Rachel Zeffira's homecoming
Canada gets excited when the rest of the world talks about us.
That’s part of the reason for the excitement around Rachel Zeffira’s debut solo album The Deserters. She’s Canadian, you see, but first made her name in the pop world internationally as one-half of British duo Cat’s Eyes, with vocalist Faris Badwan of the Horrors. She branched out into solo work shortly after, releasing The Deserters overseas in 2012. It got its homecoming this spring thanks to Paper Bag Records, and, it turns out, we’re not the only ones working the Canadian angle.
“I didn’t do any shows with Cat’s Eyes in Canada,” Zeffira says over the phone from snowy London. “I’m really happy I’m doing it on Paper Bag records, that I have an actual Canadian label. As you can tell from my accent, I’m still very much Canadian!”
Raised in the Kootenays region of B.C., Zeffira, a classically trained vocalist and musician, was sponsored to sing at Cambridge University in the UK when she was only 17. Customs problems sent her back to North America before she barely got to leave the airport. She found a way back to London anyway, forging her resume (and age) and landing a job as a substitute teacher, with her singing aspirations largely put on hold. After an eventual gig flexing her classical muscles for the Pope, a chance meeting with Badwan led her to her new pop home.
“When I met Faris it was at a time when I’d stopped doing concerts for a while,” she remembers. “We were just kind of writing songs for fun. Now I feel totally comfortable, maybe even more comfortable in this world than the classical world.”
Not unlike other classical musicians trying their turn at pop, there are hints of Zeffira’s past in the gentler moments on The Deserters; Rufus Wainwright comes to mind, but baroque is downplayed by the quieter shoegaze inclinations (she covered My Bloody Valentine’s “To Here Knows When” last summer; it stands as one of the best moments on the album).
Letting go of classical performance's strict discipline has allowed Zeffira to focus more on the music, she says, but she maintains that her favourite part of her new world is the studio. It could have something to do with the fact that she put herself in the legendary Abbey Road to make The Deserters.
“In a way, the recording might be my favourite part,” she says. “I like the creative process most of all. I like building things, and hearing it kind of grow, and keep putting things in and taking things out. The first thing I noticed was while recording—I just sing in a totally different way now.”
But how quickly and naturally Zeffira has settled into this role belies the surprise it’s taken her by.
“I never planned on doing either Cat’s Eyes or a solo album. Everything is a surprise as I go along,” she says. “I’ve never had a chance to go to Toronto. I never thought the first time I’d go would be to do a pop show. It’s really unexpected.”
This article originally appeared in the March 2013 issue of AUX Magazine. Download and subscribe for free in the App Store.