What The People Say - Burnettes Review

"We’re all over the map, but we’re consistently all over the map," stresses Cora Burnette, one half of the husband/wife Vancouver-based combo The Burnettes (you may recall hubby Chris from strumming duties in Furnace Maintenance).
"Our official term for our music is ‘new-wave-country-kitchen-party-pop’. It’s pretty accurate, in that it’s a little bit of everything. We’re not here to blow you away with our polished pop songs."
Their descriptor also captures the freewheeling vibe on their two records, the charmingly shambolic, consciously home-produced debut Album Schmalbum and the recent We’d Better Be Dreaming. Both releases feature sweet nuggets of songcraft playfully delivered by either Cora’s velvet purr or Chris’s more deadpan vocal approach; simple tunes about relationship promises, moms, and self-doubt.
The couple is playing a few dates in their former home province while on their way to NXNE, accompanied by drummer and honorary Burnette Kreg ‘Mung’ Brow.
"Mung’s awesome. He’s this big, huge guy who drums like a shaman." She adds, "Our live show is more consistent than the records–my acoustic guitar, Chris’ distorted acoustic, and Mung drumming, but every song is still a weird hybrid of different genres."

The Burnettes, March 3, 9 p.m., Clinton's. Couple Rock 1: Festivals should provide as many surprises as sure things. One curiosity catcher this year is this Vancouver husband-wife duo whose "new-wave folk" songs suggest screwball road trips in a junker whose wheels threaten to wobble right off. Just hope they don't play it too cute.

With the release of their sophomore album, We’d Better Be Dreaming (Go-Rock Records), Vancouver’s Chris and Cora Burnette are set to hit Toronto with songs about “friends, foes, family and the end of the world.” Matt Blair spoke with Cora just moments after she had installed MSN Messenger.

WHAT EXACTLY IS “NEW WAVE COUNTRY KITCHEN PARTY POP?” Who knows? We’ve been having a hard time describing our music, and that was a compilation of a few different suggestions. I guess we’re just trying to get across the various genres we like and see them come across in the songs. Every song is a little different, so that makes for a long description. Chris and I are very different musically in a lot of ways, and that’s just what comes out.

YOU PRESENT YOURSELF AS BEING FROM A ROOTS BACKGROUND, WITH CHRIS BEING MORE PUNK ORIENTED. WHEN YOU COME TOGETHER TO WRITE, IS IT GENERALLY THE TWO OF YOU PLAYING THOSE SAME ROLES? It’s hard to say. Every song is different. We both have a long-lived love for punk rock, but Chris has actually been playing in punk bands since he was like 12, and I have always leaned toward writing rock, folk and blues based songs. I guess that’s what happens when you’re locked in a room with just you, a guitar and a shitload of Zeppelin albums. Chris definitely adds an electrical element, and our songs are a combination of both. But I must say, they all stem from good old-fashioned down-home front porch jamming.

DO YOU FIND THAT YOUR RELATIONSHIP AFFECTS YOUR CREATIVE PARTNERSHIP? We don’t try and hide the fact that we’re together on stage or anything, and we’ve even been known to bitch at each other pre-show (okay, just me bitching at him). But what it comes down to is that we love playing together, and making music together. A huge part of it is the recording process. We do everything ourselves at home and love it. I won’t lie and say its all roses. Anyone who’s ever worked with their mate knows that it’s a lot of work and not always easy, but it’s very rewarding. Besides, Chris is my guitar hero, so what’s not to enjoy? Plus, now we have a mediator on tour with us, which is always nice! We call him “the Ref.”

THE REF? Our new drummer. His name is Kreg “Mung” Brow, and he comes from a post-industrial noise background, but we convinced him that folk music was good for the soul. And when things get ugly between me and Chris, he’ll just stare off into the distance until we shut up. It works out great.

YOUR MUSIC IS OBVIOUSLY THE PRODUCT OF A VERY INVOLVED LEVEL OF COLLABORATION BETWEEN THE TWO OF YOU. DO YOU FIND THAT ON STAGE, YOUR SUPPORTING MUSICIANS BRING A LOT OF THEMSELVES INTO THE MUSIC? Yes. We much prefer that whoever plays with us writes their own parts. And no, what you hear on the record is not necessarily what you’ll hear at a show. The albums are quite layered, with Chris and I adding and playing whatever instruments and parts we feel, and whatever noisemakers are at our disposal. But at a show, or the ones on this tour anyways, you’ll be hearing two dueling distorted acoustic guitars, and a full drum kit. No bells and whistles this time.

ON YOUR FIRST ALBUM, THERE’S MORE OF A PLAYFUL SOUND. THE NEW ALBUM, IN CONTRAST, SOUNDS A LITTLE BIT MORE SOMBRE. I’ve heard that. We’re always evolving, I guess. For this album we had a lot of songs we wanted to get out of us. It’s all cathartic in a way, isn’t it? So it just wound up that way. Chris actually calls it a really dark album, so it’s interesting that you pointed that out. I think we were experimenting more with different sounds and techniques. Hey, who knows? Maybe the next album will be all banter! I don’t know.

BY MATT BLAIR

Soulshine - Canada's Essential Guide To Music (February 2005)

The Burnettes Take a Look Around Ontario
Published: 2005-02-25
Husband and wife team The Burnettes are half from Montreal and half from North Carolina, but now base themselves out of Vancouver. And early next week they’ll be packing things up and heading off to Ontario for a CMW performance, and making use of their time in the eastern half of the country. The “Wooly Winter Tour 2005” begins next Sunday in Toronto for Wavelength, and then it’s on to Montreal. After a stop-over in Ottawa, the band will head back to Toronto for their Canadian Music Week gig.

The Burnettes are playing their short tour in support of their newly released album “We’d Better Be Dreaming”. Put out this month, it’s the duo’s second LP of “new-wave-country-kitchen-party-pop-rock”, and the follow up to their 2002 debut “Album Schmalbum”. They’ve been compared to both Ween and Willie Nelson, and are called the Buckingham/Nicks for the modern age – but hopefully things work out a bit better for The Burnettes relationship wise.

Four – count ‘em, four – songs from “We’d Better Be Dreaming” are free to download at http://www.telusplanet.net/public/melvins/gorock/theburnettes.html.

Writer: Jaclyn Arndt

Somewhere in the gray mist that exists between musical genres, a duo called The Burnettes have set up camp. One show-goer recently described them as "the new-wavest country" that they’d ever heard; a slew of others have compared them to everything from Ween to Yo La Tengo; and still, for certain songs, the most precise categorization that can be applied (albeit hesitantly) is "folk-punk-shoegazing-pop." All right, Burnettes, you have some ’splainin’ to do.

"I’ve always sort of said [we’re] somewhere in between folk and punk, just because we use a lot of acoustic guitar but it’s not your conventional music," begins Cora Aronoff, one-half of the husband and wife team. "A lot of the songs are quite different from each others. It’s kind of a collage, I guess, which sounds really arty –we’re not an art band, I swear!"

The non-art folk-punk band came into being when Chris Burnette (who completes the duo) and Aronoff met in January 2000. Drawing from influences as diverse as Led Zeppelin, Ethel Merman, Janis Joplin, Elvis and Frank Black, The Burnettes released their first CD, Album Schmalbum last September.

As of late, The Burnettes have become a ménage-a-trois, so to speak, with the addition of multi-instrumentalist Tanya Gordon, formerly of Edmonton’s All Woman Brothers Band. It is as a three-piece that The Burnettes are hitting the road. "We have a minivan. We’re quite excited–the Ford Aerostar. We’ll see how that pans out. It’s a ’91, so God knows," jokes Aronoff. "We’ve got a shitload of instruments [six between the three of ’em]. We’ve got so much crap that we bring with us, it’s ridiculous. We bring props [because] a backdrop is critical to me, and not everywhere you go has a nice stage, so we’re going to bring our own silver, glitter stripper curtain, which I’m quite excited about."

If you have a psychic premonition that you just won’t be satisfied with seeing The Burnettes only once in Edmonton, check them out in Jasper the night before (July 16) at Pete’s.