Bronze Leaf

Artist Information

Biography

"haunting, skilfully crafted ... She’s a stand-out in the genre with her boundary-pushing guitar playing, emotionally-charged lyrics, and beautiful vocal melodies. Go see her." - SEE Magazine Local Bands to Watch 2009

"gorgeously melancholic and somewhat ephemeral, like a lover's last words hanging in the air." - VUE Weekly

"Catch her now while she remains within our ether!" - Aaron Levin (Weird Canada)

Bronze Leaf is born of the space between intimacy and distance. Her ghostly instrumental evocations shroud listeners in an unrepentant nostalgia, one that faces head-on our memories of fractured kinship and emotional epiphany. With a lyrical sensibility that favours showing over telling, she is well equipped to melt many an icy heart.

Recorded in a basement in the world’s most northernly major city (Edmonton, Alberta), Bronze Leaf’s debut full-length album Bread Crumbs (Champion City Records) captures a rare, transient warmth. Bronze Leaf’s dialogue with memory and melancholy takes its elusive form in an ethereal space-time mapped by Champion City recording deity Eric Cheng (Spreepark, Portraits). Somewhere on the horizon between singer-songwriter and avant-folk, Bread Crumbs weaves paths of contradiction; haunted but hopeful, its strength is its subtlety.

Armed with guitars, delay pedals, and looping mechanicals, Bronze Leaf, a.k.a. Amy Macdonald, arose in Edmonton in 2008 to join a new wave of psychedelic folk artists transcending Canada into the bewildering nether-zone of fringe success. Not one to specialize, in 2009 Amy began navigating the uncomfortable boundaries between Bronze Leaf’s earthy folk and her frenetic, screaming vocals in the mathy weird-core band Gyre, Spire & Spindle—all while holding down keyboard duties for post-rock screamo heavies Book of Caverns. She will be leaving Bread Crumbs in her stead from her home on the prairies to the wilds of the east coast in May 2010, before relocating to Montreal.

Instrumentation

Eric Cheng - Drums, keys, Percussion
Matthew Israelson - Guitar, keys
Amy Macdonald - Guitar, voice

Discography

Birthday Tentacles - split w/ Likewise Vultures (Champion City, 2010)
Produced by Cecil Frena (GOBBLE GOBBLE)
Free download: http://www.championcityrecords.com/2010/03/happy_birthday_tentacles.html

Bread Crumbs - LP (Champion City, April 2010)
Produced by Eric Cheng (Spreepark, Portraits)
Free download at www.championcityrecords.com

Forthcoming: Split 7" with Jaded Hipster Choir

assorted surprises

Links

• MySpace
• Twitter

Audio

• Shell
  Listen   Download
• Text Exit
  Listen   Download
• Tree of Veins
  Listen   Download
• Anatomy
  Listen   Download
• Pennies
  Listen   Download

Lyrics

• Shell
• Text Exit
• Tree of Veins
• Anatomy

Video

Photo Gallery

Press

• Local Artists to Watch 2009 [+ Show ]
  

  "With only a few shows under her belt, Amy MacDonald has already enchanted many softies with her hau..."With only a few shows under her belt, Amy MacDonald has already enchanted many softies with her haunting, skilfully crafted singer/songwriter fare. She’s a stand-out in the genre with her boundary-pushing guitar playing, emotionally-charged lyrics, and beautiful vocal melodies. Go see her." - Mike Deane, SEE Magazine

• New Sounds: Bronze Leaf [+ Show ]
  

  ALBUM REVIEWS New Sounds: Bronze Leaf David Berry / david@vueweekly.com You might call the fo...ALBUM REVIEWS
  New Sounds: Bronze Leaf
  
  David Berry / david@vueweekly.com
  
  You might call the folk-tinged pop of Bronze Leaf atmospheric, but it hardly seems evocative of something so wide open; rather, the space created here seems more like the empty air between two people in a room, people with a certain intimacy who are still at a loss with what to do with another. Partly that comes from Amy Macdonald's voice, as substantial and affective as lingering perfume, partly from the full but unordained playing of bandmates Eric Cheng and Matthew Israelson, partly from Macdonald's knack with lyrical detail (she sings of "windbreaker skin" and people looking like a "sunlit dog"). However the combination comes together, though, the result is always something gorgeously melancholic and somewhat ephemeral, like a lover's last words hanging in the air.
  
  Bronze Leaf
  Bread Crumbs
  (Champion City)
  4 stars

• Bronze Leaf and Jom Comyn: The sound of history [+ Show ]
  

  BRONZE LEAF AND JOM COMYN: The sound of history Music and hors d'ouevres at Rutherford House Dav...BRONZE LEAF AND JOM COMYN: The sound of history
  Music and hors d'ouevres at Rutherford House
  
  David Berry / david@vueweekly.com
  
  At some point in the last year, Bronze Leaf, Jom Comyn and Giraffedactyl all independently found themselves in Eric Cheng's Champion City studio, putting together a new release in anticipation of Edmonton's brief but wondrous summer. Sharing a musical affinity beyond the locational coincidence, the three have decided to combine the release into a massive, of sorts, triple release party.
  
  Such an occasion demands something more special than the average club show, though, so in the interest of spreading some wings, the bands have decided to host the party at Rutherford House. Whatever its reputation as a tea house, it's one of the last places in the city you'd expect to find an independent music show—which was, as Bronze Leaf singer/songwriter Amy Macdonald explains, absolutely part of the charm.
  
  "One of the things about touring that I think all of us have been talking about and thinking about is the old buildings, because Edmonton has so few and does such a terrible job of preserving the ones it does have," she says from a stop in Kingston, where Bronze Leaf is continuing its tour before coming back to release Bread Crumbs. "A lot of the buildings we've been playing [on this tour] have some kind of history, the owners have stories about what the building's past lives were, and I'm really drawn to those places, so to find out that Rutherford House is hosting shows—it's not just another place: it has a storied feeling to it that I think is very cool."
  
  "I've played pretty much everywhere I can play here, I think, all the usual spots. This is something different, and might be a nice way to get the parents and grandparents out," she says with a smirk. "And I'm pretty stoked about the hors d'ouevres."
  
  History and hors d'ouevres seem like a solid enough reason as any to put a show together, but even the space of Rutherford seems particularly appropriate for these three bands. Though there are distinct differences, all three make music that has a certain delicate but lived-in feel, an abject prettiness and comfortable songcraft that seems especially suited to one of our rare historic sites.
  
  The similarities don't end with sound or recording spot, however. Talking to both Macdonald and Comyn, they reveal that something crucial to the songwriting process is a kind of unconscious creation, an intuitive process that seems to do little more than channel their surroundings into something unpolished but still glimmering.
  
  "I very much trust my unconscious," says Comyn, who makes relatively simple pop songs that seem whittled down from something more grandiose. "I don't even write the songs in a way, as funny as that sounds. When I do try too much, it sounds too forced—it's just, if this is the song that's here right now, I should just go with it."
  
  "Songwriting is a place where I can't think too much, or it just doesn't work," agrees Macdonald, whose songs tend to sound a little more traditional, but which frequently encompass an emotional nakedness that is bracing. "Sometimes it's just a way my hand will go on a guitar—or walking is another good one. Especially walking across the High Level Bridge. I've lived downtown and gone to the U of A the last couple years, and there's lots of time for songs to figure themselves out over there." V

• Bread Crumbs with dinner [+ Show ]
  

  Bread Crumbs with dinner Bronze Leaf releases Bread Crumbs By Joe Gurba With a resolved and...Bread Crumbs with dinner
  
  Bronze Leaf releases Bread Crumbs
  
  By Joe Gurba
  
  With a resolved and trusting foot, Amy MacDonald steps into the world of Music. Not the realm of art, but the competitive world of Music with a capital M — the industrialized and honest pursuit of sustenance, an occupation akin to the travelling evangelist.
  
  This is plaintively evident as I discuss her new album with her from somewhere between Edmonton and Moncton.
  
  “I plan to throw this record at whichever walls I can, and see where it sticks.”
  
  And indeed she has, venturing boldly across our massive nation, touring her debut full-length, Bread Crumbs.
  
  Accompanying her are Bronze Leaf’s newest band members, Champion City Records senator Eric Cheng and Brazilian Money patriot Matthew Isrealson, whom she eagerly exalts in our discussions.
  
  This is a new stratagem for Bronze Leaf, formerly a silhouetted woman, solitarily gracing so many stages throughout Edmonton, amassing — for three years now — an eager throng of fans anticipating this release.
  
  Bread Crumbs is finally poised to present itself on May 27th at the Rutherford House. What is particularly fitting about this release event is that the disc will be ceremoniously presented over a warm meal. For a long awaited record that eulogizes the last few years of the artist’s life, the intimacy of a dinner with its recipients seems only appropriate.
  
  “[Bread Crumbs] is in equal parts warnings, reminders, and love letters about what not to do. It’s a half-look back over the shoulder, a shaking head with a smile, a walking-away,” she says.
  
  The resulting spirit of the event is sure to inject the value and personal significance of this release into the record itself.
  
  Listening to Bread Crumbs, it unfolds much like a diary. The recording itself is clad in quietude. The majority of the album has the prevailing atmosphere of a blanket fort. Though it gets off to a mild start, songs like “Shell” invoke the ambiance of a Julie Doiron record while tracks like “Pennies” display MacDonald’s ability to write quietly catchy melodies in the vein of Gregory and The Hawk.
  
  Eric Cheng’s recording input cannot go unmentioned here. A highlight example of his excellent production choices can be found on “Text Edit”, arguably the strongest song on the disc, where Cheng leaves MacDonald’s breaths in the chorus unabashedly un-muted. They serve to punctuate the chorus and reel the listener back in again and again. Techniques like these give the album its signature intimacy.
  
  There is nevertheless room for growth on the next record. MacDonald’s songs are similar throughout and can begin to blend together. With that said, the album still remains beautiful, inviting, and available to invest yourself in.
  
  If MacDonald’s drive and work ethic equate the passion and personal investment she’s poured into her art, it is no question that Music will receive her eagerly. Attend this dinner and release show and bear witness to this self-fulfilling prophecy.
  
  Thursday, May 27, 2010 – Doors 7:30; Show 8:00 – All Ages / Licensed
  
  Only 75 tickets available – $10 in advance from Rutherford House / $15 at the door – FREE FOOD with ticket – Call: 780 422 4697

Setlist

Typically 20-45 minutes of original songs. Flexible to suit context.

Songs in regular rotation include:

Pennies
Shell
Spitting Image
Anatomy
Any Bridge That You Come To
New Feet
White Noise
Text Exit
Exodus

Basic Requirements

Calendar