MUSIC: B.C. band spies success
It all started with being locked in a room full of sheet music.
"Jane [Gowan] and I met at music school. We were working for the school in the summer and they had boxes and boxes of unsorted sheet music, [which] somebody had to put it in order. We were essentially trapped in this little room together going through all this old sheet music and it was just fun… we started talking a lot about what kind of music we liked and it was sort of a natural progression that we'd say 'hey, lets get together and play some of these songs,' and that's what we started doing.'" That was the first step in the evolution of Spygirl, said Koralee Tonack, the talented lead vocalist of the Vancouver-based band. Now comprised of six musicians, Spygirl has just released their second full-length album Pieces of Evidence, a lush and melodic set of tender yet upbeat songs. Starting with their previous album, the band has been striving for that "perfect pop-epic," and the songs on Pieces bear the results of that quest.
"A song that you hear and that you can relate to… that really pinpoints a moment in your life and makes you respond-makes you cry or makes you laugh or makes you feel something real. But at the same time is just a fun song, not too heavy, and not too weepy. A good flow-y pop," Tonack said.
This description rings true for many of the songs on Pieces, an album of warm, luxurious pop. Pianos, trumpets and drums effortlessly weave together in Spygirl's music, but Tonack's amazing, velvety voice is the true heart of the songs. The instruments intermingle beautifully, but it's Tonack's vocals that they build around.
"I'm one of the luckiest people in the world," Tonack admitted. "I really love the lyrics that the songwriters in our band write… I find them really evocative and really easy to get inside and interpret. But I love to sing, that's the thing, it transcends everything else."
When Tonack and Gowan first started working together twelve years ago, they formed Time Waits with guitarist Jon Roper. This acoustically based band evolved as Eduardo Ottoni and James Ong joined in, and soon a new sound emerged.
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