The album cover for Third Wind was created by Robert Voyvodic and is one of your most abstract covers to date. What inspired this direction?

Windsor, Ontario legend! Bob is a very old friend of ours. I think we just wanted to do something different, something unlike our other album covers, to keep it fresh and interesting. I think we wanted something that reflected how we felt - an artistic representation of the music that reflected a little bit of the more indie rock influences of the record. It’s a strange word to use, but it might be our most artsy record yet. I think it was Vince’s - who sings and plays guitar and writes all of the songs - vision. He came with a mood board of these very pastel-y, almost Rothkoian ideas that he had. We gave a bunch of inspiration to Bob and then Bob came back with this really varied pitch deck of all these ideas. We got really lucky that we were able to pick from ten really cool starting points and narrow it down. Like with any band I imagine, certain people preferred certain ideas and others preferred others but we were all able to eventually agree on this one.

What’s really cool is that there was another strong contender that we were able to use as the back cover for the album and also as the cover of the “Clean” single that came out in November. That piece of art also gets its own life, not only in terms of a physical copy but on Spotify or Bandcamp as well. If you see the “Clean” single you’ll see what is the back cover of the record and what was also a strong contender for the front cover. It’s cool that we were able to not only choose one piece of art, we were also able to give another thing we really liked some visibility both digitally and physically. I think that’s a really cool aspect.

It definitely fits with the music. When you’re listening to the album and looking at the art it kinda shifts with the songs.

That means a lot to hear because I think that really was our intention and our goal was to figure out art that really married well with the music.

What helped you to catch your third wind?

There was a very specific event and it’s a very interesting story. In November of 2021, we kind of decided that we were a little bit burnt out on the band. I don’t think we ever called it a breakup but we kind of decided that we needed a bit of a hiatus situation. We didn’t know if it would be a couple of months or forever. It was just like, “We need to take some time away from this band and we’ll reassess in six months”. I’m trying not to give away too much of the behind-the-scenes but to me, at least at the time, it really did feel like we were going to go on an “indefinite hiatus”. We were about to announce a farewell show. Right before I was about to click publish on the Facebook event - who knows how the Universe made it so I hadn’t clicked it that day already - I was like, “I’m going to do this tomorrow”. Then that day I got a text message from this individual who books Alex G, Jeff Rosenstock, and a whole bunch of acts including a band called Pinegrove. He was like, “Hey, would you guys like to open for Pinegrove on tour?” That was far and away the biggest tour opportunity we’d ever received. We got to play the Danforth and all these big, beautiful venues. It just felt like something we couldn’t pass up. So despite the fact that we were about to go on this hiatus, we were like, “We have to say yes to this and if we want to, we’ll take the hiatus after this tour”. We’ve been going stronger than ever since. [laughs] We never ended up taking that hiatus.

That tour was supposed to be in February 2022 but it ended up getting pushed to July because of COVID so maybe that helped us because instead of the tour happening in two months, it was happening in eight months. In that eight-month period, we suddenly wrote most of this record and started recording this record. Joey and Vince - who play guitar and sing - write all the music so sometimes me and our drummer, Julien, are kind of out of the loop because they’re doing their thing and they bring the songs to us when they’re done. We showed up to practice one day under the impression that we were just getting ready for this tour and they were like, “Here’s all these new songs! And by the way, we’re going to make an album”. We looked at each other and were like, “Ok, sounds good to me!” As far as our band goes, we’ve been pretty steadily active ever since. We have a bunch of new music after this album that’s almost finished being recorded. That tour offer was the catalyst for our third wind.

I think playing shows to a bunch of sold-out giant venues is a really motivating, momentum-building feeling. You do that and you’re like, “Maybe people will care about us more than we might think”. I think the pandemic was really defeating. We put our last album out right in the middle of it and I think there was this energy of, “Does anyone care?” It was hard to see the fruits of our labour in any kind of tangible way. It’s funny because we ended up playing that farewell show but we didn’t call it a farewell show, it was the first show back since COVID. During this random three or four-week period in Quebec in 2021, between waves, venues were allowed to be open at full capacity. The show was incredible. It was super well attended and the energy was crazy. There were all these people that we had never seen at our shows before and clearly, they had gotten into us over the pandemic. It was the first show back that they could go see. I think that show was a really important element of the third wind. It was like, “Oh this is really fun and rewarding and we can see there’s tangible feedback and results to what we’re doing so let’s keep doing it”.

It was timed perfectly.

Exactly! All of these things like that show and that tour offer were timed so serendipitously. I guess the Universe was telling us that our time wasn’t quite up yet or it wasn’t the moment for us to take that hiatus that we thought we needed.

Last year you also played Pouzza Fest for the first time since 2013 and New Friends Fest in Toronto for the first time. What were those experiences like?

They were both awesome! I’ve known the people who organize New Friends forever and I’ve been booking their band Respire here since Respire started. I also booked their old band Foxmoulder here for over a decade when that band was active. We’ve played shows with Respire in Toronto. We also aren’t the most obvious New Friends band as far as being in the heavy, screamo sort of orbit but it was a thing that I always wanted to do. Every year there was always an Awakebutstillinbed or sort of an outlier where I was like, “Yeah, I could see us being that outlier someday”. I wanted it to happen organically, in a perfect world wanting them to approach us and not me knocking on their door. It also happened that we were on that Pinegrove tour during the 2022 edition so even if we had been approached that year, we wouldn’t have been available. Then of course, the previous two editions didn’t happen because of the pandemic. Last summer was so perfect because we didn’t have any other tours. We played Pouzza which is a hometown show and we flew out to Calgary to play Sled Island, but we didn’t have any routed tours. That summer we’d play Ottawa and come back one night or we’d play some shows in Quebec. It was all of these weekend things so it worked out perfectly with our schedules and stuff and it was perfect to be able to go to Toronto for that weekend.

It was a blast! I had never been either. I wasn’t able to make it out to the ones pre-pandemic but I went all three days. I’m a big heavy music person in general and a big screamo person. There’s a lot of stuff that I really wanted to see that I would’ve never otherwise gotten to see. A lot of those bands don’t come through Montreal. Also, I think it was a really cool edition because Joie De Vivre and Stay Inside also played, we weren’t the only outlier. Especially on the Saturday we played it felt like there were at least three bands that weren’t heavy. Joie De Vivre is a huge influence for us. They’re one of the first bands that Vince and I bonded over twelve years ago when we started the band. They’re super inactive. I’m a promoter and I book shows and we got really lucky in the early, early days of our band to play with Prawn and You Blew It and Algernon and Everyone Everywhere. I booked all those bands in that scene that we got to play with but Joie De Vivre never made it. It was one of the few bands in that revival era that we never got to see. I think we were all very excited to see them and play with them. I’m obsessed with this band Boneflower and I got to become pretty good friends with them. Same with this band Young Mountain from Sweden. That’s sort of what I live for, hanging out with all these bands by the pool and getting to know them and telling them how much I love their bands. It was really fun!

Pouzza was awesome too. The lineup of the day we played was really awesome. We got to play with Chastity and Anxious and The Bronx and The Dirty Nil. One Step Closer was supposed to play but I think the drummer got injured. It was this really stacked lineup. I got to hang out with Pet Symmetry and Camp Trash and Retirement Party the day before. I spent the whole day with them and gave them a big ol’ tour of Old Montreal. That was a really fun day. Pouzza’s always a really good time for the same reason that New Friends is. It has all these bands that wouldn’t come to Montreal otherwise. Montreal’s kind of a weird town for a lot of this music but Pouzza unifies a lot of people and brings a lot of people in from out of town who like this kind of music. It’s one of these rare opportunities that we get in Montreal to see a lot of bands in this world. Those were two really, really fun editions. Pouzza for sure I’ll go back to this year because it’s local to me and I’m really hoping to spend the weekend in Toronto for New Friends if I can swing it. Hopefully, I’ll get to experience both again this year as a fan.

How do you feel you’ve grown as a band since you started working on this album?

We’ve been a band for a little over twelve years now and we’ve kinda evolved with every album. We have an anthology - it’s on Spotify now - that’s a collection of a couple of EPs and splits. At that time we were super math rock and had a lot of guitar tapping but we were also really getting into that emo revival stuff that I was talking about before. The second album felt like a deeper dive into that emo revival influence. Dog Bless, feels like us not perfecting that sound but hitting the apex of what we can do with that sound. That self-titled album that we put out in 2020 felt like the first real, thorough attempt at, “This is the band that we are but in the last couple years we’ve really gotten into slowcore and shoegaze and indie rock. How do we incorporate those influences into our band?” That album felt like a transitional record between Dog Bless and Third Wind where I really feel like we hit our stride as a band somehow really successfully combining this math rock thing and this fourth-wave emo thing with all these other broader indie rock influences and nailing that. I see this album as a big accomplishment of really synthesizing these two different influences that we have at this point in our life, at this point in our career as a band, and successfully molding them together. That feels really good, just feeling like we did it. At the risk of sounding self-congratulatory, we made an album that stands on its own and is really unique and is really a product of combining all these really specific influences that we have.

What drew you to incorporating the more shoegaze-y, indie rock elements?

I think in the last five or so years, maybe more, in terms of guitar music I think Joey and Vince listen to that kind of stuff far more than they listen to math rock or emo. It seemed like a pretty obvious path forward for the band. It’s also exciting. I think some bands writing the same record over and over again makes sense but I think if you can pull it off, growing your sound and expanding your sound while at least maintaining some recognizability to your original foundational sound is really exciting and fun. I think it’s kept us all interested in this band. I know that myself and our drummer listen to a lot of math rock and emo still but I think it’s more fun and more interesting to see how far we can push outside of that while still fundamentally maintaining that as the foundation of the band. This album, to me, feels recognizable enough as Gulfer while still flirting with and incorporating all of these sounds. Hopefully, we’re hitting that target smack dab in the middle of both.

It sounds like a natural progression.

That’s really important to me. I don’t wanna suddenly be like, “We’re a shoegaze band now!” and it sounds completely different than anything we’ve ever done before. I feel like because I don’t write any of the music, I can sort of speak to a lot of this from an outside perspective. I’m proud of Vince and Joey for being able to pull off having their cake and eating it too. We’re still doing this band and it still sounds like us but it’s also honouring all of their contemporary influences and inspirations. I think we pulled it off and I’m really proud of them for writing such a cool record.

Some of the songs, like “Clean”, you’ve been playing live for about three years now. Which song has changed the most during that time?

Like I was saying before, Vince and Joey write the songs and they come to us with a very finished product but I know that “Clean”, for example, didn’t have the outro at the beginning. The song stops for a second and comes in with this really anthemic, shouty outro where the verse is repeated in this slightly heavier way. The song just ended there. I know that “Clean” is Joey’s song but Vince came in and added that outro and added that chord progression and those melodies. That’s definitely one that mutated from its original state.

Another really interesting accidental mutation is “Too Slow” because we totally forgot to record it in the studio. We just forgot about the song. Then it was too late because we had already recorded all of the drum and bass parts. To go back and rent a studio and set everything up to record literally sixty seconds of music was something that we couldn’t justify so all the drums you hear on that song are computer drums, our drummer didn’t record any of that. And I didn’t record any of the bass. [laughs] Vince recorded all the bass parts. I sort of just got sent a finished version of that song. We had practiced it as a band a bunch but we just forgot to record it somehow which is funny because it’s the lead single of the album. That’s a funny song that definitely is non-traditional in a bunch of other ways too because it has this electronic outro and stuff that’s obviously unlike most of our songs. That’s a funny, weird story of this accident that created this unusual outcome.

There’s another one that we did really change more as a band. It’s the song called “Motive”, it’s the seventh song on the album. That had a whole different ending. We went up to just north of Ottawa to Joey’s cottage for a couple days and just worked on the album. I remember spending a lot of time deconstructing the second half of that song as a band and really rearranging and retooling it and remembering that I loved the way it was. When you change a thing it’s hard to get used to the new part. I was like, “Ah, is this new part better?” but now, I’m really happy we did it. That’s probably my favourite song on the album. I love what we did with rearranging the second half. That’s a great example of one that changed quite a bit from even when we first built it as a band.

“Heartshape” opens with a sample from an old movie or TV show. Where is that from?

That’s a really good question! I think Vince found it on YouTube. He told me this story but I’m very not involved in this process so I don’t know the details, but I think he just searched for an old 40s movie or something and ripped it off YouTube. I remember asking him about it and I remember us talking about it but I don’t remember exactly what the movie was or what inspired him to search specifically for that type of movie. Broadly speaking, I think we wanted to sequence the album in an interesting way so it’s not just song, four seconds of silence, song, four seconds of silence. We wanted the album to flow with intros and outros and little tidbits. I love listening to an album that feels like, “It’s so cool how this band linked these two songs! It’s cool how this band put thought into the sequencing and the flow and the vibe of the album”. I think that was the intention behind doing that but I don’t know the specific details beyond that.

All the transitions are so smooth.

Awesome! wasn’t super involved in that process so I kind of heard it for the first time the way you would. I know the songs obviously, but Vince and Joey did all of those transitions. It was one of those things where you’re so used to the songs but you’re not used to these little intros and outros. It’s great to hear that to outside ears it flows well. Now, having listened to the album a bunch, I think it’s awesome but there were those first two times that I listened to it where I was like, “Is this too much? Does this work?” just because I was so not used to it.

On “Too Slow” you talk about feeling burnt out and the pressure that comes with that feeling. What do you do when you’re feeling burnt out? What helps you to recharge?

That’s a really good question. I feel like there were many years of my life where I would say, “Take it easy and sit on the couch and watch TV” but these days it’s kind of the opposite. I feel like when I’m feeling that way it’s better for me to go to yoga or clean the house or do some kind of activity like go for a walk or be outside. I feel like feeling accomplished and feeling physically engaged has been really important to me these days. Getting a refresh and mental clarity and physical revitalization rather than just rotting away on the couch or staying in bed or whatever.

In the video for that song, you’re playing outside around art installations in below-freezing temperatures. How did you decide where to film?

It’s an area around where Julien and Vince live in Montreal. It’s near this big circus school called La TOHU. For them, it was convenient because it wasn’t too far from their house so that was a factor for them. [laughs] But also there’s all these funky art installations in this park, all those orbs that you see us playing around and Joey’s standing on one of them at one point. It’s such a cool park and it’s so unique. It’s public space in theory as long as the cops don’t come and kick us out, hopefully, we don’t get a noise complaint or whatever it is. We don’t need to rent this cool space to film so we just showed up, set up, and started filming. There are all these free, cool public settings that are here. There were some crazy moments. For one of the scenes our generator ran out and we somehow found a power outlet in a city building in the park. We had shot some promo photos for the last album there. I think it’s a fun little park and part of town where there’s all these cool backdrops. We were like, “Let’s use this for the set of the video because there’s so much here and they’re cool and they’re free”.

Like you said, it was below freezing and we maybe waded too deep into the fall. If we had’ve done it two or three weeks earlier that would’ve been awesome. The day after we filmed there was this super icy rain-snow that would’ve been impossible to film in. Had we done it a single day later, we wouldn’t have been able to do it at all so we did get really lucky. It was a fun but very uncomfortable eight hours. My feet were really not in a good place. I definitely sat in the car a lot while other people did stuff. [laughs] I kinda felt bad and guilty for it. There was a moment where Vince was driving his car and the director Jordano and Joey were in the trunk filming the runner. We had to unload everything out of the car to make room for it so me and Julien sat with all of our instruments and all of this camera gear sprawling out on the sidewalk for like an hour. We were pacing back and forth trying to stay warm. If we ever do anything like that again, I’m getting those foot-warmer things that you put in your shoes. I had them randomly for my hands. I thought my shoes would be better than they were with the cold but now I know. Big lesson, if I’m ever outside in the winter for more than 30 minutes, I’m going to be wearing those foot warmers.

It was super fun and we’re super proud of the video. We were actually supposed to release “Heartshape” as the lead single but we were so excited about this video that we switched it at the very last minute so this video could be the lead video for the album. I’m really proud of it and proud that it got a really cool reception.

You recently announced your album launch show which will be on April 6 in Montreal. What are you looking forward to the most about this show?

We practiced for the first time the other day because we’ve been really busy in the studio working on some singles and split stuff that I mentioned before so we haven’t really been practicing much. We were like, “Dang, we should probably start getting ready for the show!” We played “Motive” and “No Brainer” and “Drainer” and “Prove” for the first time in years, probably since we rehearsed those songs to make the album. I’m really excited to play these songs live for the first time ever. “No Brainer” and “Heartshape” we played a little bit on tour but there’s certain ones like “Prove” and “Drainer” and “Motive” that we’ve never played live before. “Motive” is my favourite song on the album and I was so happy at band practice to play that song. I was having the best time. I’m definitely really looking forward to playing songs we’ve never played before for the first time.

We have another show in a pretty small town in Quebec called Saint-Hyacinthe a couple weeks before so that’ll be the first time we actually play those songs but I’m counting on Montreal, no offense Saint-Hyacinthe. Hopefully a bunch of friends and family and people who know the band will be there. I also think it’s cool that it’s a solid six weeks or so after the album comes out so hopefully people can spend a little bit of time with the album and know the songs more than if the release show was on the day that the album came out. No matter what the attendance is, I’m really excited to play those songs live. That’s going to be really special for me.

How would you describe the music scene in Montreal?

The music scene broadly in Montreal is amazing. I think some genres have stronger scenes than other genres. Montreal is awesome. There’s a lot of really cool places to play and we get a lot of cool touring bands coming through. I think that question is predicated on the kind of music you make and the kind of music you like. There are certain scenes here that are really really strong and I think there’s definitely a scene for everything. I really think for what we do, it ebbs and flows. We’ve been a band for twelve years and I’ve definitely seen periods where the scene is super strong and shows are awesome along with periods where there aren’t as many bands that sound like us and there aren’t as many shows in the genre of music that we play. It’s not just a Montreal thing, for example, hardcore is popping off everywhere so the local hardcore scene is popping off here. I know there have been lulls in the local hardcore scene as well. I think it also has to do with if the genre of music you’re into is popping off globally in general. I do feel like compared to something like hardcore, emo specifically has less of a scene that mobilizes around it, at least here. Of course, there are exceptions like in Philly or even in Toronto with what New Friends are doing, obviously more for screamo but they’re fostering a little bit more of a sense of community around it.

I’m 33 years old and even though I play in this band and book shows for a living, I’m booking shows for a professional organization and I don’t do nearly as much DIY stuff as I did ten years ago. I definitely feel less involved. Ten years ago I ran a house venue and was booking all these DIY bands and I’m not doing any of that anymore. It’s harder to feel connected to the local scene at least compared to how it was five or ten or fifteen years ago for me. All things considered, there’s a super strong scene in general.

Would you go back to doing more DIY stuff or is that in the past?

I think that’s in the past for me. I loved it. It’s easier to do that stuff in a collective or as a young person with less responsibility in their lives or whatever. [laughs] Also at the time I happened to live in a house that could host shows. That’s pretty important to have the space for it. I think another thing that’s made DIY more difficult is how expensive everything is now. When I would book a band like You Blew It - that band sticks out to me because that show was seven dollars. You can’t do anything for seven dollars for a touring band from Florida. I think it was a lot easier to do DIY stuff back then because you could throw a seven-dollar show or a ten-dollar show and it went a lot further. I think it was totally cool and normal for a touring band to get $150 and that was expected. I would feel bad paying a touring band $150 now. I also do booking as a day job and that’s kind of enough stress and pressure for me. [laughs] To take on more outside of my 10-5 is pretty unfathomable. Whereas then I wasn’t doing this as a day job so I think that’s a big part of it too.

There’s a whole new generation of people who do awesome DIY shows in Montreal. There’s no shortage of people carrying the torch along. At least there’s that. I think post-pandemic it’s stronger than ever. It’s just different. Maybe it’s other genres of music that are being showcased, maybe more on the heavy side or more on the indie rock side. I was definitely feeling a very specific void of fourth-wave emo that no one has really fully carried the torch for me. I also feel a little bit more out of touch with that scene than I did in my early 20s. Through my job, I’m trying to do what I can. I’m doing that Arm’s Length, Carly Cosgrove, Ben Quad tour, and doing that Oso Oso tour. I’m trying through my job to bring cool stuff to town when I can as a little treat for myself when appropriate.

It’s always good to find those opportunities.

Yeah. I want this stuff to come through the city but I also want the shows to be well attended. So it’s all about being strategic like, “Maybe I’ll roll the dice on this. Maybe I won’t roll the dice on this”. Montreal’s also geographically an interesting place because it’s not really on the way to anything. If you’re in Boston, you can just cut through to Rochester; you don’t need to come up to Montreal to get to the next place. I think for a lot of bands there’s a lot of factors to consider like crossing a border and getting taxed and our currency is not super strong right now. If Montreal is not already popping off for these kinds of shows it can definitely be a dice roll and a detour for bands. Whereas Toronto feels a little bit more central and also feels like stuff does so much better there for a bunch of reasons. It’s a bigger city. I think a lot of people in Montreal in our broader age range just listen to French music. They aren’t familiar with music outside of Quebec as much. Tastes are very different here, there’s a lot of people from France who live here who listen to their own type of music. It’s a really unique place and sometimes it’s hard to make things work here that would work in other places like Toronto.

Toronto’s usually the only Canadian date on a tour.

It has more of a proven track record, it’s bigger and I think there’s more money. [laughs] There’s more people who go to shows. It doesn’t surprise me that a lot of tours just get Toronto and that’s it. All that said, we have stuff like Pouzza and a bunch of things going on here that I’m super grateful to have. In the grand scheme of things I think we’re very blessed and very privileged, and have a lot of cool stuff going on here.

All of the members of the band really enjoy cooking. If you had to describe Gulfer as a dish, what would it be?

The first thing that comes to mind, which is funny because I’m vegan, is fried chicken. So it would be fried chicken where one plate is vegan and one plate is chicken chicken. Two dishes of fried chicken, one for me and one for the other three guys. Fried chicken is almost a meme in our band. Julien is always either cooking it or telling us how he made fried chicken or we get it on tour. We were on tour in Calgary for Sled Island last year so we rented a car and went to Banff and the first thing that they did when we parked the car was go to Popeye’s. They freaked out that there was a Popeye’s because we don’t have them in Quebec. The first food thing I think of when I think of this band is fried chicken and Popeye’s specifically. [laughs] They love their fried chicken but I love vegan fried chicken too. I love vegan fried chicken. Not that I get it or find it that often but there is some banging vegan fried chicken in Montreal and elsewhere. I’m fully on board with that answer.

What does the future hold for Gulfer?

We just started recording five new songs. I did vocals recently so they should be done in the spring. We haven’t really strategized how we wanna release them. One thing we’ve learned or noticed is in the modern age of Spotify it’s really strategic to keep the algorithm happy and at least for us, singles have proven to stream really well and get on playlists well. As a band who doesn’t really tour much, or at all, just to have a presence as a band on social media in between albums and have a steady flow of singles is important. We got to do that split with Charmer in 2021 and I think that was really good for introducing us to maybe a slightly younger crowd. I think we’ll just slowly drop the five songs. It’s funny because in between this album and the last one, we also had five songs - two singles, two came out as a double single, and one of them came out on that Charmer split. Maybe we’ll do something similar to that to tide us over. Who knows what the long-term plan is - maybe a fifth album? I have no idea what that will look like. I know we have these five songs and I don’t know what we’ll do after that. There is a split with a band that I’m extremely excited about that I really hope happens that we’ve been talking about on and off for a while now. They’re also busy and they have all kinds of stuff on their plate. It sort of seems like the stars have to align for both of us. I’m really optimistic that this split will come out. We might be inviting other bands and maybe do a four-way. We’re not in a rush because we have this album and we have a grip of songs. I think in the worst-case scenario we go in and record another song. We have no shortage of songs. Vince and Joey are super prolific songwriting people. I think our main goal as a band is to write and record as much as possible.

God willing, fingers crossed that split materializes but I’m pretty confident that we’ll have at least one new song out by the end of 2024 if not two. We’ll put this album out, let its cycle happen, maybe tour it in Quebec and Ontario and maybe the East Coast over the summer, and in the fall-winter zone put out a song if not two. Unfortunately, we’re not much of a touring band and also visas to get into the States are really crazy and expensive and complicated. We have no real plans to go anywhere outside of Canada. If it’s meant to be, we'll hit some places we haven’t played in the Quebec area or maybe, maybe, maybe in the Maritimes. Definitely, a couple of shows to be announced for the summer.

Is there anything I didn’t ask that you’d like to add?

We made a really fun music video for “Heartshape” with a bunch of tour footage. Vince went to our Instagram archives and took a bunch of videos from people who tagged us playing live and put them all next to each other. You can see the person’s Instagram handle. It’s a really silly DIY video that was really fun and nostalgic. Besides “Motive”, “Heartshape” is probably my favourite song on the album. I’m excited for the album to come out!