Oct. 29, 2008 - Issue #680: Palace of the End

Michael Rault: No more Mixed Signals

Michael Rault focuses with a new solo record

It’s been a busy year full of gigs for Michael Rault—the busiest he says that he’s ever had—and he’s done most of them without his band the Mixed Signals, eschewing the group format in favour of taking the stage by himself. The transition to performing solo came after the Mixed Signals wound down and Rault took a couple of months off from playing shows. After repeated requests from the now-defunct Blackspot Café to put on a show, he duct taped a tambourine to his shoe, ran his acoustic guitar through an amp and started singing again.

 

“It became not only necessary to play solo because I couldn’t find people to play with at that point in time, but it also was ideal—I really liked the way it sounded and I really liked the space you get in by going up on stage by yourself,” Rault admits. “It seems to have changed the dynamic of all the shows. You get up on stage and I find that I’m playing with my eyes closed most of the time, which just gets me in a completely different space because I’m not interacting with all the band and stuff.”

 

After what Rault calls a really, really long recording period by his standards—somewhere around six months—the young songwriter is set to release his first recording without the Mixed Signals following his name. Despite the credit at the top, though, the Eric Cheng-produced Crash! Boom! Bang! features more than just Rault on its eight tracks—including a couple of the Mixed Signals. Rault explains that, while he’s playing a lot on his own these days, he didn’t want to simply capture the live show on the disc.

 

“I wanted to be able to bring in what was right for each song, but it did start at a more minimal point for every song, so everything that was put on was put on because I thought it was right for the song,” he says. “Nothing was put in habitually, it was all put in because I thought that after we put down the bare minimal of the song, theses extra parts would sound really good with it.”

 

 

 

At a brisk 22 minutes in length, Crash! Boom! Bang! leaves the listener practically begging for more. Rault says that he had originally planned the record to be a full-length album, but changed his mind as time kept turning and he still had a few things unfinished. The lack of a full-length in his recorded output is not something that hangs heavy on Rault’s mind, though.

 

“I think in some ways I lean towards shorter releases—I really like singles even, I might even put out a few two-song CDs or seven-inches if I can get together the dough to put those out at some point in time, because I really do just like focusing really closely on the songs that I put out and not worrying too much about putting out a bunch at the same time—just making sure that the two or three that you put out at a time are really good.”

 

A series of EPs has seen Rault’s sound remain remarkably focused—even the new, stripped-down solo record sounds very much like the same singer/guitarist/songwriter who was at the heart of the Mixed Signals. For Rault, that’s not a bad problem to have, even when he occasionally wouldn’t mind stepping outside of himself for a song or two.

“I find that, for good or for bad, everything I do ends up sounding like myself, despite my best efforts—even if I’m getting really sick of myself and I want to try to do something that sounds completely different, once it’s all said and done it’ll still end up sounding like me,” he laughs. “I have no idea if the next thing I do will be out of left field or not, but I have a feeling that generally most of the stuff I do will end up nonetheless sounding like myself, even if I try to do something drastically different.” V 

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