Good show in Ottawa TONIGHT

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Tonight at Zaphod's there are 3 good bands playing. Headlining are Jon-Rae and the River (indie gospel country), along with Wooly Leaves (Will from the Constantines) and Ottawa's excellent The Soirée.

Tickets are only $8.

Here is some hype from Zaphod's website.

Jon-Rae and The River

It's hard to classify a 7-piece band fronted by an old fashion singer/ songwriter who grew up singing in churches in B.C. led by his father and grandfather who were both pastors and then running to Toronto to chase a girl right when a cult fan base in B.C. was starting to grow and things were starting to pick up, not to mention they were signed to a hip label in Vancouver but now a new band had to form in Ontario and a new label was found, a pianette player was added and a back up singer was retrieved from back home and gracefully Toronto embraced them and this band is sometimes accompanied by a choir of friends, but all this won't make sense until you hear or see the band because a beer-drinking hymn-singing arm-linking gospel-soul alt-country rock orchestra is hard to describe. If you're out of breath now, wait until the live show.

The undeniable immediacy, passion and pure spirit Jon-Rae lays down on his latest is so spectacular, it'll take days before your soul recovers. Following the Lou Barlow lo-fi aesthetic of living room as recording studio only adds to the power of the tunes, with cracked vocals and bum notes (however few) left intact to complement Rae's immaculately disjointed vocal delivery. While musically not unlike Jason Molina's "Songs: Ohia", Rae and his band come off more like they're playing to a lost generation that finds the Carter Family and Cisco Houston cutting-edge. It's wholly bereft of pretense, and when Rae turns up the gospel you'll pray for the apocalypse, while his fractured delivery threatens the implosion of everything he's created.

Signed to Permafrost Records in 2005, Jon-Rae and the River have shared a stage with The Arcade Fire, Magnolia Electric Co. and Cuff the Duke to name a few. Their amazing new album, "Knows What You Need" is out now on LP courtesy of We Are Busybodies and will be out on digital compact disc October 4 on the Baudelaire Label.

Wooly Leaves

While Woolly Leaves' debut album, Quiet Waters, is as gentle as its name implies, it is also packed with resonant imagery that paints 11 vivid pictures. Quiet Waters is the work of one man, Toronto's Will Kidman, with a few friends helping out, most notably singers Jennifer Castle and Melissa Boraski, who add another layer of beauty to this fragile record.

With his voice raised barely above a whisper, Kidman evokes intimate times around a campfire, where words linger in the smoke before evaporating in the night air, only to return hours later, creeping out of the mind's recesses to catch you unaware. Like ghosts, these songs are remnants of past experiences and people and places; memories that drift in and out of consciousness, but will always return, especially when you least expect it.

While Kidman is currently best known to music fans as the keyboard player for one of Canada's most beloved rock 'n' roll bands, The Constantines, Quiet Waters proves that Kidman is the next link in the formidable lineage of Canadian songwriters. With songs that are tender and comforting, while simultaneously evoking gut-stirring emotions, Quiet Waters is more complex than its simple, spare arrangements would suggest.

The Soirée

Musically, The Soirée cannot be easily categorized. Songs are not written to conform to a particular style, instead the songs are given license to develop independently, in the way that each requires. The band's takes influences from alt-country, post-pop, rock and folk, and combines them to construct unique and catchy songs that stay with the listener long after the music stops.

In 2004, The Soirée released a debut 5 song EP, recorded with Dean Watson at Attic Recording Studios in Ottawa, which, despite a very limited mailout, reached #42 on the canadian campus/community radio charts and remained there for 5 months. The songs contained therein survived the close scrutiny that all the band's songs are subject to. "We practice a lot, and try out lots of different song ideas. Most of them don't survive more than a few weeks, and we like it that way. The songs that do have stuck around for a reason". This metered and creative approach to songwriting creates a kind of quality-control, and gives songs the opportunity to evolve and mature. "We throw a lot of things out there, and see what sticks..."

They are currently completing production of their first full-length record at Little Bullhorn Studios, due for release Fall 2006.