Repackaging The Box

The last time Jean-Marc Pisapia talked to this newspaper, he said a Box reunion was out of the question. But two and a half years later, The Box, one of Canada's top-selling pop acts of the 1980's, is back in business.

In a chat this week, Box frontman Pisapia starts things off by admitting he had changed his mind since our last meeting and he still isn't quite sure why or how that happened. "Beats me,"the Montreal singer-songwriter says, with a shrug. Tuesday, Universal Music Canada released Black Dog There, The Box's first new studio album in 16 years, and the Montreal band also returns to the concert stage this week. Pisapia and his cohort play the Spectrum tomorrow, hit the Théâtre du Capitole in Quebec City the following night and make the trek to play Toronto on April 20.

Pisapia is the only member of the new Box from the original lineup. The other guys had no interest in re-forming the group, which was one reason Pisapia figured his old band would never come back to life in the new century. Then, last year, a friend suggested he should do it with new players, given that he had written and sung the vast majority of the material when the pop outfit dominated the charts in Canada with catchy hits like Closer Together, Temptation, Inside My Heart and L'Affaire Dumoutier.

Pisapia figured he's give The Box an other spin, but with one major-league twist. In its first incarnation, The Box specialized in radio-ready, electro-charged, three-minute pop numbers.The 2005 edition of The Box is a decidedly different musical beast than The Box circa 1985 Black Dog There is indeed a blast from the past, but it's an acid flashback to the '70s and the sort of progressive rock that was all the rage with doobie-toking Quebec rock fans back in the day when CHOM ruled the town with a steady diet of Gentle Giant, Genesis, Yes and Pink Floyd. This is the music Pisapia grew up and still loves.

"The idea of doing something completly different without thinking of the parameters of the radio industry was just too appealing," Pisapia said. "I'm doing this pressure-free."

There's no pressure because The Box is a moonlighting gig for Pisapia. He now has a day job writing and recording music for radio and TV commercials, and his jingles company pays the bills. Most bands re-form for the cash. But this is not about money for Pisapia. If anything, he figures The Box reunion might actually cost him. He also had no interest in jumping in the nostalgia circuit.

"Going back 20 years and doing the same thing, that was not an option," Pisapia said. "It was to do the record I wanted to do."

The album Pisapia wanted to do-and did do-is full-on pro-rock, just the thing for fans raised on Genesis's The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway and Pink Floyd's Atom Heart Mother. Just how progressive is Black Dog There? Not only does it pay musical tribute to Bowie, Genesis, Floyd and Gentle Giant, but it also revives a form seldom seen since the '70s. It is an old-fashioned concept album, complete with a spacey narrative. The nine tracks tell the story of Jamie Anderson, a farm boy from the Prairies who's living his dreams as an astronaut. But on his first space-shuttle flight, a rocket-booster explodes and the shuttle goes up in a ball of flames, with the crew flung into space. Anderson wakes up in an other dimension, stuck between two parallel universes.

Pisapia says the sci-fi tale was inspired not by a return to the bong but rather by his fondness for reading up on new scientific theories about possible existence of other dimensions.

When it's mentioned to him concept albums are a little out of date, Pisapia says he doesn't care.

If it's passé, we'll find out. If it's good, it's good. If it makes you trip, it makes you trip."

Though Pisapia made the album withtout thinking about a potential audience, it might well click with the many Quebec music fans, both young and old, who are still big prog-rock boosters. He notes his two teenage daughters love Atom Heart Mother,and that the phenomenal popularity of local Genesis tribute The Musical Box suggests perhaps progressive rock really never went out of fashion in la belle province.

The Box will play the entire Black Dog There album (except for one song that's too complex to play live) in sequence at the Spectrum. But old-time fans hoping to hear the vintage Box hits need not despair. After performing the new material, the band will kick into party gear and play all the old Box chart-toppers.