Elizabeth Bruce

BFTL, a fivesome of mostly queer Vancouverites, totally suckerpunched me in my inner teenager when I heard their new CD, Great Loves. As a debut disc, Great Loves is a good calling card for the thrift store / kitchen sink arrangements (two vocalists with sometimes competing vocal lines, a two-keyboard synth player, two guitars, bass, and drums). The live show had a lot of energy and a lot of promise and I'd definitely go see 'em again.
Glenn's set (I guess I've seen him five or six times already) was throatier than normal — he had just returned from Pop Montreal that afternoon after exhaustive partying, he said from stage. But more interesting was the band's rearrangement. He's already undergone one seismic shift in accompaniment (going from traditional rock guitar format to cello-accordian-piano) so seeing him tweak the arrangements shouldn't have surprised me. I have to say I missed Marie-Josee Houle on a few of his songs (Mark even sung one of the counter-melodies into my ear from memory) but Glenn and cellist Patrick Dedauw had such extra sonic freedom that I think it was a net benefit to listeners. Is it permanent?
Opener Elizabeth Bruce has a powerful voice that you can tell she's been working to tame. Her compositions don't go the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, the major lift. In fact the piano arrangements were delightfully dissonant. The lyric content put her squarely into the emoter category, but there was a dramatic self-awareness... helpful, even necessary to navigating her dark themes.
Anyway, on the whole, a great night. See you at the next show? - marcusmccann.blogspot.com

Have you ever thought about
dropping out of school and
pursuing a music career? Art
Matters participant Elizabeth
Bruce is putting some serious
thought into doing just that next
year.

The singer and pianist
currently has a degree in music
from McGill and is studying as a
graduate student at Concordia.
“But next year I want to focus
on my music and putting together
a record,” Bruce says. Her music
has been described as “alterna-
tive folk pop,” to which she
replied, “close enough.”
“I get the word ‘pretty’ a lot,
which is good and bad,” she says.

Listeners appreciate the humour
in her songs.
“If I hear someone laughing
during one of my songs, it makes
me happy,” she says. “I like to
inject silliness into it.”

Bruce is looking to expand her
sound with the help of a band.
“I like instrumental pop music
and I’d like to find people to help
with that,” she says. Although
there are musicians who are
interested, Bruce says that it’s
difficult to get them together
because they’re busy with school
work. She’s also used to being a
solo performer.
“It’s simple,” she says. “You
just lock yourself in a room and
play.”

Bruce would like to get away
from “the over-sentimental songs
I wrote as a teenager—although I
still love it.”
Bruce lived in a house with a
piano since she was born. She was
self-taught and didn’t take lessons
until high school. She started
writing songs when she was 13.
“They were terrible songs,” she
says with a laugh.

Although the piano is her
instrument of choice, Bruce says,
“give me any instrument and I’ll
have fun.” She’s never been a big
fan of guitar playing, however.
“Guitar squishes your fingers
and it feels cramped,” she says.
“I’m used to the free range that I
have on the piano.”

Bruce is playing three shows
this month; two in Art Matters
and one at the Yellow Door.
“I want to get exposure at
Concordia,” she says of the Art
Matters shows, “maybe reach out
to people who are checking out
the festival or another artist.”

Her CD, though, won’t be out
for another year and a half.
“I want to take the time to do a
good job and not rush it," she says. - Saraline Grenier - The Link (March 2006)