No Kids Inspired By Amerie As Much As Nirvana
Thursday May 08, 2008 @ 05:00 PM
By: ChartAttack.com Staff

No Kids (photo by Sarah Cass)

When Vancouver's P:ANO burst on to the Canadian indie rock scene in the early 2000s, quirk was the "key." The band developed a dedicated following for their decidedly off-kilter approach to songwriting, cumulating in Brigadoon, their third album, and an underappreciated masterstroke of thoughtful, song-based weirdness.

The band broke up in 2006, leaving a legacy and uncertainty in their wake. Before long, three members (Julia Chirka, Justin Kellam and Nick Krgovich) reconvened for a new project that was "a little more deliberate and less haphazard," says Krgovich.

The resulting outfit was christened No Kids, and the band's sound has certainly evolved since the P:ANO days. Come Into My House, the band's debut full-length, is full of rhythm, soul and smart, bountiful production that sounds like a small-scale Timbaland creation... or at least a David Byrne record. Krgovich says this was definitely by design.

"Come Into My House exists within a few different styles: primarily late 1980s/early 1990s Jam & Lewis-type dance pop that's being nagged by a shrunken MGM Orchestra and The Four Freshmen. I don't really have much interest in dabbling in genres at this point because to integrate elements of different musical styles in a way that is successful to me requires a serious exploration of how that certain type of music functions. So we definitely want to stay focused for now."

The influence isn't one you often see at the microcosmic level, but one listen to Come Into My House makes it clear that No Kids are liberally sampling from the populist palette. The band's unabashed love of mainstream pop and R&B is refreshing and, though they still largely toil in indie circles, No Kids aren't afraid to pledge devotion to their guilt-free guilty pleasures.

"We just got back from a three-week U.S. tour with Dirty Projectors and, despite the fact that we had two iPods filled with music, we spent an exorbitant amount of time in the van listening to top 40 radio," says Krgovich. "I've listened to R&B all my life, but for some reason I only started listening to it voraciously over the last three years.

"As soon as I heard Amerie's song '1 Thing' in 2005, I felt like everything had changed. It has turned out to be my 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' or something."

No Kids will embark on a month-long European tour in early May, spreading the goodness to the continent one beat at a time.

"No good luck charms per se for this tour, although since we're gonna be driving ourselves, we're splurging and getting a GPS device," says Krgovich. "I think that'll double as our good luck charm."

—Cameron Gordon