Illustrious pop-twisting duo Fur Trade – the ambitious collaboration between four-time JUNO nominee Steve Bays and Parker Bossley – are excited to share their new LP Dark Celebration, a ten-song tell-all of happiness and heartbreak, out now via their new label home, Light Organ Records. Alongside the new LP, the duo shares a new video for the French-disco-inspired “Monaco,” an infectious tune that breezily sails through topics of escapism, love nostalgia, writer’s block, and DIY haircuts. “Monaco” joins the previously shared singles “Signature Moves,” indie-sleaze glam rock “LOL Trash,” and “Make it to the Morning,” on the new record.
The first collaborative full-length effort from the duo in nearly ten years, Dark Celebration is a get-together of shredded neon guitar-monies, gothic organ whirls, tropical disco vibes, and the free-flowing four-on-the-floors of “indie-club tracks with an arty twist”. Tapping into a wellspring of sonic inspiration — think Yellow Magic Orchestra, Dirty Projectors, Yumi Matsutoya, Hall & Oates, and Phoenix — Dark Celebration instantly becomes Fur Trade through signature moves like Bays’ familiar weighty croon, or Bossley’s slinky, bass-forward bump.
“The album traverses through peaks and valleys — a lot of happiness and heartbreak — but it ends with this message of peace: this one’s for when you see the world for what it is and could be,” Bossley explains.
Written while on tour with Canadian supergroup Mounties, the album’s opening “Monaco” was born in Paris.
“We ended up at an after hours disco in some sort of underground bunker,” Bays explains. “Something about seeing the impact of french disco music on everyone in there resonated with us. We were drinking red wine, watching everyone dancing, and imagining the creative sacrifices those musicians and producers had made up front, for the greater good of the audience by keeping the groove and overall energy steady and uplifting from start to finish. It was our ethereal ‘aha’ moment and led to us writing most of ‘Monaco’ that same night.”
“When we were playing songs from the record to friends, every song on the album seemed to generate different reactions except one: ‘Monaco’.” Bays continues. “Within 20 seconds, eyes would light up and their critical brain seemed to shut off as they just enjoyed it. For whatever reason, it just seems to give energy to the listener, in a way we can’t really take credit for.”
“Monaco” finds Bays singing about writer’s block, perhaps speaking to the decade-long gap between Fur Trade’s 2013 self-titled debut and this sophomore follow-up. That’s not to say Bays and Bossley have been out of the game, entirely. Both musicians have spent the in-between times working steadily through various projects (Bays through supergroups Mounties and Left Field Messiah; Bossley with The Gay Nineties; and both as members of the venerated Hot Hot Heat), while also developing their studio chops behind the scenes with the likes of Said the Whale, Steve Aoki, Diplo, Fitz and the Tantrums, Hotel Mira, Sleepy Tom, and more. Occasionally, they’d invite each other onto outside sessions taking place at their respective Tugboat Pl and Jam Florist studios in Vancouver. But as Fur Trade became increasingly backburnered, Bays and Bossley wondered whether this specific creative outlet would forever be limited to “Friday nights with a box of wine.”
“It felt like for most of those ten years, Fur Trade was just a vanity project that might die on a hard drive, sadly,” Bays explains, though Bossley counters this with an optimistic, “For me it was less ‘Is this going to come out?’ but ‘When is this going to come out?’”
Truthfully, you can’t force great art (“The more I think, the less that I create,” Bossley sings poignantly at one point on the album). Though they’d been sitting on versions of an album for the better part of a decade, the turning point came during the all-night creative spurt in 2022 that yielded Dark Celebration’s first single, “LOL Trash.” A playfully sleazy, post-breakup anthem, “LOL Trash” is “about going out on the town and trying to distract yourself by looking for a new person.” While thematically anchored in “dodging self-analysis,” the track became a cathartic breakthrough for Fur Trade, propelling the duo towards crafting a collection hinging on real-life-and-imagined scenarios of existential angst, imploded relationships, wedding day meltdowns, and the feat of living through the pandemic. But sonically, they contrast Dark Celebration’s dourest mindscapes with undeniably surefooted melodies.
“We felt like we were allowed to add all these dark elements, lyrically, because at the end of the day, it’s such a catchy record,” Bays admits.