the Darling DeMaes
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the Darling DeMaes

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"DeMaes Grow Places"

Montreal up-and-comers The Darling DeMaes make some change.

If bands could go through puberty, Montreal’s the Darling DeMaes would be pimply-faced and squeaky-voiced.

The band’s lead singer and guitarist, Erik Virtanen, moved to Montreal from Vancouver Island last year. He started playing music at open mic nights around the city, and through that met a Quebecer named Buz. Elysia Torneria, who sings and plays the glockenspiel, came to some of their early shows and eventually joined the band, who are playing at the Artel tonight.

A year later, after experimenting with different combinations of percussionists, the band has rounded itself out with Alec Ellsworth on bass and Fred Rail on drums.

“We’ve just been changing ever since we started, so we’re kind of used to it now,” Virtanen said. “It’s been a part of the band that we do everything different—every show is different, really different styles. We can play an acoustic show that’s really laid back, or have a really full band with distortion.”

And most bands would be hesitant to experiment so publicly, Virtanen said change is something their fans have come to expect from the DeMaes.

“For people who have seen us a lot and come to a lot of shows, they see something different every time, and so all of these changes have been a part of the band too,” he said.

Nowhere is their volatility better demonstrated than in the list of artists they’ve been compared to. From Belle and Sebastian to Pavement to the Ronettes, their sound is hard to pin down. Their Myspace page calls them “Indie/Rock/Acoustic;” a few more forward slashes would need to be added to adequately communicate their sound.

A dainty negotiation between the worlds of folk and rock music, the band’s music is emotional and bare-boned, conveying an unabashed earnestness rarely seen in indie music.

The DeMaes feel a bit like the awkward younger brother as they try to make their mark in a sea of hip, high-profile bands in Montreal.

“We’re finding that the French culture is really, really supportive and we’re finding that the English culture has a bit of a history in the music scene here. We’re outsiders, because I’m not from here, and we’re playing a style of music that isn’t exactly what the indie scene in Montreal is playing right now,” he said. “We always stand a little bit outside the indie scene.”

Virtanen moved to Montreal originally to pursue his day-time career as a film screen writer. He’s since been able to lend that ability to his music writing.

“I think our songs are really image-oriented. The songs all tell a story and it seems like on our EP, every song is about a different type of girl,” Virtanen said. “I really spend a lot of time on the lyrics. It’s a really important part of every song.

The Darling DeMaes’ first EP, Winter Keep Us Warm, was released this May and is available for free download on the band’s site. Largely the result of a lucky break, the album was recorded and produced by Mark Andrew Lawson, a British producer who was visiting Montreal for a month and booked the DeMaes for a showcase he was putting together of upcoming Montreal bands. After the showcase, Lawson called the DeMaes and said he wanted to see them again.

“We played for him in a living room, and it kind of inspired him to want to create a unique feel for an album,” Virtanen said. “He wanted us to play live in a studio and he would mix it so it sounded like we were all sitting around in a living room, as if we were in a semi-circle around someone who listened to the record on headphones.”

As the band begins to promote the EP, which was recorded live off the floor, they’re also embarking on a new journey—literally. This month signifies not only the band’s first tour, but their first time playing outside of Montreal.

“We’ve been taking things one step at a time, and this felt like a good time to get outside the city and to go to different places,” Virtanen said. “When we started playing in Montreal, I thought it would be good if music could take me to different places and give me different experiences I wasn’t having if I wasn’t playing music.”

Though any change has its growing pains, the Darling DeMaes seem to be taking it all in stride.

“In terms of growing, it’s not scary or anything. We’re just kind of going along with the flow and it’s really fun,” Virtanen said. “What we’re doing right now is really nice, and if it grows, then it grows.”

- Meghan Sheffield, Queen's Journal (Kingston)


"Darlings Keep Winter Warm"

Breezy, plucky guitars layered with male-female harmonies shroud the restrained urgency of lyrics written by Montreal-based band the Darling DeMaes. Their debut acoustic EP Winter Keep Us Warm, released in May 2007, features eight tracks dealing with ambivalence, hopefulness and love. Gaining exposure and momentum in recent months by playing in popular Montreal festivals like the Montreal Fringe and the Indyish Monthly Mess, these indie darlings might be the next big act out of Montreal’s thriving music scene that has produced bands like Arcade Fire, Stars and The Dears.

While teaching English in Korea, vocalist Erik, originally from Vancouver Island, wrote and played most of the songs in many of the Western bars. Citing Nirvana as his initial reason of picking up a guitar at age twelve, Erik also lists off influences ranging from The Beatles to The Smiths, and Nick Cave to The Pixies.

The album is easy to absorb and get into, allowing the listener to achieve greater meaning with every listen in part to broodier lyrics sung sweet. Relying mostly on vocal harmony and guitars, the DeMaes pepper their sound with the glockenspiel, mandolin and melodica, creating a sound likened to Belle and Sebastian, The Shins or Paul Simon. Darker lyrics such as “I saw a show at four o’clock, maybe five. It showed this picture of a young girl who died. She lay face down, a man drove a nail through her head, and as she died her body shook, and they had sex,” contrasts with the up-tempo mood in the song “A Day in Her Life.” Named after a dead porn star, the band enjoys walking the line between sweet, melodic guitar-driven melody on the surface with something a little darker and moodier in the subtext.

Recorded in just ten hours, in a style similar to 1960s Phil Spector ‘Wall of Sound,’ production technique, the EP is available for free download at http://www.darlingdemaes.com and features band members Erik, Elysia and Buz “just playing.” The results are natural, organic and seemingly effortless. The band’s formation mimics their sound as well – Erik was playing open mics around Montreal when he met a Quebecois “music nerd,” Buz, online. A newspaper advertisement later, and vocalist Elysia joined Erik and Buz on the Darling project.

The Darling DeMaes are currently on tour and will be playing at Cameron House on Queen Street West on October 27 with the Coal Mine Canaries. Having already written approximately forty songs since putting out the EP, Erik, a self-proclaimed “fast writer,” hopes to record an album more representative of the “clear vision” he sees his band heading towards, especially now that he’s proven what his gang of musicians “just playing,” can accomplish. For more information on the band, upcoming gigs, lyrics and songs check out their MySpace page: http://myspace.com/theDarlingDemaes

- Rafay Agha, The Medium (Toronto)


"Downer Disco"

It wasn't meant to be a concept album - the theme just kept arising says the Darling DeMaes' front mourner Erik Virtanen. A User's Guide to Raising the Dead is the first full-length, full-band album for the Montreal five-piece. It follows 2007's Winter Keep Us Warm EP. The new album, subtitled Songs of Spring, was recorded by Joseph Donovan at Montreal's Mountain City studios.

Pop lines sneak into the quiet, mostly acoustic tunes adding a contrasting joy to the maudlin stories. Recorded voices, made to sound like film clips, add an eerie undertone to songs like The Ghost of Gwangali Beach, while Young Mothers offers respite from the artful gloom with its dry wit. The lyrics of Winter in Montreal sound like a coping mechanism. To wit: "Cold winter nights, all blow away, when you twirl in her summer clothes".

This is a band that finds inspiration between the highs and lows - finding common ground with Stars, Morrissey and other celebrated melodramatics.

"It's a place that's really real," Erik Virtanen says. "The mix of joy and suffering is what everything is about".

"When you play music, there's a ghostly attribute," Virtanen says.

"When you even listen to music, you're hearing things that are gone and that are being brought back to life for a little while. When I'm playing live, it feels like I'm constantly reliving experiences. That's where the title for the album came from."

Makes you wonder what the Darling DeMaes' take on summer would be.
- Fateema Sayani, Ottawa Citizen


"Swept Away by Sweet Dark Irony"

WHAT DO YOU GET when you cross an Olympic athlete with a dead porn star, the boy next door with a psychopath, and a gruesome death with a happy tune? The Darling DeMaes, a Montreal band that launched its debut CD, A User’s Guide for Raising the Dead (Songs of Spring) earlier this month.

The name was inspired by the story of Lea De Mae, a Czech high diver who turned to porn after a serious injury and died of a brain tumour in 2004 at the age of 27. Though she’s not a character in any of the DeMaes’ songs, she is the perfect figurehead for a band that revels in ironic combinations which raise, celebrate and lament the dead. Their lyrics tell small, disturbing, poetic stories while their music provides catchy hooks, ethereal harmonies, and infectious choruses that won’t let you go.

All but one of the songs on A Users Guide are written by Erik Virtanen, a transplanted Vancouverite who works as a scriptwriter, and whose sweet and sometimes tremulous voice is, in turns, vulnerable and eerily seductive, luring you into landscapes you might have otherwise avoided, out of both instinctive fear and sadness. The broken, the used, and the disenfranchised are the stars of the show: teenaged mothers, fragile-hearted sweethearts, men trapped in ice and girl soldiers deployed to fight a man’s war.

In A Day in Her Life, we are introduced to the young victim of a sex crime, and invited to “join hands and kill the ones, Who make this and evil place.” Before long you’re joyously singing along. In Love with Patty Duke is a love song to the actress in her role as Neely O’Hara, the drug addicted, self-destructive diva in the 1967 film Valley of the Dolls. “There is love in the air,” Virtanen croons in the chorus, and again it is almost impossible not to be swept up in his limerence.

The DeMaes’ sound is hard to classify, combining warm folk, a bit of old country, a more dynamic rock vibe, a hint of 1980s New Wave a la Cure, and some Radiohead-like threnodies. It is sometimes upbeat, often haunting, constantly surprising yet never confusing, as if their music always existed, even though you have never heard these particular songs before. The production is crisp and clean, and there is a welcome continuity from beginning to end—a full journey through sound, story and emotion that cleverly drops off at the end in a form of coitus interruptus which leaves the final song unfinished and the listener wanting more.

Though Virtanen’s voice and vision clearly drives A User’s Guide, it would not be so powerfully and precisely delivered without Tasha Cyr’s harmonies, Buz’s exacting guitar, Alec Ellesworth’s bass and harmonica, and Sami Kizilbash’s lively percussion. The Darling DeMaes developed and honed their unique sound playing live, and have now successfully transferred this strange and subtle artfulness onto an impressive, must-have CD.

- Tess Fragoulis, Rover Arts


"Oh My Darling"

In a scene oversaturated with Montreal-based artists, The Darling DeMaes have taken themselves to the next phase this past year, touring extensively through Ontario and Quebec to rave reviews.

Named after the infamous Lea De Mae, the self-destructive European porn star who committed suicide, the band chose to be selective with their moniker. "We wanted a name that sounded classy, yet had a darker meaning once you looked closer," insists lead vocalist Erik Virtanen.

The group's first EP, Winter Keep Us Warm, had originally been intended as a demo until the band decided it was strong enough for their first release. "After being passed around on the Internet for some time, we decided to make it available for free on our website," says Virtanen. However, the stripped-down acoustic session is far from reflective of what the group reproduces live. With plans to begin production on their full-length this spring, Virtanen explains their next recorded effort will be similar to what you'll experience live. Even so, "Our live show contains a lot of percussion and more of a full band effect that isn't apparent on the EP," he explains.

While it's easy to throw around the term "indie" with reference to The DeMaes, the group's output is a unique blend of classic folk with their own upbeat and relevant approach. "Each member of the band brings something different to the table musically. Our influences range everywhere from artists from the early '60s to Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds," reveals Virtanen. The product is a poetic, lyrically focused batch of songs that are likely to set them aside from the rest of the genre. - Steve Adamyk, Ottawa XPress


"CD Review from ICI Montreal (translated from French)"

**** (Four star rating)
Darling DeMaes, hybrid local band, defends itself from invoking any
predecessor in their music, staggering their sound on the fragility and complexity of their pop, acoustic and chiseled melodies. Rarely a new band
knows itself that well and rarely are they so adventurous on a first EP.
Released in May, this album amazes by the proximity it establishes with the listener as soon as the second song kicks off (the delectable hymn of contrasts "Young Mothers") and continues to do so until the very last fulfilling jolt ("With A Magnifying Glass", all in haunting and then rushed guitars, and "A Day In Her Life" shine particularly bright). With vocal harmonies as a bonus. Sept 14th at Quai des Brumes. (EC) - Evelyne Côté, ICI Montréal


"Light Tragedies (translated from French)"

The twilight universe of the Darling Demaes mixes a disconcerting softness with red and black.

On a sunny afternoon, a phone call to Montreal to talk with Erik Virtanen about his band, the Darling DeMaes. Lea De Mae had a tragic destiny. Member of the national Tchec diving team, she injured her spine in a bad way, and then recycled herself into the porno industry. She died at the age of 27 of a brain cancer. This story illustrates the Vancouver native’s interest for contrasts. “It’s a dark and tragic story. We took lots of time to find it”, reveals the singer.
The Darling DeMaes is a trio of pop-rock music, light guitars and vocal harmonies, a vocal duo which tells stories… twisted ones. The pop luster which wraps every song from their first demo, Winter Keep Us Warm, contrasts with this fixation for stories gone bad. Celebrations of the twilight, the titles make neighbors of tenderness and toughness with a talent that almost dissipates the discomfort.
Winter Keep Us Warm was recorded in 10 hours in March 2007. We discover a song where the melodies remind us of the world of Feist, Josh Ritter and Belle & Sebastian. Virtanen’s voice lands softly on the guitar chords of Gatineau guitarist Marc-André Mongrain, aka Buz, who’s omnipresent on this album. Then comes the voice of Elysia Torneria, who was met a concert, attaching itself without making waves. It’s this same way that the band met the man who would produce the album: “It was pretty intense. Mark Andrew (Lawson) saw us play and offered to produce the album for free. He had the idea to record it in only one day and to capture it live in studio, like the old albums from the Rolling Stones, since he had to leave for England soon.”
This exercise seems to have been fruitful because the album is of dreaded efficiency. We meet a promiseing up-and-coming band with a clean sound and a solid base to build on. As the conditions of the recording of this first essay are minimal (acoustic and live), we can really feel the core: “I told myself that if I made the effort to compose in an acoustic way, I would write more interesting songs than if I just pressed a distortion pedal to help me create a sound.”
The band gets set to perform several concerts in Quebec and Ontario, while it will be accompanied by additional musicians. We can expect to witness the bright side of the Darling DeMaes: “We don’t want to play the dark rock stars. This job has already been filled, it’s over now. We want to make people joyful”. From contrasts to paradoxes, the Darling DeMaes already own the essence to feed a very promising mechanism. We just need to see how this poetry will take life on stage.
(Philippe Alarie)
- Philippe Alarie, Voir Ottawa/Gatineau


"Montreal’s The Darling DeMaes are one of Canada’s best kept secrets"

Montreal’s The Darling DeMaes are one of Canada’s best kept secrets; somehow equally playful and sinister, the band grabs your attention and never lets go. (...)

I wish I had heard about this record last year when it surfaced in November. It would have skyrocketed up my Best-of List and honestly, I’ve listened to nothing else since I picked it up. I’m not sure if being the next big thing from Montreal is quickly becoming the Canadian equivalent of being the next hot band on Stereogum, but The Darling DeMaes are talented and unique enough to take over the Canadian indie scene. This record is a must have. - HeroHill


"CMW (Toronto) concert review"

Grade: 84

The Darling DeMaes are generating some major buzz in their hometown; if Montreal is still the next Seattle, we should probably be keeping our eyes on them. (...)

They were an exceptionally cordial bunch and thanked the Silver Dollar audience endlessly. It's a bit of a redundant thing when you're talking about this venue, because the stage is practically in the middle of the crowd. But The Darling DeMaes were definitely aware that they had patrons to cater to and that gesture's always welcomed. - CHART Attack


"Ghastly Stories Set to Warm Sound"

Remember when Stars were just on the rise? That's where the Darling DeMaes are now.

The five-piece comes sneaking out of the mad Montreal music scene with their quiet, plucking, acoustic guitar-pop. Their debut EP, released in May, is called Winter Keep Us Warm.

The band is fronted by Erik Virtanen, with Marc-André Mongrain (guitar, mandolin, and the band's one Gatineau-residing member), Sami Kizilbash (drums), Elysia Torneria (glockenspiel) and Alec Ellsworth (bass, harmonica).

Like Stars, this is a band that loves contrasting ghastly maudlin stories with a quiet sound. Winter Keep Us Warm is full of steely-string strumming and grand harmonies. The dripping sentimentality, character sketches, and dry humour are to be appreciated all on their own. Set against the spare -- but warm -- sound, the stories are magnified.
Singer and guitarist Virtanen works as a screenwriter outside of the band, but there is little distinction between his work there and his work in the Darling DeMaes. Both careers converge in the song In Love with Patty Duke, one of the EP's eight tracks, all of which deal with different women.

"I wrote that song after I saw her screen test for Valley of the Dolls," Virtanen says. "It looked way too real when she was pretending to be a depressed drug user."
The song contains other references, too: there are a few verses that were inspired by The Ronettes' Be My Baby. "I worked in '60s sound influences from songs about boyfriends and girlfriends and brought in different subject matter to give people a different feel that's uncomfortable in some ways."

That story is much like the story behind the band's name, taken from porn star Lea DeMae, whose life story has a depressing, downward arc. Once a member of the Czech national diving team, she injured her spine while training for the Olympics and turned to making adult films before dying of a rare form of brain cancer in 2004 at the age of 27.

"We wanted a nice name that sounds beautiful and classy from afar, but when you look closer, it has dark aspects," Virtanen says. "The music has a nice surface but take a closer listen and there's more beneath the surface."

The Darling DeMaes play two sets at Hull-sector venue Le Petit Chicago, 50 Promenade du Portage, Gatineau, Wednesday, 9:30 p.m., $6.
(08/11/2007) - Fateema Sayani, Ottawa Citizen


Discography

"A User's Guide to Raising the Dead (Songs of Spring)" (LP, 2008)
recorded and mixed by Joseph Donovan & Adrian Popovich
produced by Erik Virtanen
mastered by Noah Mintz

"Winter Keep Us Warm" (Acoustic EP, 2007)
produced and mixed by Mark Andrew Lawson

regular airplay on CBC Radio 1 & 3, top 30 on university charts, streaming through those infinite indie sites and podcasts.

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Bio

"Singer Erik Virtanen's balance of bleeding heart and backhanded humour, twin fixations on love and death and faint retro rock n roll echo make him a contender for the next big new Morrissey." ~ Lorraine Carpenter, MONTREAL MIRROR

"Montreal’s The Darling DeMaes are one of Canada’s best kept secrets; somehow equally playful and sinister, the band grabs your attention and never lets go. (..) The Darling DeMaes are talented and unique enough to take over the Canadian indie scene. This record is a must have."
~ Ben Acker, HEROHILL (Halifax)

"A User's Guide to Raising the Dead (Songs of Spring)" is the first full-length album from Montreal's The Darling DeMaes (pronounced de-mays, named after the tragic porn actress), and the first true introduction to the quintet's darkly tales sung sweet.

With "A User's Guide", the demaes finally bring their captivating, spirited live performance to record, complete with alluring male-female-male harmonies, melodic guitar arrangements, roaming bass, and textured rhythms in intricately arranged songs that schizophrenically jump from section to section with an ease that somehow makes sense. A complex simplicity permeates the demaes' music. Subtly shifting time signatures, surprising song-structures, and unexpected chord choices are piloted by songwriter Erik Virtanen's unique-and-sometimes-odd-but-always-honest storytelling
that seamlessly blends joyful love, joyful hate, humour, regret, and utter horror.

In April 2008, after releasing an acoustic demo-turned-Winter Keep Us Warm EP amidst the chaos of Montreal's overflowing underground, F.A.C.T.O.R (Foundation to Assist Canadian Talent on Recordings) selected The Darling DeMaes as a recipient of their Juried Independent Sound Recording loan. Suddenly, the band was in talks with the city's top studios and producers and, in June 2008, the demaes headed to Mountain City studio to record with Joseph Donovan (The Dears, Sam Roberts). Later that summer, they took to Toronto to finish the album with "mastering guru" Noah Mintz (Feist, Broken Social Scene).

The recording session had each band member staking claim as a multiinstrumentalist: vocalist, Tasha, on vibes, piano, and a little glockenspiel; Buz on guitars, vocals, melodica, and mandolin; Erik on rhythms guitars and finding new instrumental ways to use his voice; drummer, Sami, on vocals, bells, blocks, and ...(*sigh) cowbell; and bassist, Alec, taking up harmonica. The band also invited unique guest performances from actress Christine Ghawi (actually acting out a scene in studio), folk-singer James Finnerty, jazz-singer Emma Frank, and spoken-word performer Song Min Young.

In their debut LP, The Darling DeMaes produce 12 refreshingly eclectic and melodic pop noir tunes that play on the inspirations and talents of five passionate music-lovers humbly trying to journey a little outside the box while never leaving the listener behind.