It’s the start of a new year, which means it’s time for another Out of this Spark anniver­sary party. I must give credit to OOTS mas­ter­mind Stu­art Dun­can for switch­ing things up this year, mov­ing every­thing from the cav­ernous con­fines of The Gar­ri­son (home to last year’s cel­e­bra­tions, writ­ten up here) to the much cozier inte­rior of The Tranzac’s South­ern Cross Lounge.

Con­tinue reading →

Tags: Evening Hymns, Jenny Omnichord, Kite Hill, OOTS Family Band, Out of this Spark, Richard Laviolette, The Pale Mornings, The Phonemes, Tranzac · 1 Comment

My favourite record label Out of this Spark cel­e­brated their 3rd anniver­sary in Jan­u­ary with a con­cert at the Gar­ri­son, with per­for­mances from their entire ros­ter: Jenny Omni­chord, Evening Hymns, For­est City Lovers and The D’Urbervilles. At the end of the evening, all the bands returned to the stage to play a few songs together, includ­ing this one by Jenny Omni­chord called “Pain of Maybes.”

Let me tell you a lit­tle bit about Jenny Omni­chord in case you aren’t famil­iar with all that she’s done. Her old band, The Bar­mitz­vah Broth­ers, released five albums between 2000 and 2007. Their last album together, 2007’s Let’s Express Our Motives: An Album of Under-Appreciated Job Songs, is one of the best albums of the last ten years if you ask me. It’s pretty much per­fect. Each song tack­les a dif­fer­ent occu­pa­tion, from library page to jan­i­tor to rodeo clown, using a wide range of styles to cap­ture the essence of each job. Since then, Jenny has released two more full-lengths and a few EPs, her most recent being Char­lotte or Otis: Duets for Chil­dren, Their Par­ents and Other Peo­ple Too, which fea­tured col­lab­o­ra­tions with Jim Guthrie, Tony Dekker, Shad and many more.

Based off of Jenny’s almost annual out­put, we should be due for another album this year, and I for one can’t wait! As for Out of this Spark, it looks like it will be a pretty busy year, with new albums from For­est City Lovers and The D’Urbervilles antic­i­pated for the fall.

Tags: Forest City Lovers, Jenny Omnichord, Out of this Spark, The D'Urbervilles, The Garrison · Leave a comment

I didn’t get off work until mid­night last night, mean­ing I missed Taylor’s big gig, but I still made it to the Tran­zac after­wards for the lat­est OOTS pre­sen­ta­tion. Luck­ily that seemed to be where most peo­ple ended up after the Tim­ber Tim­bre show so I was still able to see some friends, which is key. I missed the first few acts (Chris Yang and Gavin Gar­diner) but got there just in time to see Guelph’s Richard Lavi­o­lette, whose quiet mas­ter­piece A Lit­tle Less Like a Rock, a Lit­tle More Like a Home was a favourite of mine a few years back, and who I last saw at Sap­pyFest about a year ago. How­ever, in stark con­trast to that show, yes­ter­day Richard was backed up by his new-ish band (well, it was the first time I’ve seen them) the Hol­low Hooves, who brought some wel­come mus­cle to his frag­ile sound­ing songs. It was a very dif­fer­ent per­for­mance than I’m used to him putting on, but I liked it all the same.

I ducked out after a few tunes to catch up with some friends out­side, but hope­fully it’s not another year before I see Richard again.

Tags: Out of this Spark, Richard Laviolette, Tranzac · 5 Comments