Luyas Look to Arcade Fire for a Little Help With 'Too Beautiful to Work'

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts -- yes, even if the parts include members of a Grammy award-winning band.

When Montreal experimental-pop act the Luyas relocated to Toronto to record their latest record 'Too Beautiful to Work' they were mainly there to work with friend and engineer Jeff McMurrich but in turn, the band was also able to call up another friend/ex-roommate to work on the orchestral arrangements.

"Owen Pallett did some of the arrangements, and he definitely had his fingers in the pie," lead singer Jessie Stein tells Spinner, of the band's relationship with the on/off Arcade Fire member. "He was an obvious choice for when we needed a little orchestral touch, and he did a great job."

That's not the only tie the Luyas have to Arcade Fire, though. The bands also share violinist Sarah Neufeld, whom Stein refers to as the only "honourary Luya."

"She still tours with us when she can but she's pretty busy with Arcade Fire," says Stein. "She's in the band whenever she can be, and when she can't we try not to cry!"

But don't think of the Luyas as some Arcade Fire side project. In fact, Stein doesn't believe the band draws creatively from any of their associated acts, including Bell Orchestre, Miracle Fortress and Torgnat.

"I don't think that we're particularly influenced by our other projects," Stein says. "I feel quite the opposite, despite the fact that our instrumentation has some similarities to the instrumentation in some other bands we're in."

"This is center stage right now in terms of our priorities."

"I think that it's really important for music to have a strong sense of identity," she adds. "And we didn't feel like this band was a good avenue for [being] traditional, so yeah, I guess, in a way, we intentionally set out to do something that sounded weird. But not for novelty-sake. We wanted to make it sound right and special, and this is what we found."

Watch the Luyas Video for 'Tiny Head'