The Neighbourhood Council

BRAIDS, Formerly The Neighbourhood Council is a Canadian experimental indie pop group formed in early 2007 by four high school friends, Katie Lee (keyboards and vocals) , Raphaelle Standell-Preston (vocals and guitar), Taylor Smith (guitar and vocals) and Austin Tufts (drums and vocals). Originally from Calgary, all four members have now graduated from high school and progressively transplanted to Montreal. The quartet made their debut by winning the youth category of the song writing contest at the Calgary Folk Music Festival in 2007 and subsequently recorded two EPs, performing at a handful of public venues since then.

History

The Neighbourhood Council first began rehearsing in January 2007 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada in the garage of guitarist Taylor Smith. At the time the band consisted of five members, Raphaelle Standell-Preston, Katie Lee, Taylor Smith, Austin Tufts and Vincent Man. Man would subsequently leave the band to attend university in September 2007. The current members were best friends at Western Canada High School before they became bandmates.

Most vocals are written by Standell-Preston though vocal duties are shared amongst them. When asked on a number of occasions to define who sang lead and who sang back-up vocals, Standell-Preston and Lee both described the band as a “democracy” where no one person was the lead and all input was valued and incorporated.

Encouraged by parents and classmates, they entered the 2007 Calgary Folk Music Festival and won first place in the youth category of the songwriters contest. Then in June 2007, the band performed to critical acclaim at the inaugural Sled Island Musical Festival in Calgary, Alberta, then again in July at the Calgary Folk Festival itself. The band spent the rest of 2007 and early 2008 rehearsing, fleshing out their sound and recording two EPs , Live at CJSW (composed of four tracks) and Set Pieces (five tracks), both recorded in the studio of the University of Calgary’s radio station, CJSW. Two tracks from the second EP, "Liver and Tan" and "She Brave Soul", are featured on their fansite on MySpace. They gained further notoriety and attention in the Western Canadian Indie music scene when articles were written about them in Swerve, a weekly section of the Calgary Herald, as well as FFWD, a local weekly publication directed at youth, in January and February of 2008. Both publications raved of their maturity of sound, Swerve journalist Mark Hamilton going so far as to say that “the Neighbourhood Council is so young--its four members are barely legal, but they are musically wise well beyond their years” and that “the Neighbourhood Council is also Calgary's most exciting and forward-looking band”. Kenna Burima of FFWD added that “you can’t help but love The Neighbourhood Council”. In July 2008 the music blog stereogum.com also did a feature on the band as an exemplar of the thriving indie music scene in Calgary.

In the “Sounds Like” section of the page, the band has written:

A couple of redbreasts were perched in a tree
and given a stick one day,
one began tapping and the other began laughing
and the two birds
just went on their way .

Present

The band, whose members are still all under the age of 20, is currently working on a third EP in Montreal and say they have no immediate plans to sign with a record label, as they are only starting out and would like to keep their options open. They have two upcoming shows in Montreal and Quebec, performing with Times New Viking and Deerhunter in both venues.