatted with Inyourspeakers to discuss his new album, recording solo, and why we may see a new Years album sometime in the future.

Inyourspeakers: So, there is a little bit of a back story behind Years. It is a collection of songs that never got around to being released until now. What prompted you to release these songs this year?

Ohad Benchetrit: Two things, first of all: The intention was always to release new material so I could move forward. It is hard to tell yourself you can see something through when you have the proof of the opposite sitting on your hard drive. I like the idea of making all sorts of kinds of music, but sometimes you need to stay focused in order to see something through. I told myself that if I can’t cap off these songs that are half-finished then how was I going to start something new and see that all the way through?

So, initially, the idea was to finish these songs off and be done with it. Ironically, every time I listened to a recording of what I’d put together, I felt like the music was missing something. Then I would sit back down with a newer idea, and work it through, using that as the glue to keep a cohesive concept throughout the record. Every time I worked on a new song, I found that I liked it more than anything that I currently had, so I would replace one of the weaker songs with the new piece. After about a year, I realized that I had replaced every single song with something that was relatively new (except for two that I couldn’t let go because I really, really liked them).

Interestingly enough, the old record is still unreleased because the current one is composed of all new material.

IYS: So the old songs were jumping off points to flesh out these new musical ideas?

OB: Yeah, I think so if I’m being 100 % honest. What ended up happening was that I didn’t want to lie to myself; I didn’t want to tell myself that I wanted to make a new record, because I wanted to feel like I was finishing something old, but I was basically using that as an excuse to make this new record anyway.

IYS: Are any of those old ideas recycled or explicitly used in the new material?

OB: There are a few songs that definitely are. In fact, “Are You Unloved” is the oldest song on the record, and one or two of them are older ideas that got completely revamped. The original idea is maybe a few years old but what it turned into and the reworking of those ideas is pretty fresh and new.

IYS: I actually wanted to talk about “Are You Unloved”; the track comes out under 7 minutes but it covers so much musical range. Is this the product of a single song or a bunch of different musical ideas thrown on top of each other?

OB: That song for me, and the reason why it stayed on the record, is because it encompassed a lot of the ideas I was trying to work with. I think it did it really well. Like I said, it is one of the oldest songs in terms of when I started it.

IYS: When was it written?

OB: It was written in chunks. Like, I would start it and then I would put it away for two or three years and not look at it once. Then I would open up the song and be like, “oh yeah, this one”. So then I brought in James Mitchell, one of the drummers from Do Make. I got him to do some drumming, and then shut it down and didn’t look at it for a long time. When I really started working on the Years record, I hauled that one up and thought maybe it was time to see what I had. I kind of reworked it and made it more current.

Originally, I think I was looking to be more manipulative with the digital aspect of recording. That is kind of one of the pillars of the record, I always wanted to make a deeply digital record. That song began with what I was really comfortable with, the post-rock structure, the Do Make structure of really long, epic songs that go through a couple of changes. Then I tried to imbibe it with a digital nature. For me, the song was a mix of personal normalcy and experimentation.

The other thing that I really love is playing acoustic guitars, and that song centers around digitally manipulating acoustic guitars. It was one of those things where you don’t sit down with a solid game plan, you just kind of start and it triggers something in your mind because you are engaged by it and it starts moving in a different direction and you start editing and pushing and pulling. I didn’t really start with an overall idea and push play/record.

IYS: I guess that explains the dual nature of this record. On one hand, you’ve got this virtuoso acoustic guitar playing, and on the other a lot of digital manipulation.

OB: Yes, as I decided what to work with and what to replace, I realized that there were two things that I wanted to be apparent on the album. I really wanted it to have an acoustic guitar feel, but I wanted it to have that blending of organic and digital manipulation.

IYS: How did recording this by yourself differ from the collaborative nature of Do Make Say Think?

OB: The biggest difference was that I didn’t have a barrage of opinions that needed to be addressed. When I’m work with Do Make, we tend to do everything together. I wouldn’t work on a piece on my own, I’d wait until there were other members of the band around; we would constantly discuss every move we’d would make. Almost every decision became a committee meeting.

The process involved in making music with the other members of Do Make is really interesting and fun; there is a lot of intellectual pushing and pulling with people whose opinions I really respect and enjoy working with. For Years there was none of that. Every time I had to make a big a decision, the result rested on my shoulders alone. It took me awhile to get used to it. With that said, I did bring in members from Do Make to play through each song and ask for opinions. It was really nice being able to work on the project on my own, get through all these issues I had with any given track and make the decisions by myself. Then when I got really stuck, I could play the song to a friend and ask for advice.

IYS: Now, there are two track names that deal with assassination (“The Assassination of Dow Jones” and “Lasantha Wickrematunge”). Is there any thematic significance to this?

OB: As you could probably guess, “The Assassination of Dow Jones” was written over the course of the big financial crashing that started last year. At the time, I was listening to the news, watching CNN, just taking in the kind of fear that was consuming everybody. Every news channel was going on and on about the financial crisis, how it was the second great depression, how the pillars of our society were crumbling around us. Now, a year and a half later it kind of seems funny, but at the time, you couldn’t turn on the channel without seeing someone like Glenn Beck acting like a fanatic.

It was hard to see all this going on without being affected by it. The song is about the state of my mind during the months from about August to Obama’s inauguration in January. And so, “The Assassination of Dow Jones” is kind of a poetic way of saying “this is a financial crisis,” turning Dow Jones from an institution into a man who can be assassinated.

A similar theme holds true with “Wickrematunge.” Sometimes, when you are working with instrumental songs, you find inspiration in certain worldly. I like to look back, and see what was going on in my life during recording or what was going around the time of writing a given song. Sometimes an event hits hard and stays around in the back of your mind while dictating the flow of a piece. Given this, I assume you’ll have an idea of the story behind “Wickrematunge?”

IYS: Yeah, he was a Sri Lankan journalist who was assassinated.

OB: Yeah, and towards the end of the record, those songs to me seem like dark times, not just because of the financial crisis, but because winter was coming on, it was getting darker and colder.

The sample in it was actually something I recorded in Malaysia. There are these Malaysians who sing at funerals, and when I was visiting, they happened to be rehearsing right outside my door. So, I stuck a microphone outside and recorded them.

I never really intended to do anything with the piece, but it fit especially well after the “Assassination of Dow Jones.” Then, right around that time that the song was being written, the story about Lasantha Wickrematunge engaged me so much that it became the title.

IYS: I feel like that even in Do Make Say Think songs there is this overwhelming sense of joy, even in the most melancholy songs; is there anything inherently Canadian about this?

OB: That is a hard question because there are so many different people in both countries that I can only speak for myself. Sometimes it is too easy to be overly dark, it is almost not realistic. To be just be stuck on one mood, to be dark and nothing but dark, is almost a lie. Music is cathartic - that is why we do it. Being able to be able to release our energy and emotions into the music is a wonderful thing. I am very happy to have been doing it for as long as I have!

IYS: Ten years now right!?

OB: Yeah! At least, making records, maybe a little longer learning, practicing, and getting to the point where I can start making records. I really enjoy what I do and I only hope that it shines through in my music.

I don’t know if there is anything inherently Canadian about that. I think Canadians as a whole like to think of themselves as having a positive worldview. The truth is we do not. Canadians like to say, “we are peacemakers,” but if you compare our environmental position to America’s, you’ll see that we are really not that different.

If you think of yourself a certain way you will slowly come to embody your thoughts. At least we think we are positive.