In my home town the music scene is... well lets just stick with overshadowed. Being about the 7th largest city in Canada, we have a large enough population to create a relatively deep talent pool, but something about the fair city’s atmosphere just does not warrant anything spectacular to come from the art scene. There’s no hustle and bustle or multinational character like Toronto, or European flavouring of Montreal. For all intense and purposes, we’re like a really big farm town. We’re surrounded by farmlands, I went to school with many kids from small towns on the outskirts of the city and there’s a certain pastoral quality to even the tallest skyscraper in our downtown. It seems like the city itself is hell-bent against creating the sort of creative atmosphere where great art can survive. Not that we don’t try; The Arts Project and the art museum do their best to attract great visual art. Our new arena is deemed big enough to attract acts that would never have thought to come to our fair city (ie. Jay-Z). LOLA fest attracted the first installation of a Brian Eno piece a couple of years ago, and for a free festival, having bands like Do Make Say Think and Holy *** grace your stage is pretty darn good. Then we have the local bands, a number of who possess real talent, trying to push our city onto the musical map. Olenka & The Autumn Lovers are one such band, and their debut self-titled album make a good push for wide recognition.
The sound isn’t all that original really. If you’re a fan of indie chances are you’re going to notice the similarities to acts like DeVotchKa or Beirut. They have that same blend of traditional world influences with indie that those other acts have, though from a slightly different region. Eastern European folk influences, particularly from Poland, flavour much of the album. “A Story...” is the best example of when this approach is done right. The stuttering rhythms over interesting clarinet, glockenspiel and violin interplay keep the song entrancing. On the other side of the coin, sometimes these influences need to be played a little tighter to the chest. The album opens with perhaps the least interesting song. At six-and-a-half minutes, “The Ballad of Lonely Bear” soon loses its initial appear, and the traditional folk melodies become a bit too much for the listener. It starts the album off on a weak note, forcing the following songs to gain back the listeners appeal. It takes some warming to, but eventually the charms do recover the album from this minor setback.
A major part of this appeal comes from the gorgeous vocal melodies that appear throughout the album. The short, but beautiful “Iron Pump” releases from its hiccoughing chorus rhythm into a flowing multi-part harmony. Even better is the fantastic closer “When We Were Children”, perhaps the best song on the album. It overcomes some lame lyrics like, “how come there’s no garbage / in the suburbs?” by layering vocals and a heartbreaking violin part into the grande climax. This is when Olenka & The Autumn Lovers succeeds the most, using indie-folk sensibilities to mold the traditional European folk influences. The accordion waltz of “A Story...” is rooted in gently finger plucked classical guitar to great effect. When straying from these indie influences, the music can grow a little bit tedious, almost unnatural even though leader Olenka obviously has a heritage from Eastern Europe. When sticking to a hybrid of the two, which fortunately is most of the time, the album works wonderfully well.
The first time I heard this group was in a live performance as they opened for a group of friends. The main act sucked, but I was drawn in by the beautiful and soulful music of Olenka & The Autumn Lovers. The record has a different feel then the live show, producing a more spacial sound. The compositions in the live show are a little bit more filled out with stronger violin, cello and electric guitar parts. The arrangements are more sparse on the recordings, but neither way works to the songs’ detriment. They both work well for the songs, creating different atmospheres. On the record, the music has a relaxed atmosphere created from the accordion tones, classical guitar, violin and those great vocal harmonies. Maybe one day our city will be on the same musical map as Toronto or Montreal... maybe... but probably not.
