Q&A: Afternoon Bike Ride Refuse to Be Defined on New Album ‘Glossover’
IN LIFE CONTRADICTIONS ARE INEVITABLE — Even the hardest moments are often accompanied by some aspect of light or laughter. These are the moments that Canadian trio Afternoon Bike Ride explore on their new album, Glossover. The LP refuses to be confined to a single feeling, genre, or sound. Instead it moves and contorts throughout, meeting these contradictions head-on. Electronic tracks are accompanied by acoustic guitar, heavy lyrics combine with upbeat melodies, and quiet moments are often met with those equally loud.
Glossover covers lead singer-songwriter, Lia Kurihara’s, journey while caregiving for her father, Tom, after his Alzheimer's diagnosis. Tom introduced Kurihara to guitar, taught her how to play and read tabs; his presence during the creation of the album is felt throughout.
This is again where the contradictions lie. “Something like this is such a cocktail of emotions,” Kurihara described. “I'm not always sad, then I’m not always happy, and I’m just allowing that to be.”
Following the album release, the band, composed of Kurihara, David Tanton, and Éloi Le Blanc-Ringuette, will embark on their first tour in March, playing five dates beginning in New York and progressing across Canada. The group has only ever played a total of two live shows, and while they are nervous they’re equally as excited to finally be performing the music they worked on for so long.
Luna got the chance to sit down with Afternoon Bike Ride for a conversation about the new record. Read their thoughts down below.
LUNA: Congratulations on the album release! How does it feel to finally be releasing the record?
KURIHARA: It feels good. It’s been almost a year since we finished it, so we’re stoked to have it coming out.
LUNA: Wow, so when did you guys start working on it?
Le Blanc-Ringuette: We worked on it for a while last February, and then we left for a cabin. We went up there and had, like, 30 demos, hoping to finish it.
TANTON: Which we did! But there are some demos for this album that are three and a half years old now.
Le Blanc-Ringuette: We kept coming back to them because we loved them.
LUNA: What is the group’s typical process then? Do you guys usually start with the music and then find the lyrics, or do you find the lyrics based on the demos and the music that you are working on?
KURIHARA: It really depends. Sometimes the guys make an instrumental and then I'll write on top of it. Other times I'll have a conceptual idea lyrically and I'll flesh it out just on my guitar and come to the guys with an acoustic demo. A couple of the songs came about live on the spot, like “Not Ideal,” for example. Our friend Jen came to the cabin with us and we just spent a day starting that song from scratch. We all contributed to the lyrics because I was reaching a bit of a writer's block. So it was kind of like a little group writing session for those lyrics, which was nice.
LUNA: You can really hear that collaboration of different styles on the record on the tracks that move from acoustic to more produced and back out. It gives the album almost a storybook quality, especially with the ambient tracks at the beginning, middle, and end.
KURIHARA: Because the album is an ode to all of the genres we admire, we’re not married to one particular genre on the album. We wanted it to feature as diverse of a sound as possible.
Le Blanc-Ringuette: Yeah, I'm a huge fan of ambient music. Especially with the pandemic, I've been listening to it a lot. I had a demo that was just synths and ambients that I sent to David, who added guitar. Then we felt like it didn’t need lyrics. With this album it's nice to have a little breather just to feel the emotions.
TANTON: I think we all just love how easy it is to marry very natural sounds with very electronic sounds and have it all feel human. Because right now, with the advent of all sorts of production techniques and microphones and all this tech, everything can have a very inhuman quality quite easily.
LUNA: Speaking of the human quality of the record, the lyrics deal with heavy topics without ever feeling tragic. That ebb and flow comes back there. Was that intentional?
KURIHARA: I guess it's not really written out in the record, but what I've learned over the past year is that everything should be approached with meaning and purpose but also with lightness. Knowing that at the end of the day, there is no failing — it's just you're making your way through life, and there's gonna be mistakes. Everything comes in that package, and if every experience can be looked at through that lens and if you can find comfort and stability in instability, then you can reduce your suffering.
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