Interview with Phantom Atlantic: ‘It’s like flying a kite in a thunderstorm in the best way’

Toronto-based alt rock band, Phantom Atlantic, is gearing up to release an EP next year, with their next single, ‘Start From Nothing’, due out in the new year.

The band comprises frontman Kyle Brunet, Ryan Stam (guitar/keys), Jeff Burling (bass) and Ken Grisé (drums). Brunet and Stam grew up together, playing music together on and off in high school. Brunet met Burling at college and Burling brought Grisé into the band.

‘No Way To Live’, their latest single, fuses Brunet’s primal vocals with a driving rhythm and pounding steam-engine-guitar grit. The track is ‘a sharp reprisal against the self-destructive patterns of behaviour that we know are dragging us down, but still struggle to break’, according to Brunet. ‘This song dates back to mid-2019,’ Stam said. ‘It’s the first song as part of the collection that will be an EP next year. The lyrics take on an added layer based on what’s happening in the world now. There’s a universal sentiment in the chorus, it’s adaptable to everyone. I think people can connect with it on different levels.’

”No Way To Live’ came from reaching a boiling point and just wanting to drop an anvil on my life’

Brunet wrote the lyrics to the track and describes it thus: ‘I was choosing severe selfishness, self-deception and really hurting people,’ he said. ”No Way To Live’ came from reaching a boiling point and just wanting to drop an anvil on my life, which was getting out of control. The title is on the nose for a reason. There was so much bullshitting myself and others going on, and it was time to say something out in the open that was unequivocally true.’

This comes across strongly in the lyrics: ‘You wanted everything, no more than any one you saw. There can’t be anything wrong with a fire that’s guarding what’s gained. You’re on one lying awake, servant to earn ground on any mistake that’s made. And yet somehow in your mind you’re fine. You’ll say that it’s fine.’

Next up will be ‘Start From Nothing’, the second track from their upcoming EP, which will likely come out in the first half of next year. Stam describes the song as ‘the darker, more brooding twin of ‘No Way To Live”: ‘It’s another reach-for-the-stadium-bleachers belter.’ Like many of their songs, it grew out of an idea brought to the band by Brunet: ‘Kyle is definitely a massive creative force in the band,’ said Stam. ‘We all bring our own flavours but Kyle’s a well of creativity, and his ideas are often left of field. He obviously writes some massive rock melodies but it’s not uncommon for him to come into the band space and give us a pop or R&B song that we then have to collectively mold into a Phantom Atlantic song. It’s like flying a kite in a thunderstorm in the best way – our band couldn’t operate without it.’

Another track, ‘Beneath Your Moment’ (2018) seems more applicable than ever today because it’s about time: ‘It’s saying that time doesn’t mean a thing, we’re stuck in a vortex,’ Stam said. ‘Kyle brought this one to us almost completely done. Normally, we dissect it but we felt that we’d be making changes just to put our mark on it, which we didn’t want to do.’

As the song goes: ‘But you believe in diamonds, everlasting time and a faith, a faith that I’ve never seen.’

Stam says that the meaning of a song is ultimately infused with the experiences you bring to it: ‘What I found in that song are the themes of desire and hopelessness, it feels like a resignation, about being crushed under the weight of your thoughts. It’s about addiction, which can be to a substance or a person or even self-loathing and going down a dangerous path that you don’t really want to break away from. The video’s about addiction.’ (In the video, we see the main character drink his way into a stupor before passing out at the end.)

‘Being in the midst of it, before you open the door, that’s the hardest part’

As such, ‘Beneath Your Moment’ has a very different feel to ‘No Way To Live’ and ‘Lessons’ (2018), both of which manage to be upbeat, despite their difficult themes. ‘There’s optimism coming through,’ Stam said. For Brunet, ‘Lessons’ is ‘about spinning in circles’: ‘It’s about knowing what I want to do and being at the door but not being able to open the fucking door. The frustration of being consciously aware of what you need to do but actively ignoring it. Being in the midst of it, before you open the door, that’s the hardest part.’

As the song goes: ‘Burned in, burned in light, I’ve lost now, heard it best to be grounded than to be spiralling out. We all bid on a little war while we’re racing to the end.’

Arriving on the scene in 2017, Phantom Atlantic’s energetic live performances quickly earned them a reputation as ‘a Toronto band to watch’ (Indie Week Canada). The years that followed saw them headline tours of Ontario and Quebec and appear at festivals such as Canadian Music Week and Voodoo Rockfest, supporting acts such as The Elwins, The Coronas and Texas King.

Toronto has a thriving music scene, according to Brunet: ‘There is a ton of music from all corners of the globe. Toronto is a melting pot for all kinds of music – from Drake to Shawn Mendes to Haviah Mighty, BADBADNOTGOOD and Simone Schmidt. The list goes on and on.’ Stam jumps in: ‘Pop and hip hop in particular are dominated by people from all around Toronto.’ Stam is a big fan of Cleopatrick, a hard rock duo from Coburg, about an hour outside Toronto: ‘They’re proof that Spotify’s streaming infrastructure works. They’ve tapped into the scene even outside Toronto, they’re a global success. It’s an interesting time for rock bands and people like them are redefining what a rock band is.’

We chat about how many rock bands have struggled over the past decade and that many rock bands haven’t moved with the times. ‘Rock hasn’t evolved as much as hip hop,’ Stam said. ‘But then you have the bands like Cleopatrick who are finding creative ways to carve out a niche community online – they call theirs the ‘new rock mafia’. I thought that maybe two piece bands were getting old but they’ve found a way to make it cool again. It also helps that their sound is a kind of stoner rock with massive choruses which I love,’ he laughed.

They’re fans of Ontario-based alt rock band Stuck On Planet Earth and rock band Texas King as well as local folk band, Ten Kills The Pack. However, one of the first bands that they bonded over was Coldplay. ‘We’ve always said their music is complexity masked in simplicity. There’s so much more going on in it than meets the eye – that’s something we’re chasing,’ Stam said. Brunet is also a big fan of Leonard Cohen – ‘I put ‘Suzanne’ on repeat,’ he laughed. He listened to a lot of Nirvana in high school but these days is more likely to be found listening to London-based Jacob Collier, who is widely considered one of the most innovative musicians of his generation: ‘He’s like the Mozart of our day,’ Brunet said.

They both deliberate for a while over who they’d like to tour with. ‘I keep thinking about Jimi Hendrix but I wouldn’t want to be embarrassed every night,’ Brunet laughed. ‘I might want to tour with Bob Marley or Kurt Cobain.’

Stam is still thinking: ‘I mean for me, personally, I have to consider any band Chris Cornell was in. My gateway concert was Audioslave and I knew Soundgarden stuff. We went to see Audioslave in Toronto and the crowd was CHAOS! He was the first rock god I’d seen, it was the first time I saw a mosh pit! It’d be cool to tour with Foo Fighters, to do a big ass concert with 80,000 people!’

(Photo from left to right: Ryan, Jeff, Kyle, Ken)