Miracle Fortress

Graham Van Pelt wants to challenge his listeners

I’ve always felt bad for athletes who win their respective league’s Rookie of the Year award. Winning something that prestigious right out of the gate invariably creates lofty expectations, a mark against which future exploits will inevitably be measured. After all, a Sophomore Slump only exists if we reward outstanding rooks; disappointments are only disappointments if high expectations aren’t met.

(This also works for actors. Take Timothy Hutton, for example. Best Supporting Actor in 1980, nothing of consequence since.)

Which brings me to Graham Van Pelt, and his (mostly) solo project Miracle Fortress.

If the Canadian indie music scene handed out hardware like sports leagues do, Miracle Fortress’s 2007 debut, Five Roses, would have won the ROY hands down. Released by in May 2007 by Montreal’s Secret City Records, it was a critical darling qua critical darling, getting licensed by Rough Trade for European distribution and making the Polaris Music Prize shortlist in the process (it ended up getting bested by Patrick Watson’s Close to Paradise).

Late last month, the second full-length Miracle Fortress record dropped. Titled Was I the Wave?, it isn’t an out-and-out departure from Five Roses, and yet it seems only a distant relative of that release. More electronic, for sure, and more isolating, perhaps, Was I the Wave? achieves something pretty neat over its 39 minutes and change: It manages to be simultaneously more accessible and more complicated than its forerunner.

“I'd say that because the record was made over a longer period it might have included more of a variety of my traits,” says Van Pelt, regarding this observation. “I do aim for accessibility, usually, to the extent that I'd like the music to be understood to an extent. It's probably subjective as to which record is more easily accessed by any individual.”

It’s commendable, I think, that Van Pelt approached the second Miracle Fortress long-player the way he did. I mean, think about it. He could have, as many artists do, regurgitated some ideas from Five Roses (and/or, possibly, the Watery Grave EP) in, say, 2008 or 2009 and had another crowd pleaser on his hands. But he didn’t, choosing instead to go back to the lab.

This, mind you, wasn’t in an effort to create something to appeal to new fans, or people that didn’t like Five Roses. Far from. “I prefer to seek out the same listeners and challenge them with a new or expanded aspect of my work,” he explains. “I'm motivated by change and by the additional depth that time can add to a project. ‘Striking while the iron's hot’ with a repeated sound or idea doesn't appeal to artists thinking about working for a long time on developing talents and ideas, in my opinion.”

Miracle Fortress plays @ The Torn Curtain on May 20th at 9 pm