Priya Thomas has been a critical favorite for more than a decade in Canada, and has long been considered one of Canada's most innovative and compelling acts flying under the radar. Her dramatic new record, Blood Heron, will be released on October 28th through Sunny Lane Records in Canada.
Known for stunning live performances, Priya Thomas released her first full-length album in 1996, and since then, has shared the stage with the likes of Radiohead, John Cale, The Fall, and The Dears. Her 2006 release, You and Me Against the World Baby, received rave reviews for its eye-of-the-storm sonic assault, and its rich, imaginative literacy. Vancouver ’s Georgia Straight ranked Thomas’s album alongside releases by Neko Case and Cat Power as one of 2006’s Top Ten Records of the Year.
Blood Heron is a collection of smoldering, unpolished love songs more immediate and intimate than anything Thomas has yet released. It's a stark and simple suite of missed mutes, tape stretch, and first takes only. Recorded at home to half inch 8, the raw mix reveals every creak of the floors, the buzz and hum of warp-necked guitars, and the sound of musicians stumbling around a tiny room. A record meshed somewhere between the worlds of Sufjan Stevens, Bob Dylan and Tom Waits, Thomas sounds something like Grace Slick banging pots and pans; or Mazzy Starr, accompanied by warped ukeleles, clattering tambourines and plunky guitars.
Blood Heron reflects its sparse, nomadic origins. Written while on the road, the arrangements are skeletal & threadbare with wide-open spaces that reflect the slow, psychedelic pace of traveling cross-country in a van of strangers. Thomas wrote much of the record in hotel rooms, borrowing the odd spare guitar, and carrying around a little black notepad. The result is a loose and ragged homage to love; confessional and reflective, stripped back and textured.The songs sweep the continent, exhuming the Canadian landscape and evoking the great American South. .
Fans of Priya Thomas’s previous work will recognize her dark irony, acerbic wit and pistol personality despite Blood Heron’s foray into a gentler soundscape. The album intimately explores themes of love and betrayal:
"Don’t you come courting me now with that carrot on a stick, Like you know what makes me tick, you and your mercenary functions - do I look like I need your sanctifications?"
(Had I Known, I would have declined)
Or, the scathing indictment of betrayal in Wine, Moonshine, Sugar Beams with its relentless insistence, "to the end, to the end, to the end, row your boat":
“He knows you exist he smiles, the widest, wildest, brightest starfucking smile."
Local Canadian musicians populate Blood Heron. The record was co-produced with good friend Steve Pitkin (Elliott Brood, Flashing Lights) who also played drums; and also features Mike O'Brien guitarist with Jason Collett, and Lindy Vopnfjord of Major Maker. Thomas picks up the rest of the instrumentation heard on the record; tries her hand at banging pots and pans with wooden spoons on Farewell Creek, and plays drums on Gunpowder Heart.
Tour Dates
Nov 4 - Montreal, ON @ Le Divan Orange
Nov 7 - Toronto, ON @ The Rivoli
Nov 12 - London, ON @ Alex P Keaton
Nov 13 - Hamilton @ The Casbah
Nov 19 - Waterloo @ Maxwell's
Nov 20 - Toronto @ The Tranzac
Nov 21 - Ottawa @ Zaphod's
Nov 23 - Vancouver @ The Railway
Nov 24 - Victoria @ TBA
Nov 26 - 29 TBC Regional Ontario
Nov 29 - Montreal @ Le Divan Orange w. The Wooden Sky
Dec 11 - Guelph @ E Bar
