The real Tea Party is at last seeing the light of day: They’re a trio of warm, sociable people, each with his own healthy sense of humour. The over-amplified darkness that they’re known for is more Tim Burton than Sylvia Plath: Intriguingly normal vs. intriguingly ill.

With their fourth release, TRIPtych, set to hit the stores June 8, and the first single already receiving ample rotation at many a radio station, The Tea Party are hitting the road.

Singer Jeff Martin is warming up his vocal chords and experimenting with traditional Indian stylings – with the help of some red wine and the recorded teachings of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, as he reveals during an interview at Signal 2 Noise studios in Toronto. Drummer Jeff Burrows is aging into melody, he none-too-sarcastically remarks over coffee at Toronto’s Harbourfront. And bassist/keyboardist/ funnyman Stuart Chatwood practices the art of interviewing the interviewer during an inter-provincial phone chat from Montreal.
The following may be shocking to some, but the band members’ responses at times drip with sarcasm and wit, then jump to genuine sincerity – not overwrought gloom.

Who would’ve thought that The Tea Party could shine in the darkness?

If The Tea Party was a voodoo doll, what part of the doll would I have to prick in order to affect you?

Jeff Burrows:The heart. Because I think we take our music very seriously, we take ourselves very seriously and oftentimes far too seriously – in a time where not many bands even take themselves remotely serious[ly]. So we almost overcompensate, and bands – no matter how good or how bad people think they are – you’re always going to get some negative type of press. We take it like a personal blow, as if someone hit your dog and didn’t bother telling you, or something like that. So that would definitely be the heart.

Jeff Martin: I guess I would be the doll’s third eye. Because, you see, nobody knows where the third eye is, so you’d never be able to find it. Thus I have a great defence mechanism.

Stuart Chatwood: The feet. I have very sensitive feet. What did the other guys say?

Martin said the third eye.

Chatwood:The third eye. I better come up with a better one.

Burrows said the heart.

Chatwood:Alright. Uh, I guess I’ll have to go with that, or else it’s premeditated. I should have said the third eye. I’m the one reading up on Buddhism.

TAKING THEMSELVES SERIOUSLY: PERCEPTION VS. REALITY
There’ve been accusations of taking yourselves too seriously in the past; is there now a conscious effort to let people see the lightness, or do you just not care?

Burrows:Well, it’s a double-edged thing, because you’re always caring but you learn to just say… People are going to have an opinion no matter what. You place yourself in that position doing what you do. We’re doing what we do; I mean, we’re lucky enough to be able to do what we’re doing for a living. But then, you have to realize [that] you’re exposing yourself, and you’re placing yourself on public display. If, after awhile, you’re unable to rebound [from] the cheap shots or the personal shots… You know what I’m saying? It’s a double-edged thing. I forget what the question was. I think I answered some of it.

Martin:In the beginning I was insecure, you know: The new band on the scene and all that stuff, and just getting inundated by the critics because of the way I looked. And it was hard, you know. It’s like I had this really big umbrella that I kept walking around with to try to shelter me from all that stuff. But then after a point, I got very, very confident in what I do, and in the band as well. We slowly gained the respect that was deserved. You know, we really go out on a limb musically, more so than any other band in this country… I think we kind of opened up and let people see we’re just three very, very good friends, and we have been for such a long time. And we really do like people. We like being around people. We’re very social. Like that EdgeFest tour we did [1998], we were the ambassadors of decadence at the party, you know, because no one else wanted to. We had to get all these bands together, you know what I mean? Which was weird, too, because then all the other bands sort of thought, “The Tea Party, those guys are assholes. Don’t talk to them.” You know, the whole darkness vibe. Chill out.

Chatwood:We care, but I think it’d be the latter: Conscious effort to say, “Hey, look at me…” We do take our music seriously. There’s bands out there that premeditate it, they purposely show you they’re joking; whereas for us, we believe in what we do, you know? It comes off self-righteous, so if you’ve got a problem with it… [joking]. It’s just, we do believe in what we do, though, musically. Those artists really don’t get poked at as much as we do. There are a lot of bands here who are like, “Are we O.K.? Are we bothering you?” You know? We don’t care what people think.

THE MELODIES, THE SONGS AND THE RADIO
Was the injection of melody a planned step for the music?

Chatwood:I am a more melodic songwriter, myself… When [Jeff Martin was in Paris], he was staying at a bed and breakfast, and a guy came down and recognized him as being a rock star. He said, “I have a guitar upstairs, why don’t you play me a couple of your songs?” Jeff realized, that, you know, “How am I going to play ‘Psychopomp’ on an acoustic guitar?” That’s probably one of the songs that he could have done, but, “Army Ants” or whatever, you know, from our prior album would be very difficult. So Jeff had a goal, from his songwriting perspective, to write songs [that are] a bit more accessible.

Are you more comfortable on one side of the tempo/emotional spectrum than the other?

Burrows:There’s none more comfortable. It’s more fun, for a drummer especially, to be aggressive, and so on and so forth. But you’re always dying to get to that fourth song where it’s slightly ballad-ish, and you can just go, “Goddamn, I’m so tired.” You just relax. But the songwriting genres, it’s whatever moves you. Hard music or heavy music isn’t necessarily loud music. There’s one song on the album called “Gone”; it’s one of the most powerful songs on the album, and it’s just strings and the acoustic guitar, the voice, and that’s it.

Martin:It depends on the intention of the song. The music that this band is capable of making is like an arsenal, an arsenal at our disposal. So depending on where the emotional content has come from, or what you try to project with the song, you can take them anywhere. We have all these ways of impacting with music – which comes with wisdom and age. No, there’s no zone that’s more comfortable than the other. Like, for instance, the song “Gone” on this new record is probably one of my favourite songs [that] we’ve ever done, and it’s like, so gentle. But it’s cool, though. I mean, that’s the one thing that makes me a fan of this band, is that when you put the records on, there’s, like, so many different things going on, but it still manages to make sense that it is one band. You know what I mean? So that’s cool. There’s not a helluva lot of records you can buy nowadays that are like that. You know, that are worth listening to beginning to end. And it’s not really the fault of the bands – well it is, to a certain extent – but record companies now have such a control over what musicians are putting out because the way times have changed. And radio is very, very powerful. It’s all single-driven now. So the record company doesn’t want to hear anymore about bands that want to make “albums.”

Chatwood:Like it’s a dinner, you know? Do you want your appetizers, main course, dessert? You know, I love sitting down when the show’s almost over and playing something [slower] and then finishing off with a bang. I mean, myself, my listening tastes I would say are more mid-tempo, you know, Massive Attack-style beats.
So “Heaven Coming Down” will be the lead-off single. There’s a lot of radio accessibility there.

Martin:I don’t think it will cross the lines [into pop-based radio]. Not unless someone else mixes it, because I play really drum-heavy as a mixer. Even though “Heaven Coming Down” is an extremely melodic song – probably the most melodic that we’ve ever done, in fact – but with Jeff Burrows’ drumming, it still has that primal thing going on with it. It’s, like, “I want my cookies now!” It’s a certain step with those types of songs. When that happens [radio crossover], you would have had to have played the game. It’s, like, a certain producer, a certain mixer, a certain palatable silver spoon type of thing going down, and that’s just not where we come from. It’s all about attitude, baby. Attitude.

Chatwood:Well, here’s an interesting thing; I put up a little site where you can vote. You can check it out yourself if you just go to our site, and you can pick one of five songs. So it’s just funny seeing which ones make it. Part of the problem with… They want to make their job easy, in terms of selling it to the public, so they pick what will be most successful, with one of the more accessible songs.

CRITICIZING THE CRITICS
In the beginning, the band was plagued with critics’ accusations of unoriginality – which became unoriginal unto themselves; an excuse not to listen to the album and figure things out for themselves. Do you feel that this has been surpassed now?

Burrows:Again, that’s a double-edged thing as well. Because I imagine [that] a lot of the reasons; or a lot of the accusations and complaints about the band; or the critics’ critiques of the band; the negative aspects of the band that they were going on about: Jeff sounding like Jim Morrison, or looking like Jim Morrison, and the band sounding like Led Zeppelin – that’s the reason many people were drawn to us in the first place. So, in essence, after awhile we got sick of it. It was just, like, “Chrissake, what are we going to have to do to get over this?” And the band’s sound has always been, like, a very swing-y, rock, not-digital-processed, you know, beat one on beat one… Drumming, especially. I’m a very swing-oriented drummer, so you can’t help sound like Zeppelin. We hated it in the beginning, and then after awhile, it just got up to a point where they’re just re-hashing the same… You know, they’re looking up what they wrote three years ago. You didn’t listen to the album, it has nothing to do with The Doors, or whatever. But that’s part a of history now, because we really don’t get that anymore. Jeff’s in the whole long-hair thing again. So he’s, like, “I don’t care. They want to call me Jim Morrison? Yeah, Jim Morrison.” So, it’s almost, you know, say what you want. It’s really funny, this business. Like, it’s to a point now where it’s almost funny to see what people are going to say about you, because it’s all been said, it’s all been done. They’ve said it about millions of other bands, they’re going to say it about a million other bands to come. It’s just, you know, it’s funny. And you get it everywhere, it’s not just music. Theatre to film to visual art, you’re always going to get people criticizing one person or one director or one company for doing the same thing or re-hashing something, but I mean, everything’s cyclical. The biggest films nowadays are re-hashed Shakespearean novels or plays, you know? You can’t do anything nowadays that is so original that it has never been touched on before. There’s no such thing.

Martin:Well sure, it’s the easy thing. The one thing I can say – I’ll give the critics this much – you’ve got like 10 CDs on your desk and you’ve got to review them. First of all, the music I make, you can’t review it after just listening to it once, or listening to, like, certain songs. Do you know what I mean? I’ll say the band does make music that’s very deep as far as the landscapes, and probably also what I sing about as well. You don’t get it on the first listen. We’re not making pop music, you know, except for a few songs on this record.

Chatwood:So well put. I totally agree with that.

FLATTERY AND SUMMARY
Would you feel flattered or soiled if there was a sudden Pearl Jam/Nirvana sound-alike syndrome in a Tea Party vein?

Burrows:Well, things like that happen, though. You can’t stop it; if it happens, it happens. There are some bands like that, actually. There’s a band called VAST that’s out right now that acknowledges us as an influence, or whatever. It would piss me off if they got really successful [joking]. I wouldn’t care, whatever. It’s just flattering. You know, everybody borrows from everybody. It’s all cyclical. It’s all been said before. So you could read it in another interview, everyone has said it before. It’s cool. It’s flattering. Yes, yes indeed, it’s flattering.

Chatwood:I think it’d be flattering. It also forces you to lead the way, though, and rely on what you were doing before.

Can you sum up the new album in one word, thought or emotion?

Burrows:Right now? I’d have to think about that. I could say something right now and it’d sound really corny. So I don’t know. I’d have to think about that one. We’re very proud of it. I’m very proud of it. And everyone always says – I always find this funny, too – you’re reading about a band and you know they’ve got a new album coming out, and, “This is our best effort yet! Best album, baby. It’s going all the way.” And you know that everybody always says that. I always look at these things going, “Are you a fucking idiot? You said the last one was the best one.” But it is like that for us. So, you know, this is our best [sarcastically]. Actually, this is our worst album so far and it’ll probably do the best. This album is shit. Piece of crap. You know what I mean?

Martin:Passionate. Because, you know, I think that this record is just an extremely passionate rock record. It’s so the anti-fashion.

Chatwood:Reassuring.
To read more stuff about The Tea Party, check out the June issue of CHART Magazine, which features a triple-foldout “triptych” of the band on the cover. To order this issue, head over to This Month In Chart.