Jonas & The Massive Attraction

Sunday, 31 October 2010 00:14
CD Review

Artist: Jonas and the Massive Attraction

Title: Big Slice

Label: Big Slice Records

Release Date: September 14, 2010

Band Members: Jonas Tomalty (lead vocals), Corey Diabo (guitar), J.S. Baciu (Bass), Francis Fillion (Drums), Henri "H" Fortier (Keys)

Genre: Rock

Reviewed by: Tessa Perkins (Vancouver)

Yet another great band out of Montreal is gaining popularity and getting set to bring their rock to the rest of Canada and the world. Jonas Tomalty began his music career as a solo act performing in various bars in Montreal, then in 2004 he toured with Van Halen and in 2005 released his first album. After being nominated for two Juno awards (“Rock Album of The Year” and “New Artist of The Year”) and releasing a second album in 2006, Jonas decided to create this new band to highlight the fact that his music has never been a solo endeavour.



The band cites influences such as Kings of Leon, Aerosmith, The Killers, AC/DC, and U2, and I would say they are more on the AC/DC or Aerosmith side of that list. This album is full of beautifully crafted songs with a strong, filled-out sound and lots of emotion that make a very solid debut for this group.



The title track “Big Slice” is the first single, and it’s a hard-hitting rock song that shows what these guys are made of. Other great songs include the epic “Seize The Day” and “The Deep End,” the more raunchy “What Type O’ Ride Are You,” the hard rock “Addiction,” and the slower “World Fading.”



Jonas took a much more personal approach on this release, co-writing nine of the eleven songs and co-producing the album. His goal was to write songs that were powerful even with just a guitar and a voice. "We wrote this album with the intention that the songs stand strong in their most simple state. Great songs have a raw emotion at their core. We then layered the instruments to build up an album that’s big in sound and very much us in every way," says Jonas.


Jonas and the Massive Attraction are currently touring in Quebec until December with more Canadian dates to be announced soon. For more information, visit: http://www.myspace.com/jonaslive.





Track Listing:



1. Big Slice

2. Seize the Day

3. Not a Hero

4. More Than a Moment

5. What Type O' Ride Are You

6. World Fading

7. Burn Bright

8. Exit Wound

9. Addiction

10. Haley

11. The Deep End


- Pressplus1.com

Following a period of turmoil, Monreal rocker Jonas Tomalty is ready to take his career to the next level.

"I think, for me, the whole thing is a question of timing," said the 31-year-old frontman of Jonas and The Massive Attraction, appearing Friday at Windsor's The Blind Dog, 671 Ouellette Ave.

A new band, a new record label, and a new manager have joined the Jonas fold in the last couple of years. Last fall, his third album, Big Slice, finally saw the light of day after a dispute with his former label.

It has been more than two years in the making, but it promises to bring his brand of melodic rock the attention it deserves.

Sometimes compared favourably with fellow Montrealer and friend, Sam Roberts, Tomalty is actually more akin to the chart-busting Nickelback, and that's no surprise. The big-hair, balls-to-the-wall music of the 1970s was what inspired him and longtime collaborator Corey Diabo, his lead guitarist, to abandon their blues roots and play contemporary rock.

Throw in a dash of Bruce Springsteen-style blue collar songwriting, and you have the formula that produced the new album and its first two singles, Big Slice and Seize the Day.

"I have been playing with Corey for 14 years," Tomalty said. "We met on the Montreal blues circuit. But as much as our roots are in the blues, we are both big fans of rock and the music of the 1970s."

Tomalty, in fact, likes to relate the story of how he rewrote the lyrics of Neil Young's Rockin' in the Free World at the tender age of 10.

"Oh, I tried to sound so worldly, like I'd been everywhere and seen everything."

But the song's simple chord structure, a quick shift to a minor key, and the passion of Young's performance left indelible marks on him.

He also credits Montreal's Leonard Cohen with having an influence on his writing.

"Like any Canadian city," he said, "Montreal's change of seasons has an influence on its music and its musicians. We have very, very cold and snowy winters when we have to stay inside for four months a year. Then we have beautiful summers when we can go wild and spend most of the day outdoors."

Tomalty has been performing almost from the day he left high school. It led to experimentation with drugs and alcohol in his 20s.

"I think I pushed the limit to some extent. I had the chance to stand at the edge and see where it might lead. But I don't regret it. Life evolves and you find different things to concentrate on and different inspirations."

Although his performance in Windsor will be his first, it's not his first visit to the city. He has relatives here and plans to do some family catching-up.

The concert at the Blind Dog is an all-ages show, doors open at 5: 30 p.m. Tickets $10 and $12 at the door.

- Windsor Star

EDMONTON — He’s a shaggy-haired rocker. He lives in Montreal. He was nominated for best new artist at the Juno Awards.

He’s ... not Sam Roberts, but Jonas Tomalty. He’s one of Quebec’s biggest Anglo stars of the ’00s, but unlike Roberts, he’s had little luck in the rest of Canada.

“Of the first album (Jonas), I sold 95,000 copies — and 97 per cent of them were in Quebec,” says Tomalty. “Hey, I’m not complaining — we still got to sell a crazy amount of albums.”

Seven years and a new name later — Jonas & The Massive Attraction — he’s finally starting to sell albums outside of Quebec. The meaty title track from his band’s latest effort, Big Slice, is Tomalty’s first national hit, peaking at No. 7 on rock radio. A touching tribute to his parents, Seize The Day, is now making its way up the charts.

“You hear the story over and over again — it’s like a nine-year overnight success,” says Corey Diabo, Tomalty’s friend and guitarist since 1997. “It takes a lot of hard work.”

Hard work, yes, but a little help from the scheduling gods doesn’t hurt, either — and, for once, Tomalty’s timing couldn’t be better. With no new Nickelback album on the immediate horizon, Canadian radio stations are clamouring for alternatives — and not just pop-rock jokers Hedley, angst-filled Three Days Grace or bar-rockers The Trews.

Big Slice won’t win any awards for originality, but Tomalty doesn’t want to be the next musical visionary. He’s more like the ringmaster of a sweaty, rock ‘n’ roll circus — complete with ballistic guitar riffs, sexual innuendoes (Big Slice), potentially offensive lyrics about women (What Type O’ Ride Are You?), and a few sensitive ballads. Kind of like Nickelback.

“Music has kind of lost its fun,” says 30-year-old Tomalty, who will swing by Edmonton on Sunday. “Some people take it to a freaky level, some people take it to a dirty level, but what about good ol’ fashioned rock ‘n’ roll fun?”

The Massive frontman — he’s well over six feet, dwarfing Sam Roberts — is an unabashed fan of classic rock, citing The Doors, Led Zeppelin, The Who and Neil Young as some of his early inspirations. (When Tomalty was 10, he even wrote another verse to Ol’ Shaky’s hit, Rockin’ In The Free World. “I know, eh?” he laughs. “Cocky as a kid.”)

In his late teens, he fronted an alt-rock band, Rubberman, for a few years — until he met Diabo at a Montreal blues bar, and voila! They formed their own band and released Jonas, a blues-rock record, in 2004, then Suite Life in 2007.

“In the second album, our blues roots were still slightly visible,” says Tomalty. “Now, we’re certainly not as blues-founded as we were in the past, but it’s still in our blood. We still like to whip it out onstage ... and play some blues.”

Tomalty’s sweet life, however, started to curdle as he butted heads with his record label. The company wanted him to record covers — his first big hit was Edge of Seventeen by Stevie Nicks — and insisted on marketing him as a solo act.

“We tried for years to call it a band and we were constantly getting into these head-to-heads with them,” says Tomalty. “It was never a solo project, it was always a band. So as soon as we broke up with (the label) officially, the first thing on the docket was to name the band. Jonas & The Massive Attraction was one of the first we came up with and it took us about a year to go back and decide it was the best name out of all of them.”

His next steps? He found a new manager; launched his own label, Big Slice Records; then collaborated with other songwriters. For Big Slice, Tomalty and Diabo worked with songstress Simon Wilcox, who has penned tunes with Edmonton’s Ten Second Epic and Social Code, and producer/tunesmith Thomas (Tawgs) Salter, who has written hits for Josh Groban, Lights and Lenka.

“Some of the songs are heart-wrenching, like Exit Wound or Haley, but others are completely ridiculous — like What Type O’ Ride Are You, comparing a woman to a circus.

“We want people to come to our shows and not give a s*** about anything. There’s too much going on in the world. You need escape for a little while. It’s just rock ‘n’ roll, man.”

Jonas & The Massive Attraction will also perform Friday, July 1 at Boonstock Music Festival near Gibbons.

ssperounes@edmontonjournal.com

- Edmonton Journal

True, 5,000 is not a strong number for the venue, and there were probably less than 1,000 in the place when Jonas and his band, the Massive Attraction, hit the stage to open the show. Even so, the city’s favourite hard rocker prowled every inch of the stage set up, catwalk included, and did an utterly heroic job of engaging the audience. For the duration of their 45-minute set, Jonas and band were the hardest-working men in show business. And by the time they closed with Edge of Seventeen, they had clearly won over everyone who wasn’t still outside the concert area waiting at the beer stand.

- Montreal Gazette