When I first (and last) met Todd Fancey, more than a decade ago, I found it difficult to reconcile the man sitting in a West End café – plainspoken, exceedingly humble, so laid back I initially feared I was boring him – with the New Pornographers guitarist who had recently released Fancey and The Magical Summer EP, two marvellous solo records modelled after the exuberance, meticulousness and unashamed romanticism of 1960s and ’70s Top 40 pop. Few people had heard them, variously because the now-defunct American label that released them had no promotional budget, Fancey had no desire to play live unless he could ensure sonic flawlessness (which, it transpired, he couldn’t), and his foremost influences – Todd Rundgren; Rumours-era Fleetwood Mac; one-hit wonders whose songs everyone knows but whose identities no one does (think Seals & Crofts’ “Summer Breeze”) – were between vogues. He followed them up with another album, 2007’s Schmancey, and then, it seemed, he retired the Fancey project, the records consigned to the second-hand bin of history.
Which both is and isn’t true. Fancey continued to make music – with the New Pornographers, of course, and he tried his hand at composing for television, which resulted most famously in “That One Night,” a deliberately ham-fisted love song featured in an Emmy-nominated episode of The Office. But attempts to make another Fancey album repeatedly failed: his musical direction was misguided, he couldn’t find musicians who could help actualize the sounds he heard in his head, his perfectionism was at odds with his bank account…
And then, this past December, it was announced online that Fancey was about to return with Love Mirage – his first album in a decade. A preview track, “Baby Sunshine,” served to prove that it would be worth the ridiculous wait.
What finally pulled Fancey out of his creative impasse was one man: Allan Rodger, a producer, musician and former Brooklynite who owns the local Crosstown recording studio. “When I met Allan, I saw what I could do,” Fancey says, in his East Van home, as mellow as memory recalls. “Without him, I never would have been able to make the album. There was a wholeness with him: he plays all the drums, he plays all the bass, most of the keyboards. And then he brought in all this great talent,” including Angela Kelman, whose vocals are often heard in tandem with Fancey’s.
As well, Rodger taught Fancey not to question his instincts. “I was still spinning my wheels, finding my direction, and then it was, ‘Duh! I live and breathe 1970s AM music. That’s everything to me.’”
This resulted in a commitment to authenticity that made the recording of the album exponentially harder, but the end result much more satisfying. For instance, Rodger convinced Fancey to forego modern “plug-ins” that mimic the sound of vintage instruments. “I don't know if you’ve ever looked under the hood of a Rhodes or a Wurlitzer [keyboard] – you can understand why they don’t make them anymore,” he says. “It’s probably the same reason they don’t make pinball machines too much anymore. They’re too complicated, and they all have little quirks – one key is haunted or something like that.”
Fancey’s expectations for the commercial success of Love Mirage are characteristically modest (“I hope a few people will like it”), but his return may signal a new period of productivity: an EP of – wait for it – country covers is already being mooted for this year. “It really is about the artistic satisfaction,” he says, becoming uncharacteristically animated. “I love recording. It’s an amazing thing to try to achieve.”
Love Mirage is out digitally on Jan. 27. A vinyl edition follows in the spring.
