Four tall Montreal girls in their late twenties that make such authentic country music that you could be fooled into thinking they were from another place and another time; it puts some perspective on the importance of trends and movements.
Ladies of The Canyon seem to have grown up someplace hot, travelled across America, and floated along the bayou in search of something pure. The most surprising thing in all this is that all four of them write and sing, supporting each other with buttery harmonies, as if they’d sprung from a single cocoon.
“We were a bunch of singers and songwriters that wanted to augment each other’s songs with harmonies. Some of us weren’t really great instrumentalists, so the only way we knew how to accompany each other was by harmonizing. So we would just take turns.”
I hear that they get their inspiration from seminal soft rock bands like Fleetwood Mac, The Eagles et The Band, music passed on by the generation that preceded theirs. However, there has been a resurgence of this music, which has been on heavy rotation in the pubs and bars that our generation patronizes, to the relief of many who thought that music was restricted to desperate attempts at being new and innovative. But renewal is also a matter of revisiting your roots, and witnessing the honesty with which these girls approach their country rock, one could think they never listened to Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins as teenagers – which they assure me they have – but also, one could be tempted to believe that this is a style they invented.
Senja, Maia, and Jasmine each have a distinct voice, and they make a point of bringing it up. “You know which one of the Beatles is singing, It’s pretty distinguishable right off the bat, and anybody who’s passionate about the music wants to understand why we do what we do.” “We can’t help but let our personalities come through in playing music, as offensive as we may be.”
There’s certainly a kind of proud irreverence in every musical trend, even in this pop oriented country that one could imagine was meant for transistor radios and long contemplative road trips. This rather sad music seems to find its counterbalance in comedy and the girls’ self-deprecation. Notably, maudlin revealed its lighter side one day on CBC, when Senja gave her ex-boyfriend’s number to the crowd, boyfriend for whom she wrote the song Poet, as a kind of vindication for a difficult break up.
During interviews, the girls also seem to juggle between official and off the record, since, when I asked them to talk about the song Give it Again that they sent to Nomag, they all answered: “Do you want the real story?”
Like many bands in the early stages of their career, LOTC have been lugging around an EP, along with a impressive catalogue of songs for a while now, and are finally embarking on the great adventure of a band with support, since they’ve recently signed with Kindling, a Warner subsidiary. The quartet launch their first album, Haunted Woman, at the Savoy on June 1st, after which they leave for Toronto, where part of the band lives now, to complete a four-day residency at the Drake Hotel. They will then follow this up with the Canadian summer festival circuit. These girls might be destined for long contemplative road trips after all.
Ladies of the Canyon launch their album Haunted Woman in 5 à 7 style tonight at Savoy du Métropolis.
by Félix Dyotte / translation by Toby Cayouette
