Describing their music as outsider pop from Montreal, The Same Sky reached out to me a little while back in advance of their latest album, Haunting in the Mountains. It’s out now, and it’s good.

Your bio says that the project started in Santiago, Chile, in 2009. Now you’re based in Montreal. That’s a big move! Did it happen all at once, or were there some stops in between?

Joseph: It definitely happened in stages. Montreal was always part of my life because I visited family here from a young age, and those trips exposed me early on to the city’s music scene. Over time, those visits became more formative: going to shows, record stores, cinemas… until eventually it felt inevitable that I would relocate. The move wasn’t a sudden break, but more like a slow gravitation.

Who was involved with the project back when it first got off the ground?

Joseph: The first person to be involved was actually my then guitar teacher and mentor, Marco. He helped me record The Same Sky’s first album when I was 15. It was really an eye opening experience and made me realize I wanted to do this forever. After that, I played with Andrés and Benjamín, who were a lot older than me. All of them were essential to building my approach to music.

Who’s in it now, and what do they bring to the proceedings?

Joseph: So a couple of years ago I started playing with Hazel (drums), and Rory (bass.) It’s funny because they are quite younger than me, so it feels like the tables have turned. And they really refreshed the project. I love what they do with the rhythm section, and I try to not give opinions unless I have a very clear idea. We recorded the album together, and then Rory spent a lot of time comping and editing. We were recently joined by Thorin on guitar, and I couldn’t be happier with him.

Hazel: It was really fun interpreting Joseph’s demos on drums for this record. Each song already had a really clear rhythmic identity before I wrote or adapted my part, which I love… I think it’s cool when no two songs on a record have the same kind of beat. One of my favourite parts of playing with this band is that I get to pull from a bunch of cool rhythms, like disco, reggae, some bossa type stuff… all against the setting of dreamy and crunchy guitars.

Rory: I think we all bring a huge variance of influences, backgrounds, and styles that really blends in such a fun way. Joseph writes these wonderful songs of all genres and styles that are simply a joy to play on. Hazel is a beast on the kit and really drives everything forward. I have a strong foundation in classical theory and jazz improvisation, but I’ve sort of dropped all that in favour of studying recording and sound art, where I met Thorin. I really think it’s all the differences in a project that make it shine, and there’s plenty, but we also share a love of noisy and angsty rock (among others) that glues everything together.

How would you describe the live indie music scene in Montreal?

Joseph: It’s very much alive! There’s a lot of stuff happening. You have some big names like Population II and Corridor, but then also this very cool indie labels like yapdog. My bandmates actually have other projects as well. Hazel plays in the band Lilith, Rory plays in Happy Sunflower, and Thorin has a project called Art Grey. They’re all worth checking out!

Rory: Yeah, Montréal has such an interesting and multifaceted scene. You can go out any night of the week and end up in a bar with some band you’ve never heard of melting your brain. However, I think it’s worth mentioning that there have been recent bylaws proposed? enacted? (not sure) that will force some venues to regulate their noise levels more. It’s a bit odd, people move to the city and then get mad when there’s noise everywhere… Construction and cars are fine, but as soon as it’s art there’s a problem. All that being said, the artists here are resilient people, so I would be surprised if anything drastic happened soon.

Your bio also mentions that you have an “outsider” perspective on shoegaze and post-punk. What do you mean by that, and what gives you that perspective?

Joseph: I think what I mean is two things. One, I do feel like a bit of an outsider coming from Chile. It’s been an adaptation period and it definitely feels like a different planet sometimes. The other thing, and probably the main one, is that I am by no means formally trained in music. My songwriting comes from a place of insecurity almost, not knowing what I am doing, but embracing that unknowingness.

Rory: My take is this: Joseph wrote that independent of me and Hazel, but I think it’s a sentiment we all share. “Outsider art” as a term has a great danger of being pretentious or just wrongfully applied, and to say it about yourself is a bold move. But, and I say this with as much love in my heart as I have, I have rarely met anyone more freaky and weird than the three of us in a room together. We all just mask it well. We’re all somewhere on the neurodivergent spectrum of labels and medication, but it’s not something we really care about cause that’s just how we live our lives. It has been a gift to be able to not really give a shit about presenting in one way or another with the band, and just focus on making the art that resonates with us, which might not resonate with a lot of other people. Hopefully I don’t sound too annoying saying all this.

Your new album is called Haunting in the Mountains. How is it different from your previous releases?

Joseph: It’s an interesting release because I hadn’t released anything since 2013. Some songs are old and even have previous versions. We rerecorded them because I never felt they had reached their full form. There are also some new songs, which I’m really excited about. Also, this record is heavier and it is a bit darker than the previous ones. I think this record reflects a lot of how I evolved as a musician and as a person. A song like What’s Left for example, feels so different than the 2013 version.

Rory: I really like that we ended the album with Bufon, which in this form is a completely different piece of music compared to the older version. Joining this project so late into its story is great because I get to hear all these demos and different versions from over the years. I think something else that sets it apart from the older recordings is working with a mix engineer like Jace who brought a lot of great colours to the project after the recording and editing.

What was the writing and recording process like? Do any memories stand out?

Joseph: I think for a lot of the new stuff I was writing a bit nervously. I was trying different stuff. A New Way to Mania came from experimenting with tape saturation. I was just trying to play as loud and distorted as I possibly could. Then with a song like Disco Punks, for instance, I started the song with a drum machine. I had never done that before. I remember bringing that song to rehearsal, and Hazel was like “that’s my new favourite.” That was a moment where I went, Okay, I can still write songs haha.

Hazel: Yeah, Disco Punks is a fav, especially to play live. I love the energy of beats based around rapid hi hat notes, there’s room to play around with a lot of cool accents and patterns. Patrick Hannan, the drummer from the Sundays, does this really well –  I was probably thinking a lot of him while fleshing out the drums on this one.

Rory: It was such a good project to work on. I had never worked on both sides of a record before (playing as well as producing/editing/mixing) so it helped me solidify in my mind what that process is like. I remember drinking a bunch of coffee one night when Hazel and Joseph were both out of town doing their own things, and staying up until 5am working on a mix of Disco Punks that was like 10 minutes long. Then we listened to it together a few weeks later and I just thought, “huh, this is garbage” so we parred it down to about 5 minutes. Another moment was when we were all wondering what to do with Bufon, whether we kept it an instrumental or got another singer, and then Joseph suggested we use samples from an old French language learning cassette from the 90s he found on youtube. At first he thought we wouldn’t want to but Hazel and I both jumped at the opportunity. It was really a fun experience putting that track together, definitely something I want to do again. Maybe one more thing was just arguing about the track list for weeks and weeks. All in good fun, but we all definitely had really different opinions at different points.

You’re releasing the album on Casa Joven, a revitalized version of your high school label project. What did you learn from running a small label as a high school student?

Joseph: It was cool because I released compilations with bands from all over the world. What I learned from all that was that it is important to trust your instincts when it comes to releasing stuff. Put out the stuff that truly resonates with you. But also, I think in an age where “economic growth” is perceived as a matter of life or death, doing a project that really resonates with you and that doesn’t really make a lot of sense financially… I guess I see that as a personal triumph.

What’s on the horizon for you?

Joseph: We’re already writing the next record, and we have plans of doing it ourselves. So that’s really exciting. I really love working with the band and spending time with them. We would like to play more shows and really grow in Montreal. As for label stuff, I am planning on putting out a record from a Finnish artist from the 80s called Johnny Spunky. I went there last year and he seems to be a bit of a forgotten figure. It’s a shame because he really has these amazing songs, so I am hoping to shine a bit of light on them.

Hazel: I’m so stoked for the next record. I think there’s been more experimentation in this process so far, as compared to the process for Haunting in the Mountains where the songs were pretty fully realized early on. We’ve been jamming stuff and branching out with different versions of tunes that pull from genres we don’t really touch on in HitM, like trip hop and post-rock. So definitely stay tuned!

Rory: Yeah, we’re trying to be more collaborative as a group now and work out songs from jams and older ideas. That just naturally leads to a huge diversity of sounds. We’re gonna try to record it ourselves with old tape machines which will be a fun challenge. Otherwise, we’re putting together a music video for Disco Punks and gonna sell some vinyl and just make a whole lot of noise here in the city.