A perfect album for the change in season: melancholy, gorgeous and powerful.
photo by Jensen Gifford
It’s only fitting that on the first day of autumn, 2014, we feature Olenka and The Autumn Lovers. Their album Hard Times is from 2012, but it’s not only a good record that perfectly suits the change in season, it’s a great album that showcases one of the most talented artists on the Canadian music scene today. Leader Olenka Krakus has a formidable musical intelligence, a cracking band behind her, and a small collection of songs that are to these ears, unequalled in their layered depths of sonic purity and emotional veracity.
She was living in London, Ontario while making this album and has since moved to Vancouver with Jeffrey Moon, who is a standout on drums, particularly in live performance as evidenced in the band’s recent gig at Vancouver’s Media Club. He also played guitar on Hard Times, which was further burnished by various other members of the Ontario music scene who provided cello, piano, lap steel, pedal steel and electric guitar. The result? – a record you just have to hear, regardless of your genre predilections. In fact, Olenka defies genre classification, moving as easily from alt-country to folk to rock to a unique brand of music that one day will be described as “you know, different, very different and very good – like The Autumn Lovers”. That’s what happens when you write all of your own material and you’re willing to bypass the usual songwriting considerations that make it easy for record labels to label you.
Olenka has a poetic and erstwhile melancholy gift with words, but don’t class her as a folkie: she’s more-new wave indie mixed with classical guitar phrasings, violin that verges on fiddle, and even, these days, clarinet, bass clarinet and saxophone. Lest that sound a little subdued, take it on fair warning that Jeffrey’s powerful and eloquent drumming often proves to be an explosive framework that renders Olenka’s material almost overwhelming in its sophistication. Songs build, flare and then subside, amidst textures and complex structures that frankly are unknown to 95% of today’s digitized musicians.
This complex and compelling songwriter, you see, is a lover of vinyl (as well as a self-declared fan of this third season of the year, hence the band’s name) and it shows in every one of her compositions. Her songs are given room to breathe, to grow, to evolve and work their considerable wonders upon the listener. I came across her recent 45rpm EP via our film editor, Shane Scott-Travis and damn if it didn’t contain some of the most interesting music I’ve heard all year. Intrigued beyond measure, I sought out her her most recent CD, which proved to be Hard Times.
She is anything but an unknown in Canadian music. In fact, she’s won many accolades over the past three or four years, but somehow hasn’t quite made it to the mainstream as of yet. She and her band won the 2012 Jack Richardson Music Award in the Traditional Folk/Roots category in April 2012, as well as the 2011 Jack Richardson Music Award for Contemporary Singer/Songwriter, and one year earlier won the 2010 Jack Richardson Music Award in the Traditional Folk/Roots category. But people, she is much more than a folk/roots musician and truly is worthy of international attention. We suspect it’s only a record away. Her newest material, along with a reformulated band lineup, is nothing short of incendiary, particularly on stage. If she can find a way to deliver the same magic in the studio, she will become a household word, at least in the households that matter to a musician of her calibre – and her 2012 release Hard Times will be one of those albums you’ll want to brag about hearing before she made it big.
Seven songs of sadness, deep feeling, images of sorrow, misunderstanding and the realization of winter pervade Hard Times. Might sound a little depressing, but it’s anything but. Olenka has a voice you want to keep hearing, and she writes melodies that stay with you. There are several standout tracks on the album, which is beautifully bookended by the powerful alt-country ‘Don’t Make Sense’ and the beguiling ‘Annelies’, with its tender opening leading to a dissonantly ambiguous ending. The instrumentation throughout the album is gorgeous, the songs incandescently exquisite, so much so that I couldn’t help but wonder why Olenka hasn’t been snapped up by a major label. She’s the best thing to happen to Canadian music in a long time.
