Lost Weekend is a young, up and coming elctro-pop band from Winnipeg, Canada. With music based heavily on 80’s new wave and 90’s alt influence the band is pumping out some seriously catchy tunes. I had they chance to talk to singer/guitarist Matt Worobec in early March as Lost Weekend was about to venture out on a US tour that ended in the ever famous SXSW Festival in Austin, TX.
I’ve listened to the songs you guys have on your Bandcamp, “Let Me In,” and “Cool Kids.” They’re both real fun and catchy, I like them a lot. For someone who hasn’t listened to you yet, how would describe the sound you guys are going for?
Umm, what are we going for? We’re going for, well we tend to write upbeat, generally upbeat music with an electronic bend to it. We really like synthesizers and I really try to write lyrics that are personal and that aren’t too gloomy cause I think that people have enough of that in their everyday lives. There was a while there that I tried to write as dark of music as I possibly could but it came to a point where I was like, ‘Hey you know what? That’s not what people want to listen to.’ And that’s not what I want to listen to mainly. So why would I want to write music like that? So yeah, we definitely love dance music, electronic dance music and also just like funk based stuff. So we definitely have a lot of umm, groove based songs.
It defintintely comes across in what you guys are doing. Let me ask you, with the synth and stuff, did you start off with that sound? Or did it progress into a more synth-y, dance based music?
Well, myself and Zack Atel, he’s the keyboard player. He and I have been writing together for a bit now and he’s just a great musician all around. So he can play piano and all sorts of other things so sometimes we write as an acoustic guitar and piano duo. And then sometimes we’ll have a groove or a cool sound and we’ll build a song around that and so it just happens organically that way.
Awesome.
Or as organic as synths can be. Yeah, it’s generally just a vibe thing and we go with that. It turns out that it’s electronic.
Who would you say are some of your influences in that style of music?
In that style? I’m a really big fan of The Gorrilaz. They’re fantastic, I think David Albourn is one of my favorite writers and artists in general. He is someone I am just really amazed by. Who else? Umm.
What about just biggest influences in general?
I would say Radiohead has had a huge impact in what we do musically. Umm we try kinda strive to not do, or although we have an accessible sound we try to do something left of center if we can. I’m a big fan of Outkast. There’s a guy out of Canada called Collegiate… Yeah, of all over the map as far as inspirations. I would say that our biggest inspiration is just being from Winnipeg it tends to get really cold here and very snowy and sometimes you’re kinda stuck in your house or your apartment. A lot of the kids here entertain themselves by playing music and they get to be really good at their instruments. Maybe not in our case but in general they become pretty darn good and they end up leaving the providence. And a lot of people are surprised at how talented people are from this side of the country.
We have a few of our staff based out of Canada but they are a little ways out from Winnipeg. I was actually gonna ask about the music scene in Winnipeg, what is it like?
It’s really strong. I am not sure how it really works in Salt Lake but it’s kinda funny, you could show up to a venue and listen to Hip-hop, the next band will be Punk Rock and then the next band will be like a DJ / electronic act. The population here is just over 700,000. We have a lot of clubs to play at but there’s like a huge mixture of artists combining their audience and shows. You could really catch a bunch of music in one night.
I was reading last night that Lost Weekend will be releasing an EP in March is that correct?
It’s actually April 30th we’re releasing our EP.
What was the writing process for that like?
We have a rehearsal space/studio that we have in Downtown Winnipeg here. Zack and I had about 20 different kind of beats, for lack of a better term. We settled on 3 tracks that we thought were quite happy with. Then we went down to Los Angeles and recorded with Zach Heiligman who works with Foster The People and actually played in the band for a while. We did some tracks in December of last year, 2012. We did some writing there as well. We ended up getting the songs mixed by some pretty cool guys who were really into the project. So it’s kind of been a bit of a stretch of a process but it’s also kind of let us focus where our aimed for the next couple months as far as song writing. We have a pile more of songs coming. And for our live show …We have a whole 12 song set list full of songs we haven’t recorded yet.
I noticed that last year you played at SXSW and at the end of this tour you’re swinging back through there. Are there any bands that you are looking forward to or planning on seeing there?
Uh yeah, there’s a couple acts that we’re looking forward to. It’s kind of funny actually, we don’t get to go watch bands that often in Winnipeg. And there’s a couple Winnipeg acts there …And we’ll get to go see them play. There’s an all A capella group with kind of funk twist, called Chic Gamine and they are amazing live. They are a mix of all vocals plus drummer. It’s really cool…
I apologize, I guess I should have asked this first. How was your experience at SXSW last year?
It’s chaotic, it’s pretty funny, like you show up with these big ideas of how you’re gonna get around. You know, taxis will be available and all this but you end up waiting for taxis for 2 hours, you have to find the right hotel location. Everybody is just out on the street too, it’s pretty amazing. You just walk on 6th Street, 6th or 3rd, I’ll have to check that I don’t remember, every two store fronts there is a new bar with live music playing. It’s pretty incredible. And amazing BBQ there too! It was a really great time there last year and we’re looking forward to playing there again.
So what type of crowds do you normally tend to draw at a show? Do you get a dancy or laid back crowd? Or a mix thereof?
We get a mixture of people that are wanting to move and dance, but we also have a lot of people who umm, it’s actually funny how different cities react to us. There is the arms crossed effect where they just stand there and just watch. Then there is the people who wanna just move and dance cause we definitely have a set where visually we have lights where its visually appealing as well…
After the tour wraps up, what’s next in store for Lost Weekend? You guys looking at recording a full length?
Yeah, we are looking at getting back into the studio as soon as we get back. We might do some stuff in Winnipeg, we might end up going down to Los Angeles again. We are talking to some producers right now. It looks we’re wanting to have a full length out by the end of Fall. Yeah, then hopefully we’ll be back down in the States as soon as possible…
Be sure to get your copy of Lost Weekend’s soon to be released EP (Which you can pre-stream on their Bandcamp page here.)