In indie-rock circles, Omaha, Nebraska has long been best known as the cozy breeding ground that spawned Conor Oberst’s Bright Eyes empire and its multi-armed offshoots. This fall, though, it’s starting to look suspiciously like an off-site incubator for future Polaris Prize nominees.
OK, that might be an exaggeration. After all, the CanCon that’s been corralled by Omaha-based label Saddle Creek (a.k.a. The Label That Bright Eyes Built) is still based in the true north, strong and free. But it’s notable that, very shortly after inching out of their community-based comfort zone to put out a handful of albums by non-local American acts, the folks at Saddle Creek have signed not one, not two, but three Canadian threats. They recently released Tokyo Police Club’s Elephant Shell stateside; this October, the much-anticipated debut LPs by both Montreal’s Land of Talk and Toronto’s Sebastien Grainger & the Mountains (clearly the band’s original name, “Sebastien Grainger et Les Montaignes,” got the translation treatment to make it easier for countries in which French is not the other official language) are slated in the Saddle Creek US release roster. (Note: all three acts are simul-releasing their albums on Canadian labels domestically.) Hat trick = trend in my books.
“It’s not calculated,” insists Saddle Creek’s Ryan Fox. “It’s not like we read in the paper that Canada was the new Omaha and decided to sign a bunch of bands. It’s just coincidental that the last three signings to the label have been Canadian. It’s more about having a wider scope of the bands we wanna work with, and not wanting them to just be Omaha bands. With Tokyo Police Club, for example, a couple of us saw them at Pop Montreal a couple of years ago and started the whole label-band conversation…”
The label’s announcement of their latest signings coincides with two new releases by acts who’ve traditionally been anchors in their stable — Oberst and dancey electro-rock crew The Faint — both of whom have opted to put out their records sans Saddle Creek. The Faint started up their own blank.wav imprint to put out Fasciination, while Oberst defected to Arcade Fire–bolstered indie imprint Merge for his self-titled disc (both albums dropped Aug. 5).
Ryan insists that Saddle Creek’s northern shift wasn’t motivated by panic. “We were talking to Land of Talk and Sebastien before Conor decided to put out that record with Merge and before The Faint had definitely decided they were gonna do their own thing. We were in a position where we were able to sign some new bands and we wanted to… well,” he pauses, “I guess we were trying to anticipate those moves too.
“It felt like the label was growing with the Omaha bands,” he continues, adding that he hasn’t noticed any backlash on home turf. “A few years ago, we were the focus of a lot of attention, and there was a natural progression. In the earlier days, Saddle Creek was very community oriented, and things grew at a really high rate for a while there, which led to the people and bands growing up and starting their own labels or moving away.”