Article content

Just over halfway through Calgary electro soul-funk band Tendavillage’s third album, the Tenda Dimension, the act offers a haunting instrumental. Even for a genre-hopping outfit such as Tendavillage, it’s decidedly against type.

The meditative three-minute composition is made up of cinematic, slow-moving drones and choral flourishes. It’s called The Grandfather Tree, named after a 300-year-old white spruce with eye-catching exposed roots found near Big Hill Creek in Cochrane. It’s meant to evoke the spiritual feelings bandleader, singer and main songwriter Kate Melvina experiences whenever she visits the spot.

Article content

“It’s a tree I feel a deep connection to,” says Melvina. “There are no words to that song, but it felt personal for me to put in on there. I’m really drawn, not only to that tree but to that place. I guess when I say the word spiritual, I guess I get into a mindset or headspace that I don’t really get anywhere else. It feels very different but hard to explain. It feels very present.”

For those familiar with Tendavillage’s earliest recorded work on its 2020 self-titled EP, many of the eight tracks found on The Tenda Dimension will suggest a serious evolution for the band, with an emphasis on serious. Their breezy debut contained songs such as Ralph Wiggum, based on the strange, dim-bulb character from the Simpsons, and Adam Driver, Melvina’s fan-girl tribute to the self-serious lanky actor and his hair.

A year later, the band followed it up with A Tenda Universe, which still offered funky and soul-pop workouts but also had Melvina exploring more serious themes of loss and personal growth. The new record represents a step into trippier terrain, most musically and lyrically.

“I still really like writing about the fun media references and stuff, but it makes sense if I’m thinking about what else is out there and what life is about and if we’re all connected as humans,” she says. “I think that’s an important thing to put out into the world.”

Article content

Article content

It’s not that the album lacks grooves and hooks: check out the funky, synth-laded We Are One. The cheerfully campy intro, Enter the Tenda Dimension, credits Melvina’s three cats — Willis, Goldie and Mango — for their vocal contributions. But the album also features Time Alone, a soulful, soft-grooved ode to solitude and Other Worlds, a slow-boil funk-pop number with skittering electronic beats beneath Melvina’s sophisticated soul-jazz phrasing. In general, Melvina’s production has gotten more experimental.  

“I listen to all different kinds of things and sometimes those influences will make it onto the record and sometimes they won’t,” Melvina says. “I guess in the past couple of years I’ve been really drawn to synth sounds. So it’s only natural I would incorporate that into it. I feel like it suits the subject matter of what I’m singing about as well.”

One of the album’s secret weapons is Melvina’s collaborator Jacob Fossum, a Calgarian currently studying in Denmark. He offers some intricate piano lines on the sparkling jazz ballad River and the celebratory closing number Humpty Dumpty. While The Tenda Dimension often sounds like the elements were captured organically in a studio, much of it was done remotely.

Article content

Melvina recorded her vocals at NVRLND., a Calgary art space, and much of her instrumentation at home. The tracks were then sent to Fossum in Denmark, while a group of other musicians — percussionist Luis Tovar, bassist Cam Dougall, drummer Graem Rife and guitarist Aaron Young, among them — filled in their parts.

Melvina grew up in a musical household in Calgary. She played classical piano and loved jazz from an early age. At the age of 15, her musical world changed when she discovered the work of Stevie Wonder. She was specifically enamoured with that creative phase in the 1970s when he produced classics such as Innervisions and Songs in the Key of Life and curios such as Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants.

Wonder’s sense of wild abandon can be heard in the more experimental, go-for-broke production of The Tenda Dimension. But the songs also sound like they could generate some serious heat on stage.

On Aug. 16, Tendavillage will be holding an album release at the Pinbar on 17th Avenue. In the best tradition of funk-soul collectives, the band will expand into an eight-piece fighting machine that will include two backup singers, Tovar on percussion and renowned jazz pianist Sheldon Zandboer sitting in for Fossum. Zandboer was Fossum’s teacher.

“I love playing with the eight-piece because it really fills out the sound,” Melvina says. “Obviously, they are going to be slightly different interpretations of the songs.”

Tendavillage plays the Pinbar on Aug. 16. at 8 p.m. 

Article content