Lots of love, no cheese

West Coast folk singers The Fugitives may sing about love, but not in the gooey way many musicians often express the heartfelt sentiment.

On their EP Find Me, the Vancouver-based folk-pop quartet sang about isolation and the feelings that came with that, so for their next full-length album, they turned away from melancholy subject matter and aimed to express their love and affection for the people, situations and towns they loved.

"We didn’t want to do it in a cheesy way," said frontman Brendan McLeod. "Some of us are so close that when you get in a fight, you don’t keep it under the rug. You yell at each other like a brother and sister. There’s something kind of nice about that acceptance of one another. You can be yourself and tell someone to screw off and have them understand that."

The result is Eccentrically We Love, a 10-track album released last Tuesday. And although The Fugitives usually lean more towards a folk sound, this album is more pop sounding.

"Who knows how that happened but we like it," McLeod said, adding that fellow members Adrian Glynn, Barbara Adler and Steve Charles managed to make a pop album with instruments more suited for folk music like banjos and accordions.

"When we first started, we actually were a beat-boxer and we had a lot more spoken word," said McLeod. "We gradually picked up all these organic instruments and they’re easy to tour with."

With McLeod and Adler making their livings as writers – McLeod as a playwright and novelist and Adler as a performance poet –they spend a lot of time working on the lyrics, maybe too much time, he said.

"We spend a lot of time on the lyrics so we hope people like them because we try to make them good," he said. "We just work to have coherent themes on our albums and coherent structure."

The first single released from Eccentrically We Love called Broken Promises, the band asked fans to write in promises to their website – www.fugitives.ca. With the next single, All This Trouble, they’re asking people to send in their small troubles.

McLeod said it’s a way to connect with their fans.

"You blow through a town and you play for one night and you have no idea who you played for; it’s nice to hear from people," he said. "People send us not only their problems, but they’re encouraged to send pictures and videos so we can kind of get to know them and hopefully interact with them."

The Fugitives play the Apollo April 3 at 8 p.m., $10 at the door.