Gianna Lauren

“On her album Fist in a Heart, Lauren is a bit of a mystery. She's part wallflower, part rocker, all intrigue. With a sound akin to Mary Timony, Lauren's poetic yet gritty. She trades the acoustic guitar for an electric, infuses strings and soft vocals, as if she's whispering secrets into the wind. "I grew up listening to Elton John, the Rolling Stones and Carole King, but when I started writing my own music at 14 years old I got into female singer-songwriters like Joni Mitchell and Sarah McLachlan," says Lauren. "Eventually I found my inner-rocker and ended up playing post-rock bands like Sunny Day Real Estate, The Stone Roses and Sonic Youth. Now I find inspiration in the talented people around me." - Shannon Webb-Campbell - The Coast

Several times, while listening to Some Move Closer, Some Move On, Gianna Lauren’s sophomore album, I had to double-check to make sure there wasn’t some heavenly chorus descending upon me.
Such is the strength of this LP. It is filled with ambient and atmospheric guitar and drums, often accompanied by violins and cellos. It is also filled with Lauren’s soft vocal style comparable to Daniela Gesundheit of Snowblink.
“Become What You Can’t Be” is the first song of the album and has already been featured on the Anti-Hit List of the Toronto Star. And it was featured there for good reason- the song is sung slowly by Lauren and accompanied by pleasant guitar riffs and eventually violins. Lauren begins by singing “Let’s give up yondering, let’s give up our clothes.”
For a large majority of the album, Lauren sings accompanied by very sparse and minimalistic instruments, and it suits her just fine. Only in two songs, “Standstill” and “Hold Your Horses” do the songs become noticeably more instrument heavy. And those two songs are just as fantastic with heavier music.
But the most beautiful song to me was “Cardigan,” which Lauren sings only slightly faster than is usual. It is still very ambient and soothing, and contains one of my favourite lyrics that I’ve heard in a long time: “What do you mean by good citizen? It’s enough work to be a good person.”
As for my reference to a heavenly chorus I made at the beginning of this review, one of those moments was during “Oh Feather.” Not only does Lauren sing it as though it were a hymn, but it even sounds biblical, particularly in the lines “Oh feather so fine, float from the vine/Release from thine.”
While thinking over what I was going to give this, I had to think for a moment to see if I had any criticisms, and I had none. Such care and dedication was put into this record that I can’t give this anything less than an excellent. I may also have found an album worthy to be on my best-of-the-year list.
Top Tracks: “Cardigan”; “Standstill”; “Hold Your Horses”
Rating: Hunting Call (Excellent+ +*swoop*
- Grayowl Point

In these parts, it’s an all too common story. A musician finds their groove and departs for the bigger, more fertile grounds of Montreal or Toronto. For every Jenn Grant or Joel Plaskett, there are ten bands that broke up or left Canada’s ocean playground behind like it was a sinking ship, hoping that the bigger, less accessible scenes would be the ticket to more shows and more fans.
For Gianna Lauren, the intimacy and community the North End provides were the reasons she made the journey to Halifax from Edmonton and honestly, the transition and alienation of finding herself in a new city works nicely alongside the hurt and longing she offers up on the perfectly titled, “Some Move Closer, Some Move On.” Over the last few years, Lauren has integrated herself in the community, befriending talented locals and even contributing to their records and SMC,SMO – out October 12 on Forward Music – shows them repaying the favor.
Thanks to well crafted collages built from Gianna’s guitar and Dan Ledwell‘s multi-instrumentation and deft production (with extra help from Andrew Sisk and Kinley Dowling), Some Move Closer, Some Move On is a slow burning, moody journey filled with lonely spaces, surprising tempo changes and tender warmth. Spare arrangements draw you close, but Lauren is inventive and the subtle transitions she offers up keep the record shifting and the listener engaged.
And while each melody channels vivid emotion, undoubtedly the star of the show are Gianna’s smoky vocals. The gunshot rhythms and sexy slink of the strings of “Le Vent Marin” give Gianna the platform to stand out front of the mix as a sultry front woman, but her voice is so crisp and precise that she can bend her sound to fit a staggering range. She handles pop songs that could find a home on any of the countless Grey’s Anatomy spin-offs (“June”), darker textures (“Be Nice’) and more traditional folk arrangements (“Waiting” and the timeless opener, “Become What You Can’t Be”), but is just as comfortable with more brooding, stripped down numbers like “Stowaway.” In fact, the high note of the record might just be the multi-layered vocal A cappella track, “Oh Feather”, a song that plays like an understated “Hide and Seek” and could push this newly christened Haligonian, a woman that wanted nothing more than a small scene to settle into, a much bigger National audience.
- Herohill

Gianna Lauren came to San Francisco with me. Actually, she’s not aware of this because it was her new disc, fist in a heart that traveled with me. Such a lovely disc, a perfect accompaniment to a heart that was, at the time, in a fist. While I might have misread the title, the lingering atmosphere and tone running through the disc’s 8 songs were comforting and warm as I trekked through the artsy areas of the legendary California town. Gianna’s songs are delicate and somber, yet hopeful. She channels the spirits of early Joni Mitchell (on the instrumental “thinking with fragility”) and contemporary P.J. Harvey (“better wait”).

Mastered at Bova Sound and mixed at The Gallery Studio, many of Ottawa’s finest artists and musical craftsmen have had a hand in the making of this disc. The production is exquisitely honed by Arturo Brisindi (My Dad vs Your Dad) along with the inimitable, Dean Watson. Renee Leduc adds sporadic touches of violin throughout. The solemn moodiness of fist in a heart permeates even on up-beat songs like “the war of love and numbers” with its quick-sand marching back beat. It conveys that surreal feeling you get walking on those long moving sidewalks in airport terminals. Don’t you love those things?! And so with Gianna cooing in my earbuds, I didn’t leave my heart in San Francisco as prescribed, I just kept moving forward, no particular destination, no particular timeline.

fist in a heart is one of the finest auditory creations to emanate from Ottawa in recent months. Highly recommended.
By Anne-Marie Brugger
Dec 2, 2008
- Earshot Online Magazine

Quiet musings, moody tunes
Fateema Sayani, Citizen Special
Published: Thursday, September 11, 2008
Gianna Lalonde's debut album, Fist in a Heart, is full of soft songs that span a wide space.
Recorded by Arturo Brisindi at the Gallery Studio in the Glebe, the eight songs are writ large with atmospheric sounds that give a heavy mood to observations on life and love in the time of technology.
Between the fuzz and flourish is a quiet kind of optimism -- saddled with what fate delivers, one has to muddle through the ups and downs to find answers. There's a breakup tune (Blueberry Fields), a song that makes the personal political (The War of Love and Numbers) and one so clever in its arrangement, it positively brims with wild energy (National Disaster).
It's easy to relate to the songs. Still, you can't shake the feeling that Lalonde is holding back on her oh-so emotive vocal ability. On Fist in a Heart, her style is less fierce flag-waving and more gentle musing. If Lalonde bleeds on this album, she does so in drips.
Going by Gianna Lauren (her first and middle names), Lalonde released her album with a Centretown house concert last month. Lalonde runs the Cameo Vegetarian, a catering business, and prepared a spread for her guests. Outside of her stage career (she sings sometimes with the Hilotrons too), you might recognize Lalonde from her pub hub, the Manx, where she is a server.
Edmonton-born, Lalonde moved to Ottawa as a teenager and studied ethics and public policy at Carleton University. She began recording the album last March, then took off on a bike tour of Europe for three months.
"I came back and I felt differently about the project," she says. "I had taken the mixes with me and had listened to them in different environments. Having that opportunity to think about it so much, I knew exactly how I wanted it to sound, but being technologically disabled, it took me a while to get that sound."
Technology -- both a boon and a bane to Lalonde -- is a recurring theme.
"I'm kind of sensitive to things that are modern," she says, as we weigh the merits of networking websites and portable gadgets. "I think things happen so quickly that people don't have time to absorb them."
Her argument for savouring all the little things fits well with the pacing of her songs; you ease into them until you hit that a-ha moment. Gianna Lauren plays Babylon, 317 Bank St., tomorrow with the Ethics and headliners the Soiree. 9 p.m., $10.
- Ottawa Citizen