True Hussars

The Lonely Hunters are another new-ish band that I highly recommend. Nineties slacker indie rock acts like Dinosaur Jr, Throwing Muses and The Lemonheads are their most obvious inspirations, but they also throw in some more precious stylings in the Hidden Cameras/Belle and Sebastian tradition…..The new-wave synths and sugar-sweet harmonies of husband and wife duo Gareth and Laurie on “Dome Tower” are my personal fave.


-Jesse Locke - FFWD Magazine

Calgary has been in the news frequently in the last few years: oil, money, jobs, environmental issues, oil and money. Sadly the city has largely taken a back seat to Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto (and even Halifax, Winnipeg and Edmonton) when people talk about the revolution in Canadian Indie Music. The Lonely Hunters, the newest Canadian band to watch, just may change all of that. After a few mail mishaps I've finally obtained and heard in it's entirity the Lonely Hunters new CD 'the Chaste are Chased'.

Appropriately "Dome Tower" the first track on their new CD begins with the lines
"Yet There is light in the oil man's heart
yet there is pain
and a candle lit with furrowed brow
in the acid rain"
The 9 song disc "The Chaste are Chased" is throughly listenable throughout. It is both great in the background when you're talking with friends and not thinking about it much and at the same time complex and lyrically poetic enough that you can sit and contemplate it when you're alone and it's pouring from your MP3 Player.

I wish it were possible to introduce a new band without making comparisons to others, but it certainly seems the easiest and most straightforward way to do it. So: Think Belle and Sebastian with the garage band rawness of mid-80's Throwing Muses ("Fat Skier" era). Then throw in the odd bit of Wilco or Neko Case, even a bit of New Pornos - little dashes of alt. country but not enough to throw them into this category.

-Justin Beach CBC Radio 3
- Public Broadcasting.ca

The action will be at the West End Cultural Centre on Sunday night, where local indie imprint Grumpy Cloud Records will be hosting a show called Have Yrself a Grumpy Little Christmas, featuring Boats, The Western States and True Hussars (formerly The Lonely Hunters). Show starts at 8 p.m.; tickets are $10.

"Last year we did a Christmas show at The Academy and it was a lot of fun," says True Hussars frontman/Grumpy Cloud co-founder Gareth Williams. "The West End had one day available in December, so I booked the show before putting together the lineup. There won't be any Christmas songs or anything, but it'll be a fun night."

The gig will also be an opportunity for True Hussars to make their onstage debut. After some big changes - both in lineup and sound - Williams decided to drop The Lonely Hunters moniker and start fresh.

"I'd been Lonely Hunters for a long time, and it didn't reflect what this was anymore,"
Williams says. "It was just me left. It's definitely less rock than we were, say, a year ago. There's six of us now, so there's more going on."

True Hussars plan to record an album early next year. In other Grumpy Cloud news, Williams swears the Neil Young tribute album we keep mentioning in these pages will be out sometime in 2010. And be sure to keep an ear out for the new album by The Consumer Goods' Tyler Shipley. Apparently it's a banjo record.

- Uptown Magazine