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Shine A Light | Elliott Brood illuminates the dark edges of history on their latest release, Mountain Meadows.

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Elliott Brood
w/ NQ Arbuckle. Wednesday, Sep. 17 (8pm). The Pawn Shop (10549-82 Ave). Tickets: $15, available through Ticketmaster, Megatunes and Blackbyrd.

Since talking to Elliott Brood frontman Casey Laforet, I play a game whenever I listen to their new album Mountain Meadows. It’s called “Guess Where The Song Was Recorded.” My options include, but are not limited to, Laforet’s kitchen, the ghost town hall of Wayne, Alta., and a cabin in Parry Sound, Ont. 

“One of the things we would talk about is that the place you record becomes one of the instruments, just like a guitar or a vocal or anything else,” Laforet says. “The idea is to get different flavours out of different places.”

To Laforet, the different sounds of the songs are fairly noticeable. While I haven’t yet been able to pinpoint the exact thud that stomping on his kitchen floor makes, there is certainly a richness to Mountain Meadows, a sense of openness and wanderlust to their take on alt-country, that I chalk up to the band’s unique recording style.     

“Our philosophy was ‘take it on the road’ and record,” Laforet says, “’cause that way you capture the mood you’re in as well. Recording at the foot of Mt. Robson is a huge inspiration. It’s different from being inside four walls in Toronto.”

While the thunderous rock that is Mt. Robson may have influenced a few tracks, it was the tragic mass murder of settlers passing through Utah by Mormon militia in the 1800s that inspired the title of the album and its concept. The Mountain Meadows Massacre left only 17 young children alive, and around 120 men, women, and older children dead.

“Overall, the record is supposed to be stories of the people who survived it,” Laforet explains, “what might have happened to the people who were there — to the children, anyways — who lived through it. Kinda like where they came from, where they went.”

The Brood band has always raided the past for stories to which they then add their own imaginative twists, so I would not advise using their albums as research in your Social Studies class. Laforet, however, probably did pretty well in Social — he was fascinated with history long before he became a musician. You can blame his grandparents on both sides for that.

“In their homes they would have these interesting old books and photos,” Laforet says. “Stuff like that that I would just get into. I’ve got a really awesome book from my grandmother on my dad’s side, a historical book that was published the year after World War I ended, with all photographs from WWI. That’s one of my prized possessions.”

As for the question of what set Laforet on the musical road he now travels, he says the epiphany occurred during a camping trip over September long, when he pulled out some old mix CDs he’d made.

“The first alt-country-ish band that I ever listened to was Weeping Tile, Sarah Harmer’s band,” he says. “Luther Wright is the guitar player on that record and it was kinda this countrified rock that I never had really given a chance to before. I think Sarah Harmer introduced me to that side of music.”

The rest, as they say, is history.