Local alt/surf/indie rockers Anteater Eater dropped their debut album, If that’s Your Thing, on August 26, and there’s a Camosun connection: drummer Daniel Hubert is a second-year University Transfer student at the college.
Hubert says the album—which features 10 original songs—is a collaborative effort that manages to create its own sound.
“[The album features] mostly things that Callum [Rudyk, guitar/lead vocals] has wrote over the last little while, I wrote one song, a couple of them were a little more collaborative between all of us,” he says. “I think it’s pretty varied in terms of the sound; I don’t know, we’ve got a sound but I think we have explored a lot of genres in this album, which has been really fun to get some variety in it for our first album.”
The themes featured in the album explore young people coming of age, experiencing new things, and love.
“There are some songs that are kind of about being a youth and kind of just being a bit of a degenerate youth,” says Hubert. “And there are a lot of songs that, I mean, I don’t want to exactly say what Callum meant by the songs that he wrote but I think a lot of them are love songs for his girlfriend. The general themes, I think, are just kind of growing up and exploring new things… That’s the period in our lives where we are all kind of making the transition into adulthood and experiencing new things. I think that’s kind of present in the album when you listen to it.”
Hubert says that the main challenges in making this album were dealing with everybody’s schedules and finding the money to record everything.
“The main challenges were… having everybody in Victoria at the same time, because last September Callum and Gabe [Boyarin, lead guitar] both moved, Callum moved to Vancouver and Gabe moved to Boston for university so it was pretty tricky having all of us in Victoria at the same time,” says Hubert. “And I was away in New Zealand last winter for a month. So that’s why it took so much time, because we were all so busy and it takes a long time to record stuff like that. Also, money, I didn’t realize how expensive it was to record stuff in a studio, but it’s like $50 an hour. I mean, we’ve been able to mostly cover it with the money we made through playing shows and selling merch and stuff, but we’re definitely a little bit in the hole. Hopefully we can make some of that money back.”
Hubert says that his favourite thing about drumming is the energetic nature of the instrument.
“Drumming, I think, compared to other instruments, I really like… that you can kind of improvise, and a lot of drumming when you’re playing with other people is the energy and being able to build up the energy in different ways,” he says. “I think in a lot of ways the drummer kind of leads the band sometimes, in like, just the amount of energy you are giving and you can really improvise and add and take away things with that, as the drummer. I’m a fan of that.”
Hubert explains that the main thing he wants the audience to feel when listening to the album is the same sense of fun that he felt making it.
“I just want [the audience] to have fun. I want them to enjoy it,” he says. “We’ve had a lot of fun making it and writing songs and we will continue to have fun playing them and stuff. I think I just want people to be able to have a good time listening to the album, and maybe take away some of the enjoyment that we got from making it.”