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Not only does frontman Brad Roberts, best known for his Jolly Green Giant deep voice, sing an entire song in falsetto called "Just Shoot Me", but backing vocalist/keyboardist Ellen Reid, once rumored to be doing her own album, sings lead on three songs, "Get You In The Morning", "A Little Something" and another still to be titled.
"Overall, the album is very different sounding than their last three records," says manager Jeff Rogers, referring to the Winnipeg-bred band's 1990 debut, The Ghosts That Haunts Me, 1993's six-million-seller God Shuffled His Feet and 1996's A Worm's Life, which sold 600,000 worldwide and went platinum in Canada.
"I can't quite put my finger on what it is in terms of saying it in words. When you hear it, you feel it and hear it immediately but it's hard say. Basically, Ellen is singing three songs and Brad is using the full range of his voice."
The album was produced by 29-year-old Gregg Wells, a Peterborough, Ont. native now living in Los Angeles, at One To One (formerly Madonna's Brooklyn Studios) and Wells' demo studio. "Gregg is gonna be this super-huge producer," predicts Rogers. "He just did some work with Liz Phair."
According to Rogers, as a teenager Wells played keyboards with Kim Mitchell, then moved on to k.d. lang, before relocating to LA to become a session musician. He then got a deal with I.R.S., where he met its CEO Miles Copeland. That, suspects Rogers, is how Wells ended up at Copeland's castle in France for the same songwriting retreat that Roberts attended.
"Brad had never written with anybody before in his life," says Rogers, "and he wrote with all these people there -- Carole King, Kevin Hunter (Wire Train) and John Parish (Wall of Voodoo, P.J. Harvey). He loved it, had such a great time, that Gregg even co-wrote a few songs on the record."
The first single is tentatively titled "Keep A Lid On Things" and that's exactly what Roberts does when it comes to talking about his lyrics, says Rogers. "I'll say to him, 'I think it's about bla bla bla bla. Is that what it's about?' And he goes, 'It is now!'
"He approached it differently this time, writing the lyrics first, where he usually used to write the music first. But I don't know what they're about. He doesn't say. But there's nothing about worms and it not such a focused bunch of things."
The band -- Roberts, Reid, Mitch Dorge (drums), Ben Darvill (harp, mandolin) and Dan Roberts (bass) -- was supposed to do some warm-up dates in Brazil and Argentina, but were forced to cancel after Darvill broke his wrist falling out of a tree.
Roberts, who is in the process of leaving London to go live in New York, has been hanging out in Nova Scotia, where his girlfriend is from, and recently performed a solo acoustic set at Fish Aid, which also featured performances by Mae Moore and Bruce Cockburn. "He has never performed a solo gig in the more than 10 years I've managed him," says Rogers.