The Lovely Feathers 'Hind Hind Legs' album

The Lovely Feathers were born and raised in Montreal, Canada. Together the band witnessed the historic Meech Lake Accord, the 3rd & 4th stages of Quebec Separatism, the infamous ice storm of '98, the decline & subsequent rebirth of the urban economy, and a decade-long turf war between The Hell's Angels and Rock Machines. The Lovely Feathers somehow managed to survive this unfolding of history, yet each member emerged with a unique and radically different sense of reality.

Guitarist/vocalist Richard Yanofsky, who dropped out of medical school to pursue a life of rock music, confesses: "the toughest part about leaving school was that I felt like I betrayed my grandma. She had an inconceivably horrific adolescence; I mean she narrowly escaped the clutches of fascism for godsakes. And nothing would make her happier than to see her grandson enter a stable profession like medicine before she dies. But I had to go and ruin that one and only hope of hers. (Long silence) I've finally accepted that guilt is going to be an inherent part of my existence. But it's alright, I guess, 'cuz I try and channel it into my music." One way of looking at the Lovely Feathers is to regard their musical output as one long obsessive-compulsive neurotic reaction to an eternal guilty trip.

Yanofsky's counterpart, Mark Kupfert, (guitars, vocals) has lived an equally serpentine and arguably even more guilt-ridden life than young Richard's. Since he was a boy, he was plagued by perpetual self-doubt, extreme popularity and severe paranoia-these combined to give way to his typically warped perception of reality and generally unbalanced personality. Kupfert insists he originally conceived of the Lovely Feathers out of his spiritual torment. "My consciousness is split," he says "I feel like I'm half Ancient Greek Hermeneutician and half celebrity-obsessed media slave. I Love the Classics, like Petrach and Cicero, yet I'm also passionate about weekly tabloids." Unfortunately for Mark, the band's music does not reconcile the paradoxes at the center of his being so much as it serves to strengthen them.

Bass player Noah Bernamoff can attest to that-he has been friends with Mark since pre-kindergarten. In high school, they made their first foray into music together when they founded a twee-pop band in Mark's garage before ultimately having an awkward falling out that saw them part ways. Noah was a dazzling hockey player and fled Montreal on a scholarship to play for a prestigious US school "I admit, I remember very little from that time, except for waking up a few years later with a bad headache and a criminal record in the state of New Hampshire."

One evening, deep in the throes of winter '04, the two unexpectedly bumped into each other on a windy street corner in the old port. After a long tense moment they embraced and wept. Mark anxiously exclaimed that he was playing a show in a week and needed a bass player. Noah smiled and thought to himself what a lucky accident. "I quit my horrible park services job, cleared my record in New Hampshire, picked up my bass and followed my old friends towards their death or glory," states Noah matter-of-factly.

And then there is the Brothers Suss, the irreplaceable backbone of the strange ungodly beast, part pterodactyl, part eccentric dream-puppy, which we call The Lovely Feathers. Though they share a mother, the two are more disparate than Cain and Abel. Older brother Daniel is a classically trained concert pianist while younger brother Ted grew to be a blood spitting, grunge drummer, immersed in Montreal's hardcore scene. While Daniel was emerging as an expert on East Asian politics at McGill, learning Chinese and becoming Canada's two-time foreign Mandarin speaking champion, Ted was breaking up bar fights after Expos games and learning to play drums like a meth-addicted cyborg from Night City. That is, until Mark bribed them to play drums and keyboards with him alongside Richard and Noah, in what he promised would be a one-time only performance. "I had been debating whether I should start interning for the UN war crimes tribunal," Daniel recalls "when I got that fateful call from Mark. Even then, I never expected to end up in a band playing wild, unwieldy audiences night after night." On the other hand, Ted maintains that he was engineered to play the drums, "I can't imagine doing anything else-I hate everything else except raven-haired riot girls."

After only a few months of playing shows to packs of horny spellbound hometown teenagers, "we found someone crazy enough to actually give us money and invest in our career" says Mark of the summer of 2005, which was spent lacing tracks at Studio Plateau in Montreal for their debut album, Hind Hind Legs. The album was produced by Jimmy Shaw of the bands Metric and Broken Social Scene, and Drew Malamud, whose engineering credits include Death From Above 1979, the Dears, and Stars. Shaw, who brought the Feathers along during Metric's sold-out Fall '05 North American tour, says of the band: "Somehow in all their poppy grandeur, the Feathers manage to convey feelings I never even knew I had. Their music portrays the canopy of life with clarity and heart smiles…oh yeah, I also completely relate to Mark's self-hatred and Richard's massive guilt."

Along with fellow Montreal band Islands (new group formed by Unicorns front man Nick Diamonds and drummer J'aime Tambeur), The Lovely Feathers enthusiastically signed with the fresh new label Equator Records, which will release their album on May 2nd. Look for the Lovely Feathers on tour throughout North America this spring, where they'll be spreading their blossomy, energetic and painful message to nobody and anybody who will listen.

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The Lovely Feathers - Hind Hind Legs