Patrick Krief

Posted by The Link in Link Live Sessions on February 7, 2013

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Before his set at Casa Del Popolo, Patrick Krief played an acoustic version of “Lost in Japan” for us in his Côte Saint-Luc home. It’s a song about his time in that country, where he felt the strongest sense of Lost in Translation -esque culture shock.

Recorded over several months in a “shitty apartment in Côte-des-Neiges,” The Dears guitarist will have his solo record Hundered Thousand Pieces released in the United States next month, coinciding with a US tour that includes a stop in Austin for South by Southwest.

It’s a dark, guitar-driven indie record that rarely keeps to the same arrangement from song to song.

Once working under the name Black Diamond Bay, Krief now plays with his own name on the marquee.

“I was a bit reluctant, but people were threatening to leave the band if I didn’t change the name,” Krief said of the change to Black Diamond Bay. “And it didn’t sound like a solo project, so I did. But then they quit on me.

“So I thought, there’s only going to be one constant, and that’s me.”

That became even more true after recording Hundred Thousand Pieces, where he played nearly everything himself.

“I was being romantic about it, the first guy who showed up I was going to give him the job,” Krief said, about the process of finding a band to fill out that sound live. “But two months in, the band was sounding like shit.

“I had to be that guy who said ‘you’re not good enough.’”

It’s a role he’s familiar with, having directed bands from a young age.

“I started putting bands together when I was 12 or 13, and I was always the leader. I took myself so seriously even as a 12-year-old. I have letters I wrote to other band members, that were really angry shit,” he laughs.

He’s put together a band of like-minded musicians now, performing under the name Krief.

“It’s not forced, it’s like the director being comfortable enough with the actor to let him reinterpret the script,” he says. “That’s what we have in The Dears. It doesn’t matter who writes the song, it’s like ‘I know what you’re going for.’ Like, if we’re going for that Motown thing, I got it.”

Krief took a songwriting role in the last The Dears record, 2011’s Degeneration Street, a first since joining the band in 2003. Before that, singer Murray Lightburn had always been the main songwriter.

“Sometimes I’d have an idea that I knew was good, but I didn’t know where to go with it. I’d call up Murray and say, ‘do you think this is shit?’” said Krief.

And if Lightburn was feeling it, the song would end up in The Dears’ repertoire.

“I don’t care about that world when I’m doing this,” says Krief about his more famous project. “This is for whoever wants it, I’m not going after the path that The Dears took, this has its own trajectory. It doesn’t matter if it’s smaller or if it’s bigger.”