“What’s important to us is touring and playing live. We put these albums out so we can keep playing and touring… I thought if we could go to Europe once it would be great, but it’s been like 10 times over,” laughs Mathieu Ball, guitarist and co-founder of Montreal experimental metal trio BIG|BRAVE (alongside fellow co-founder and guitarist/vocalist Robin Wattie and drummer Tasy Hudson, who joined the fold in 2020). The last time I spoke with Ball was in the summer of 2022, when the band was just returning to touring and getting ready for their first post-lockdown US jaunt, which had them supporting post-metal supergroup SUMAC (and included their biggest Philadelphia date yet, at Underground Arts).
However, BIG|BRAVE have been on the road for much of the time since then, including a European trek this May, which they’ve thoroughly appreciated: “We’re just so grateful for every tour. We always feel like maybe this is the last tour, especially with COVID, so every tour we go on we realize how lucky we are.” They’re currently gearing up for about three weeks of headlining dates through America, which kick off August 2nd with a hometown show and will have them playing MilkBoy on Saturday August 17th.
For their last stop in the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection, fans got to hear local live premieres of tracks from Vital, the band’s 2021 full-length and final release for longtime home Southern Lord, but the trek also featured premieres of songs from the band’s upcoming full-length, nature morte, which dropped last February on Thrill Jockey (who also released Leaving None But Small Birds, 2021’s collaborative LP with The Body). However, this April BIG|BRAVE released A Chaos Of Flowers, their second LP for Thrill Jockey and their first album to have its own Wikipedia page, which Ball admits he didn’t realize at the time of our recent phone chat. It’s also their third consecutive album to be nominated for the Polaris Music Prize longlist.
Metal Hammer wrote, “On A Chaos Of Flowers, [BIG|BRAVE] have transcended their metal origins without betraying them and created something truly astonishing and unique in the process,” but when I ask Mathieu how he thinks the album compares to previous releases, he tells me, “It’s slightly different from what we’ve done the past six records,” although admits that he thinks it’s more or less where the band left off with their last LP: “With nature morte, we started playing chord progressions, which we had never done before… Now we’re thinking more about melody…” He also tells me that he thinks the band’s new label might have something to do with their sonic evolution: “It’s like a dream to be on that label, with all those amazing musicians… They encouraged us to just experiment with different palettes.”
A Chaos Of Flowers includes a number of collaborations, including Tashi Dorji (who provides guitar on two tracks, who also opened Underground Arts for SUMAC and BIG|BRAVE), Patrick Shiroishi (who provides saxophone on two tracks), and fellow Thrill Jockey artist Marisa Anderson, who plays guitar on two tracks, including latest single, “cannon : in canon.” When I ask Mathieu about collaborating with Anderson, he tells me, “With Marisa, we never actually met. Everyone on this record, we just wrote to. We did it remotely,” but admits that they didn’t even give her any direction for her parts, which they’re exceptionally pleased with. However, when I ask how the song came about, he confesses that he doesn’t exactly remember: “It was all blurry… we were recording the other record, but we were writing this one.” But he does tell me that, like many of the album’s tracks, it was appropriated by Robin from a poem and that, at the time, they were playing around with playing along with other people’s songs, and this one came about when they were playing along with a Gillian Welch number.
Mathieu tells me that fans of A Chaos Of Flowers will certainly enjoy the band’s upcoming live dates, but that it may not be exactly something they’ve heard before: “We’re gonna play the full record, but I don’t think we’ll play it in the same order every night, as our live shows are definitely improvisational.” Joining BIG|BRAVE for support on their US dates is Spiritual Poison, the ambient project of Primitive Man’s Ethan McCarthy, who I also find out during our chat is BIG|BRAVE’s booking agent, who the band are more than happy to have accompanying them on the road: “He’s a road dog, so that’s also important… That project is great. I love a diverse lineup.”
After their American dates, BIG|BRAVE are heading to Europe, where Ball tells me they’ll wrap their 2024 live shows: “We’re touring through August and then September and October, and that’ll be it for touring for the year, at close to 100 shows.” However, he says that they’re definitely hoping to be back on the road next year, although it may resemble something different from what the band’s longtime fans have come to expect: “We’re working on a project that’s like a soundtrack record to a film that doesn’t really exist… It’s really abstract, even for us, and we’re hoping to tour that a bit in 2025.”
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