“When you’re coming up with a new band name, it’s kind of a hellish thing to have to take on,” says Nassir Liselle, the lead guitarist and founder member of Montreal Art Rock band DahL. “To find something that’s relevant, catchy, that hasn’t been borrowed.”

As literal as it may sound, the band name DahL is derived from the South Asian stew, typically made with lentils and a mishmash of optional ingredients, each with its own particular flavour.

“When I was younger we often ate it,” Liselle recalls. “We chose the name DahL because one of our sound techs had once described our sound as a bunch of people going in different directions. I like that idea. It’s like a different series of grooves all working together.”

For the uninitiated, DahL’s sonic aesthetic is as diverse as any soup recipe, more than the sum of its parts, incorporating elements of Trip Hop, electronic, and spoken word and fusing those into something uniquely contemporary.

The band — which consists of Liselle, Bryan Greenfield, Edward Scrimger, and William Winston — garner comparisons most frequently to a Montreal-specific blend of Dean Blunt, TV On The Radio, and Massive Attack. “I love Daddy G,” Liselle admits.

Hailing originally from Calgary, Liselle relocated with Greenfield to this city in 2013 and has since become something of a fixture within Montreal’s independent music scene.

“We’ve gone to school here,” Liselle tells me. “We’ve had more than one iteration of a musical project. We’ve built lives here, and roots, and built community.”

Montreal’s legendary sense of community is what drew Liselle and Greenfield eastward, with few outlets in Alberta’s more conservative environs for their outré creative sensibilities.

“It was hard to find venues in Calgary,” laments Liselle. “At the time it was still limited to community centres. We just wanted to be more immersed in a music scene. When you’re out west you always hear about Montreal as this mythological spot. But it’s not even a mythology, it’s very much real.”

Indeed, the achievements of bands like Suuns, agencies such as Mothland, labels like Constellation Records, and the storied Suoni per il Popolo festival called out like a siren song to Liselle.

“What Suoni has done here is so important to art and sustaining art and giving it some vitality,” he says. “The spaces and the venues they operate are so intrinsic to Montreal. They’re accessible to so many people. A lot of their efforts have been done to facilitate that. In terms of community, Suoni is deeply involved in different events and community-based organizing. They’ve done so much.”

Liselle’s musical education and influences span a wide generic spectrum — from country and folk to calypso and punk. “My mother was really, really into kind of crooner-esque stuff like Kenny Rogers, and Neil Diamond, and Graceland by Paul Simon,” he remembers. “But the first albums I ever owned were Tragic Kingdom by No Doubt, Smash by Offspring, and Dookie by Green Day.”

Liselle’s parents enrolled him in classical piano lessons at age five, and he developed an immediate aptitude for singing and songwriting. His paternal uncle in Edmonton was that city’s sole steel drum band leader, and his cousin, Janayah Ellis, in the early 2000s performed Dancehall-inflected Reggae under the moniker Souljah Fyah.

“We didn’t have a lot of money when I was growing up,” he confesses, “so I would make makeshift drum cases by putting plastic bags on cups of different sizes, trying to figure out what Tré Cool was doing. I’ve been obsessed with composing and writing songs since I can recall, but I started playing music and being more ambitious about it in my early 20s. What matters to me these days is the song. And I love a good story.”

DahL’s singular compositions come together through an inimitable dialogue between Liselle and Greenfield, its principal songwriters.

“We often will work on our own thing and bring it to each other,” Liselle explains. “I’ll be in my room working on something, or at the studio space, and Bryan will ask what’s going on and I’ll be like, ‘not yet. I can’t show you yet.’ When I’m still in my own little world is when I’m closest to the art, dumping the Lego box out and trying to make pieces of something, even before they really become songs that I think I’m ready to show, when I’m still in discussion with myself.”

With a 1990s Hollywood surf movie as an unexpected touchstone for inspiration, Liselle has just started writing what he believes, in two years’ time, will become DahL’s next album.

“In terms of songwriting, it’s going to be a lot less linear. The band might hate me for this,” he laughs, “but right now, I’m obsessed with the score to Point Break. Gary Busey sounds. I recently bought this lovely synthesizer that the American composer Mark Isham used to make that soundtrack. I’m like, that’s the sound.”

Liselle feels an affinity with Montreal’s established and emerging indie rock scene in bands such as Museums, Chasm, and Bluebird. “They’re more country-folk,” he tells me. “It’s really organic and from the heart, off the floor. And I’m a huge fan of Kristian North, formerly of the punk band Babysitter. Crooner singer-songwriter vibes. There are a lot of strong, tight-knit communities in Montreal, and it’s both a blessing and a curse. Those communities and the wealth of community that can be generated when people are together is great. But if you’re outside of it, it’s hard to access.”

Nonetheless, the Montreal music community has nurtured DahL across ten recordings, including, most recently, an EP entitled That’s It, a remix split with Scottish electronic duo Post Coal Prom Queen, and a live album called The Earl’s Hall Sessions, which the band recorded in Wakefield with saxophonist and prolific local collaborator James Goddard.

“There is constantly so much going on in Montreal. If you want to take the time and make yourself open, you can take in a lot.”◼︎

Dahl perform with LAL and Bianca Supercell at La Sotterenea 24 November 2024.