After a five-year hiatus between albums, Canadian roots band Chic Gamine is hoping its new album, Light A Match, will spark a renewed interest in the Juno award-winning band.
“The premise of Light A Match is kind of the theme of the record. When you strike a match you have an opportunity to do something big with it or blow it out,” said Andrina Turenne, a member of the five-piece band.
“On this record we tried to create new soundscapes with our voices being the prominent feature, but with more instrumentation, and we allowed ourselves to explore that realm a little bit more than we have in previous records.”
The band dropped its third album on Oct. 23 in Toronto and is currently on a 15-stop tour through southern Ontario and western Canada and will stop in Jasper on Nov. 15 for a show at the Olive Bistro and Lounge.
The band’s unique sound, which blends three female vocalists with a strong rhythm section and synthesizers, is difficult to describe, but falls somewhere between rock, soul and pop.
“It’s always a bit hard to classify our sound by a specific genre because I feel like it crosses the board in many ways,” said Turenne.
Part of the band’s distinctive sound likely comes from the group’s varied backgrounds, with three members from Montreal and two members from Winnipeg.
Without a home base, the band splits its time between the two cities.
“When we’re touring, if we’re out east we will use Montreal as a home base and if we’re going out west we’ll use Winnipeg,” explained Turenne, adding the group often rents a cabin or cottage to collaborate on new music.
To date, the band’s biggest success was in 2008 with its self-titled debut album. The album garnered a great deal of media attention and won Chic Gamine a 2009 Juno for best roots album.
The band’s sophomore album, City City (2010), was nominated for a 2011 Juno in the same category.
Since then the group has undergone a minor line up change, after one of the founding members left the group in 2014. Unwilling to give up, the band found Benoit Morier, a multi-instrumentalist, to fill the void and almost two years later Chic Gamine has reemerged with a new album that it hopes will soon catch fire.
Chic Gamine has toured across Canada, the United States and parts of Europe, bringing their sound to festivals such as the Montreal Jazz Festival, Festival International de Louisiane, Winnipeg, Regina and Calgary’s respective folk festivals, France’s Transmusicales and SXSW amongst others.
They’ve also opened for Mavis Staples, Smokey Robinson, Marc Broussard and Lake Street Dive and played before Queen Elizabeth the Second.
To see them in Jasper, head to the Olive Bistro Nov. 15. Advance tickets for the show are $10 or $15 at the door. The show starts at 7:30 p.m.
Paul Clarke [email protected]
