Recording: DIANA

Artist: DIANA

Songs: Perpetual Surrender + New House^*

Recorded at The Drake Underground, October 8, 2012.

DIANA - Perpetual Surrender

DIANA - New House

The local wave of avant soft-rock intensifies with the live debut of this new combo. At one level, this could be seen as being precisely the sum of its parts, but given that they aren't necessarily intuitive parts to stick together, the result still manages to surprise. Kieran Adams and saxophone king Joseph Shabason played together in Everything All The Time, although the former has more recently been seen contributing explosive percussion to Bonjay and atmospheric textures to Warm Myth, while the latter has been a key part of the Destroyer's latest sonic reinvention while showing up in plenty sideman appearances. Meanwhile, vocalist/guitarist Carmen Elle's Army Girls has been dazzling with heart-on-sleeve guitar-rock. (Paul Mathew, on bass + guitar, was an unfamiliar face to me, but hopefully someone in the know will add a comment here filling in where else we might have seen him has apparently been playing in Hidden Cameras.)

The upshot was a musical backdrop of lush synth-rock and gated drum sounds that could have sounded like neon/pastel '80's kitsch pastiche, but was always grounded by Carmen Elle's emotionally resonant vox. For a band that has so far only revealed itself through a couple songs on their Soundcloud, it was a genuine achievement to have all of these disparate textures integrated on their first gig — and the fact that have some ace songs makes it something worth paying attention to.

This six-song, half-hour set was a warm-up before the band heads down to make a splash at CMJ, but it was also noted their next local show will be at the AGO's new "1st Thursdays" series on November 1st.

^* Thanks to Joseph for passing along the title to this one.