Canadian band Hello Operator

Have you ever noticed how much there is for which we have Canada to thank? They've brought us actors, directors, comedians, and musicians we know and love. America's northernmost country hasn't exactly been slacking off lately, either: enter Hello Operator, a new wave/pop-rock gaining prominence in the States as well as in their home country of Canada. I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Mike Condo and Evan Huson, so as to ask them a couple questions about their music, their fans and how Hello Operator came to be.

How did you start Hello Operator?
MIKE COSTA: I started Hello Operator as a songwriting project. I wanted to experiment with doing new wave rock, and that was about four years ago, and I did some demos and left the band I was in at the time and started doing demos with my brother, who has a recording studio, and then we slowly got other people involved and we started to put a band together and that's when I met Evan. And from then, which was late 2004, it was basically just collaboration with other people and Evan, and we just started writing songs together.

In terms of new wave rock, it's easy to tell from your music where your direction is. Your genre is a type that's gotten really popular lately, although it often gets blander when it's in the mainstream, so has that made getting an audience easier?
EVAN HUSON: In some ways, yeah.
MC: You start to get compared to stuff, though.
EH: Yeah, I'd say that's the only problem. Sometimes it's like, "Oh, you're one of those types of bands," because you have keyboards or—
MC: But the good thing about it is there are more bands like us that we can play shows with and tour with, and there are lots of clubs that have these new rock nights now, where they have DJs and bands play before the DJ set, so that's been really cool, especially in the U.S., where they have some great places, and L.A. has a lot of stuff like Club Moscow and other wicked places for us to play. So that helps, because it caters to a built-in audience and people who like the music we like to play.
EH: It seems like people always want genres. Like, they want a specific slot to be able to put you in, so it makes it easier sometimes, even though—
MC: To just go along with the label, yeah.
EH: Even though we don't necessarily sound like the Killers or the Bravery, or exactly like those bands. But it's easy to say, "Yeah, I sound like that." There's a place for you in the sort of mainstream type of market.

Which can be good or bad, I imagine, because then you both gain an audience but also people who will refuse to listen to your music.
MC: Yeah. Well, I think it's bad if you have bad songs, because bad songs never win. If you have good songs, I think people are always attracted to a good song.

Speaking of your coming to the States a lot… you're a Canadian group. Do you come to the U.S. frequently?
EH: We have been, recently.
MC: Yeah, over the last year, yeah.
EH: We've been here a lot, actually. Say, at least four months out of the year we've spent in the U.S. One third of our year.

So, how is that different, playing to audiences across the U.S. and going across the U.S. as this new wave group?
MC: The audiences aren't very different. I think we get the same type of people out to our shows in Canada and the U.S. I think touring's a lot easier in the U.S.; a lot of major cities are closer to each other, and there's the highway system, and it's not as cold throughout the whole country, the south is pretty warm, so that helps.
EH: I mean, generally Canada and the U.S. are like—
MC: Yeah, it's generally the same people.
EH: Americans like good songs though, that's the thing. Well, Canadians do too, but Canadians like cool factors too. Like, a lot of time they'll get caught up in the scene or aesthetic of a band, whereas Americans—that's why country music is so big here.
MC: Because it's all about the song.
EH: And there isn't that you have to be this kind of cool, whatever—
MC: But I think you get that if you go to any major city. You're going to have hipsters, you're going to have the people who like what's not in, so they don't have to like what's in, and then you have people who just like pop rock albums. Yeah, I think it's very similar.

Are you in New York a lot, or do you spend a lot of time in L.A.?
EH: L.A. more, yeah.
MC: New York's cool, though. We've spent three days here this time, and only a day the last time we were here, so we haven't spent a lot of time in New York…
EH: We spend a lot of time parking.

Oh god, parking's hopeless in New York.
MC: [laughs] Yeah, I think we've noticed that!

Yeah, L.A.'s built for cars, New York's built for pedestrians. Most of the time. Not always!
MC: Yeah. Yeah, a van and trailer make it tough.

But L.A. and New York are both big music cities, so whether or not you're playing a gig it's probably easy to find people who are interested in your music on the spur of the moment. Especially in New York, people will go to concerts after hearing about them at the last minute.
MC: Yeah, like through a paper or a friend or something. Yeah, we've spent a lot of time in L.A. so a following's developed, so people know us there, and we go there a lot, and people come to our shows, and it's pretty fun. In New York, this is only our second time here so I don't think we've been here enough to be established yet. We're working on it!

You develop rapports with your fans?
MC: Yeah, I try to keep in touch.

On your Myspace, you list among your influences Revolver and Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust; how has music like that shaped your sound?
MC: All our influences, our favorite bands, just write solid songs. They sound different from each other; Bowie sounds different from the Beatles, and then the Cars are different, but one thing they share is that they write catchy songs and melodies. There are strong melodies between all of them. So that's what we look for first.
EH: Well, I think all those albums are classic albums that have had a lot to do with shaping music in general.
MC: Yeah, we always find ourselves coming back to those albums and listening to them, and going, "Why'd they do that?" and "Why'd they put that in there?" and "That's an interesting bit. It's cool the way that song builds." We try to learn from it.

How do you develop your music?
MC: Most of the time for me it's the melody and the music, the chord progressions.
EH: Yeah, pretty much. I think we write pretty much the same way.
MC: Yeah, we write separately, and then we show each other ideas along the way and we collaborate and make some magic, and just try to do the best we can. Usually we start over time with gathering ideas and just documenting them quickly, because I find you usually come up with the best ideas when you're not expecting them, when you're just letting everyday life just bring you ideas, so you'll have a tidbit of a melody or something, and you'll remember it and expand on it, and then we'll usually sit down for a while and work on a recording and start putting it together.
EH: Yeah, you have to give the idea time to develop itself.

How do you think your sound has changed and developed since your last album?
EH: I think we've got more rock. We've got different influences, more Radiohead and Nirvana—more rock, definitely. More punky.
MC: Yeah, we've figured out our sound…
EH: Yeah, we sound pretty different.
MC: And… themes? I don't know. It's not as happy or poppy. But the songs are still super pop songs, they're just presented differently.

You also released this album online well before it was released in stores.
MC: Yeah, just to give us time to build it up. We've never really had anything in stores before, so we thought this was a good opportunity to make stuff available while we continue playing, and just let people know we have an album available.
EH: Pretty much, it was done and we wanted people to hear it. It took nothing to put it online, so we just got it out right away while we made sense of everything else, getting stuff into stores and everything, because that takes more time.

Do you try to make a presence online and create a community around that?
MC: Yeah, we're trying to. We have a new website that's sort of a blog-ish kind of site. I know a lot of other bands are doing that, we don't think we're breaking new ground, but it's good to just know the fans. There's a lot of kids where there's a reason they all identify with us, so you have to keep in touch with them and build yourself around that, and then you'll have fans who try to get a little more out of your music—rather than just listening to it once or twice on the radio.


Hopefully, people will do that; Hello Operator is worthy of attention. Their album The Breaks is available in stores, and more information can be found on their MySpace and their website.