Campbell and Dumont live on opposite coasts, in cities with opposite personalities: Vancouver with its laid-back atmosphere and New York City, where Dumont resides, with its frantic pace. Unlike its predecessors, which were made in the heady, relaxed Vancouver summertime with two inveterate marijuana smokers, Here Comes A City was recorded in New York.
     “New York doesn’t pass you by without taking its piece of whatever you create in it,” says Campbell astutely. “[City] has more focus on it and more agita. It isn’t exactly an AC/DC record, but it’s a little more extroverted. There are postmarks, guide-marks for you to get used to on the record. There was a more straightforward approach in terms of wanting to write a few songs that were outreaching pop songs. The other two records are very homemade, pretty trippy and mellow, a bit more of a wander down the garden path.”
     To this end, and referring back to the apocalypse, on “Apocalypse Pop Song”, Campbell strongly channels Morrissey, whose Smiths-esque presence is felt on more than one occasion on City. “I Am The Photographer” and the declarations of “I don’t love you anymore” on “Wait” confirm the Mozzer’s influence. But it’s not all tongue-in-cheek suicide music. In fact, most of City is melodious and pretty. Case in point, the echoing “M+E=Me”, “Five Loops”, and the Cure-informed “What Is This Thing Called?” Memphis aren’t afraid to go all-out pop as “Way Past Caring” proves.
     Yet, one doesn’t sense any feeling of expectation when speaking to Campbell. Not that he is dismissive of his work; he has more of a go-with-the-flow approach. He likens the world he has created with Dumont and Memphis to a child’s make-believe kingdom, where for the time that you believe in it, it really exists, and there is no hope beyond those moments. To illustrate his point Campbell recounts, “On the wall of our rehearsal space was a photocopy of a list of instructions that Thelonious Monk had written. One thing it said was, ‘Remember, all of this was written so guys would come to rehearsal.’ I thought that was a really beautiful way of looking at music, as a means to an end, community. For me, it’s always been the way it is.”

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