Love is: Jane Vain & the Dark Matter

First of all, I'd like to thank Simon for inviting me to contribute to this blog. It certainly has the potential to be pretty rad.

For my introduction post I'd like to highlight a band I came to know after a summer stint in Calgary, one of the few treasures found within the corporate conglomerate. Pop-noir quartet Jane Vain And The Dark Matter create masterfully moody melodies. Their recently released Love Is Where The Smoke Is, embodies the spooky seduction of Emily Haines solo endeavors, the mystique of Maria Taylor and features splashes of Coco Rosie's black humour throughout.

Chanteuse Jamie Fooks resembles a wiry, petite pixie with Coke bottle glasses. The captivating 24-year-old chanteuse is painstakingly honest, and her anxiety-ridden on-stage persona is merely amplified in person. Over a pot of tea in a pub, she spills over lost tales of adolescence, alcoholism and the struggle of self.

"I didn't even know how to play these songs when I recorded them. I just wanted to learn the process of everything. I played in bands prior to this, but they were mostly drunken punk rock bands. This just started as something I made in my bedroom, layering piano track over piano track."

As Fooks crafted the skeleton of the album in her basement apartment, she rang up old friend Dillon Whitfield of local act Racoon to add his instrumental expertise on guitar. The twosome are the spine of the band, as they've auditioned and lost three members over the course of the past few months. Currently, Britt Proulx is listed as the bassist and Jzero Schuurman sits in on drums.

"Basically, the band name stems from a darker period of my life," explains Fooks. "I don't really know how to say anything without being too blunt.

"I guess it mostly comes from a reckless adolescence, a time when everything was circulating around being vain and concerned with how everything appeared to everyone else."

"C'mon Baby Say Bang Bang," "Ships Bound To Sink" and "Last Chance For Romance" are tortured testimonies cloaked in endless existentialism and dense instrumentation.