Purveyors of: Existential pop for the soul.
File next to: Dirty Projectors, Caribou, Feist.
Playing: Wavelength New Year’s Eve at Markham House City Building Lab. Get tickets here!

Delta Will have been an ever-steady presence in the Toronto indie music scene over the last three years, quietly blowing the populace away one by one with their imaginative, virtuosic, and uncategorizable electro/soul/pop. Evolving out of frontman Charles Tilden’s previous, more folk-rock-inclined project Parks and Rec, Delta Will greeted the world with two solid EPs in 2013, but they’re set to step things up with the imminent release of their debut full-length album, Weathering, in 2016. Wavelength co-founder Jonny Dovercourt caught up with Charles via electronic mail in advance of their set at Wavelength’s New Year’s Eve party.

So, the last time we spoke, you were feverishly arranging a three-song set of Caribou covers to perform at Wavelength 15 last February. Were you happy with how the performance turned out?

We were! We had a blast on stage that night and I think the energy came through. It was challenging material to cover but with Sean Dunal backing us on drums that night, the dancy flow was undeniable. It was so much fun in fact that we might bring one of those songs back for our New Year's set.

Nice! So now, a year later, you're set to drop your first full-length. Did learning the Caribou material contribute to the creative growth of the record at all?

Maybe. I would say Caribou is one of many many in a constellation of artists that probably influenced this record's sound. I didn't write the songs making a conscious effort to sound like this or that, though making this record as a band has definitely resulted in a much more dynamic sound than on the first two EPs.

So in addition to really coalescing as a group, what other events or happenstance influenced the way this group of songs developed?

Well, the songs were written over the span of a few years (along with many others that didn't make the cut). Once I started thinking of these 11 songs as a collection, I noticed how many of them were about my worst fears — either succumbing to them, or fighting them while in search for hope: climate calamity, the prevalence of mental illness, loss of free speech… all these apocalyptic thoughts. Around the time I realized this, the band had recorded the bedtracks for the album already, and I now had the tracks back at my home studio, where we overdubbed parts off-and-on for another few months. From that point on, I made a more conscious effort to layer the record in a way that matched the uneasy, dark vibe of the songs. Brandon added lots of beautiful / spooky synth layers to the album, which I think capture that optimistic / worried vibe quite well.

That's funny, because based on my first few listens, I picked up on more of the "optimistic" than the "worried." Then again, I'm the kind of weirdo who finds Joy Division and The Walking Dead "uplifting." (And it also takes me five listens to a record to hear lyrics at all.) Do you find there's something strangely comforting in facing your fears head on?

There are definitely more hopeful moments! But ya, lyrically these are hands down the darkest Delta Will songs yet. And it does feel good to get that out. It can be hard to bring up real downer topics. When you're just hanging out with friends, you don't necessarily want to kill the mood and spend your hang-time moping about the terrible state of the world. But I think these songs deal with fears — real and imagined — that most of us deal with, and I'd rather address them than have them keep haunting me quietly.

I know what you mean. I think that's one of the reasons I never became much more than an armchair environmentalist — to spare myself the mental health risk of becoming a proper activist. That said, we seem to be in a moment of positive upswing in terms of global issues. Do you feel optimistic about the Paris agreement and our shiny new P.M.?

Let's say I feel cautiously optimistic. There's much hopeful banter going around, and that's nice, but much of the change that needs to occur will require deep institutional shifts, and I don't see those happening yet. Seems like we're in an early stage of societal transformation, where people in large numbers are voicing how fed up they are, and governments are only starting to listen up. Time will tell if we have a Justin "the game changer" Trudeau on our hands.

Does it feel strange, then, to balance your cautious optimism about the state of the world with getting ready to promote an album that includes song titles like "Are We Gonna Make It?" Also, is there also any significance to the new album's title, Weathering?

I think it feels just about right, because the fears are still there. They still need to be tamed on the regular. I like the double-meaning of weathering — it's both the wearing down of the earth by the elements over time, and it also implies making it through a difficult event (e.g. weathering a storm).

Back to fun-time logistics: what do you have planned in terms of bringing Weathering into the world?

The exact details are top secret, but I can tell you that we're working on an immersive live experience that plays on the record's dual themes of hope and fear. The album will drop early in the new year and we're going to tour a whole bunch throughout 2016.

Can’t wait! Okay, let’s wrap it up with a Lightning Round!

Dream concert line-up (to play)?
Delta Will, Mac Demarco, Hiatus Kaiyote, Four Tet DJ set.

Dream concert line-up (to watch)?
Son House, The Beatles (1968), Panda Bear, Radiohead.

Walk or bike?
Bike.

Star Wars or Empire?
Empire.

Mustard or mayo?
I want to claim "false dichotomy!" But in a pinch I'll have to say mustard.

— Interview by Jonny Dovercourt.