Content area
Full Text
Yesterday is dead. And Canadian rock band Kittie offers up a melodic eulogy to the mistakes and lessons of days gone by on their just-released album, Funeral for Yesterday. A few short years ago, the all-female band nearly wrote its own obituary, having been torn in half and missing vital components.
Founding members, sisters Morgan and Mercedes Lender, both of Local 279 (London, ON), were contemplating their next step following the exit of the other two musicians in the four-person band. "Morgan and I were not really feeling like this was going to happen anymore; we were at a point where we weren't sure if the band was going to continue or not," says Mercedes, the band's drummer and vocalist.
The pair decided that Kittie would not lie down and die. After a short bout of soul-searching, the musicians used another of their talents-writing-as a way of sorting through their emotions.
"Out of that desperation we kind of decided to start writing just for fun and to see what would happen and that's how this record got written," Mercedes continues. "Everything just came out so easy, and once songs started to come to fruition, we decided the next step was to continue. Once we got about five or six songs in, we knew the project would work."
New Recruits
The Landers had to resuscitate the band, but to do it effectively, they had to find musicians they knew would stand by them. It didn't take long, due in part to the fact that a little more than fate brought this incarnation of Kittie together.
"We'd kind of been spying on her for a long time," Mercedes admits with a laugh in reference to the band's first new recruit, Local 279 guitarist Tara McLeod. "Because she was a really good guitar player who'd come out to our shows before. She was the first person we tried out for guitar, and we knew we didn't need to try out anyone else."
McLeod's sound, molded by a slew of classic rock influences, fit Kittie perfectly. "I listened to a lot of AC/DC when I was younger, probably because it is a lot...