Sunday Music Spotlight – Immaculate Machine

Let’s say you’re an average girl in Canada. You grow up, join a band, and start to become relatively successful with your musical career. Then you find out you have this long-lost uncle, and he’s non-other than A.C. Newman of The New Pornographers. When your band shares the stage with John Collins, the The New Pornographers’ bassist, who’s playing with his other band The Evaporators, asks you to join the The New Pornographers. You might think this story is a little too strange to be true, but it’s not. It’s just life for Kathryn Calder, keyboard player and singer for Immaculate Machine.

Immaculate Machine is a three-piece band from Victoria, BC. Guitarist Brooke Gallupe and drummer Luke Kozlowski join Calder in creating catchy melodies, tight vocal harmonies, and overall memorable pop songs. The band’s been playing shows and touring since 2002, but didn’t release their first album until 2004. That debut, Transporter, got into the hands of Mint Records, who picked up the band. They released Ones and Zeroes in 2005. Then things got interesting. Their next album was essentially a French version of Ones and Zeroes, called Les Uns Mais Pas les Autres. This was a little confusing to their English-speaking fans, as the music and vocal arrangements were identical to Ones and Zeroes, but the lyrics were all in French. Strange. But hey, they’re Canadian.

Around that time Calder hooked up with The New Pornographers to help them record Twin Cinema. She played keyboards and sang backup vocals, but on the ensuing tour she got to play a bigger role. She got to sing Neko Case’s parts when Neko couldn’t make it to shows. This led to her getting to sing lead vocals on the band’s latest album, Challengers. Oh, and that story about her being related to A.C. Newman? Goes something like this:

The story is complicated, but he’s my long lost uncle. My mom [who was adopted] applied to find her birth mom , and then Carl’s mom — my mom’s birth mom — [also applied to have the adoption records unsealed.] They found me when I was in my mid-teens. There’s this whole family, six of them, uncles and aunts. We spend Christmas together now, it’s like a hallmark commercial.

Immaculate Machine released their latest album, Fables, last year, and it displayed an evolution of their sound. They added extra instruments to many of the songs, expanding the sonic possibilities beyond just drums, keyboard, and guitar.

“Jarhand”

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This up-tempo rocker opens the album and features Kathryn on vocals. It’s got a great, uber-catchy melody and a beat that’s guaranteed to have you drumming your hands on your desk or steering wheel.

“No Such Thing as the Future”

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This track from the band’s second album, Ones and Zeroes, is a little more raw than the songs on Fables, but it clearly shows what the band is all about. It has the clever melodies and tight vocal harmonies that define their music.

Videos
Official video for “Dear Confessor”

“Broken Ship”

Links
Buy Fables
MySpace
Official Site
Mint Records
Immaculate Machine’s Daytrotter Session