The Ballantynes

To be frank, it’s a travesty that the “organ-wailing, hip-shaking, and tambourine–shimmering” sixsome the Ballantynes hasn’t already been included in our Best of Bands roundup. Since dropping their first release in 2011, frontman Jarod O’Dell (keys, guitar, vocals) and fellow band members Vanessa Dandurand (vocals), Jennifer Wilks (keys, vocals), Corey Poluk (guitar, vocals), Max Sample (bass, vocals) and Micheal McDiarmid (drums) have established themselves as one of the city’s sweatiest live acts—because, as O’Dell once pointed out in an interview with the Straight, “everybody fucking loves soul music.” Serving up a solid set of dance-floor fillers, the Ballantynes’ shows are more concerned with making sure everybody is having a good time than hitting every note. If you want to hear the band at its technical best, however, you can just take a listen to its latest release—a cassette tape of eight of the band’s singles—which proves that everything sounds better when accompanied by a good rotary organ. Or so O’Dell says.

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Best local release other than yours: I was having a bit of a time answering this question. I’ve listened to so many great songs from groups this year, but I couldn’t hold on to one. Thankfully, Jennifer Wilks talked me off a ledge by offering a sample of songs, so I’m going to say Adrian Teacher and the Subs’ “Emily Carr Punks”, from the album Terminal City.

The year’s best gig: Cobalt Karaoke. Say it’s farce and you’re not entirely wrong, but I’ve watched more honest and gut-wrenching performances on that stage this year than I have at any classic venue.

Hootsuite’s Ryan Holmes is paying. Where’s dinner? Ramen with a velvet-cloud broth… The sweetness of perfect ceviche… Rich, spicy pollo taco… No, we’re not going to a restaurant. We’ll take our stack of bills and hit the grocer.

We’re road-tripping. Who’s on the stereo? We’re just back from being on the road recently, and I noticed a strange shift in our soundtrack for this one. Sirius XM scored our travels with its curious and repetitive playlists. Corey [Poluk] was offering a deeply emotive take on “Ironic” by Alanis Morissette. I spent a lot of time in the back with headphones and Carly Rae Jepsen keeping me company.

Like that Weeknd song, who makes you feel like you can’t feel your face? Good—it’s time to discuss all those artistic types that I’d like to know in a Biblical way. I’m going to say Christian Pelech. He’s a consummate performer and a tremendous dresser. He’s been in the ditch with me and helped me out in the morning.

You’re a creative type. Where are we opening a venue? The Pacific Ocean. No? Okay, fine, but isn’t the water such a tremendous part of this city? Wait—I’ve got it. The MPV Constitution: Vancouver’s paddlewheeler boat. It would be a bobbing venue on the waves. - The Georgia Straight

Lace up your wingtips and set your curls, because the Ballantynes are burning up the dance hall with their debut LP, Dark Drives, Life Signs. The Vancouver ska-soul-rock-and-roll sextet has graciously blessed us with an ass shaking, fancy footwork inspiring collection of songs (can I get a hallelujah?). Dark Drives, Life Signs is a twelve track party that hearkens back to the Motown era and sounds more like the sunny South than our cloudy coast.
Each member of this sextet — which includes Jarrod O’Dell, Vanessa Dandurand, Jennifer Wilks, Corey Poluk, Max Sample, and Michael McDiarmid — plays at least two instruments and sings (drummer McDiarmid is the only one who doesn’t lend his voice to the music). The vocals are consistently impassioned, pedal to the metal. It often sounds as if an entire gospel choir is singing. The engines driving the big sound of Dark Drives, Life Signs are the string and brass ensembles that the band brought in for the record. Former drummer Trevor Racz rejoins the band for this recording, and producer Felix Fung adds supporting guitar for a sound that’s as thick as biscuits and gravy.

The Ballantynes will hold your body hostage, and there is no use resisting: you will be shaking your hips and shimmying your shoulders by the second track, “Let’s Go”— I have never been more compelled by the danceability of an organ accompaniment. The seventh track, “Argent,” had me pulling dance moves straight from the sixties without inhibition. Even the shining slow jam, “You Were Mine” will have you grooving and singing along at full volume. The Ballantynes keep soul fresh with mosh-worthy ska inspired brass and bass lines in “My Place Your Town” and “Us.”

There is no way you won’t like this album. Like a strong drink, the music loosens your limbs, warms your cheeks into a smile and puts a fire into your belly. This is music to sweat to, to get down to. Dark Drives, Life Signs will peer pressure you into losing your shit on the dance floor. It will make sure you’re having the best night of your life. - Discorder

IN THE MIDDLE of a freewheeling conversation that covers everything from circa-1900 architecture to the genius of the Clash and The Lost Boys, Ballantynes singer-keyboardist Jarrod O’Dell pauses to make a serious point. What he says goes a long way to explaining the appeal of his band, which has quickly gained a reputation as one of the city’s must-see live acts.

To hear him argue things, the Ballantynes are firm believers that there’s no point stepping on-stage unless you’re willing to aim for all-out mayhem. But what really might be connecting with audiences, O’Dell suggests, is the fact that the seven-piece is working in what might be the least-polarizing genre in pop.

“Everyone fucking loves soul music—there’s just no way around it,” he says matter-of-factly, interviewed at the Straight offices with Ballantynes singer and self-described theatre nerd Vanessa Dandurand. “That’s why it’s in every other commercial. That’s why it’s been used ad nauseam in sitcom previews. I always obsess about this, because the first time I remember hearing really good soul music was when Hangin’ With Mr. Cooper’s theme song in the ’90s was ‘Soul Man’ by Sam & Dave. I remember really loving that song, but not being old enough to be able to contextualize what I liked. It was like, ‘I like this thing, because it bounces like this.’ ”

Just getting warmed up on the subject, he continues excitedly: “Then you had the California Raisins’ Christmas special with all this R&B that I didn’t understand the concept of. Soul has this weird undercurrent in our culture—everyone knows it, and everybody likes it. I swear to God I can find a soul song that any human being likes, from the biggest fucking death-metal grinder on down.”

The Ballantynes, who released their debut EP, Liquor Store Gun Store Pawn Shop Church, this past fall, sprang out of a long-running night devoted to the sound that Stax helped make famous. O’Dell has spent years deejaying at East Van Soul Club, formerly at the Astoria and now running at the Biltmore. Dandurand was a regular.

“Soul Club was something that I kind of stumbled into, and felt a really strong draw towards,” she says. “I think it was probably two-and-a-half years before I missed a Soul Club. I was there every month, part of a regular crowd right from its inception.”

After quitting local vets the Tranzmitors and having his next band, the Parallels, break up, O’Dell found himself looking for a new project. He had a vision for the band, and pretty quickly realized he was going to have no problem finding people to buy into it.

“When the Parallels dissolved, it was the first time in 10 years that I hadn’t been on-stage in any way,” O’Dell says. “I was chomping at the bit enough that, when I started talking to everyone else, we had a real immediate ambition. It was like, ‘Do this now, now, now!’ ”

When the Ballantynes hit the rehearsal space, it was in the form of an old-school soul-obsessed septet. In addition to O’Dell and Dandurand, the band would include bassist Max Sample, guitarist Corey Poluk, vocalist Jennifer Wilks, and dual drummers Michael McDiarmid and Trevor Racz.

The first order of business was honing an attack that draws heavily on gin-still rhythm and blues and 45 rpm single–era soul.

“We took time in terms of how we went about it,” O’Dell says. “We recorded our first single before we even played a show.

“I think we spent almost a year before getting out there—almost a year,” Dandurand continues. “We were working on the formation of the band—the writing and the recording, rather than playing shows.”

But even in the practice space, it was obvious that the Ballantynes were going to be more concerned with making a connection with their live show than hitting every note.

“This is the only band that I’ve ever been in where we’ll be practising on a Wednesday night and all sharing the same mike,” O’Dell notes.

Dandurand adds: “We have a lot of cheerleaders within the band.”

That’s abundantly clear on Liquor Store Gun Store Pawn Shop Church, which—with producer Felix Fung keeping things proudly analogue—sounds like a fevered, gloriously lo-fi love note to the early ’60s. Things get off to a gold-star start with “No Love”, propelled by the inventive drumming of McDiarmid and Racz, with O’Dell sounding like a man raised on the teachings of Otis Redding and James Carr. Dandurand and Wilks take centre stage on the swaggering grrrl-group great “Sickos”, which boasts such lines as “I’m green at the gills/From your liquor-store kisses, honey.”

“Morning” sounds like waking up in a pile of leaves and empty beer cans just outside James Brown’s garage, while “Night Gospel” boasts an organ-shimmered country undercurrent that gives you a good idea what Neko Case might sound like attending Sunday church service in rural Alabama.

Liquor Store Gun Store Pawn Shop Church’s energy captures what tends to translate on-stage for the Ballantynes; no one in the front row at the group’s live show stands there with arms crossed.

“I want a degree of abandon from what people in the audience are giving back, and also how we are engaging with each other,” O’Dell says.

Dandurand chips in: “When you go as crazy as we do on-stage, it’s knowing that, whenever you make that first move, you’re giving permission to people to follow suit. A big thing about Vancouver is that a lot of people don’t want to look foolish. If you can be the first one to start dancing, other people will feel okay doing it.”

Proving, one might argue, that we’ve all got soul in us. It just takes a group of obsessives like the Ballantynes to help get it out.

The Ballantynes play the Arrival Agency’s NYE at the Hotel Vancouver on December 31. - The Georgia Straight

I know I love the Ballantynes. I catch them whenever I can. They get better every time I see them. The East Van seven-piece was in fine form last Thursday at the Imperial, kicking things off with a bang and quickly moving on to “Stay” off their 2012 seven-inch, “Misery / Stay”. Set staple “No Love”, which bandleader Jarrod O’Dell noted “speaks for its damn self,” injected much fun into the room with Jennifer Wilks’ and Vanessa Dandurand’s sad-sassy call-and-answer with O’Dell (“One,” “When you call me much too late,” “Two…”). These playful “Sickos” followed that up with a boozy little tune “about drinking too much, with someone you like too much, and then throwing up,” as Dandurand put it. “Would you hold my hair? / Would you hold my hand?” Oh, sweet, sweet nausea.

O’Dell’s beloved Hammond – which didn’t survive their most recent road trip and is now recuperating in the shop – was the only element missing from the Ballantynes’ performance, but a loaner Nord Electro 2 from buddy and soul-partner in crime Gordon Rempel (the Beladeans) more than made up for it.

The band wrapped up with a few new numbers, the last of which was led off beautifully by Wilks, and quickly morphed into a spirited closer that rattled and rolled with the sweaty, reckless abandon of homestretch relief.

I filled the intermission time with a solitary vanilla Bullseye on the Main St. sidewalk, the din of impressed soul fans after a raucous Ballantynes set on my left, the wild and constant buzz of East Hastings on my right. - Vancouver Weekly

Friday night was a hell of a homecoming for the Pack a.d.'s Becky Black and Maya Miller. The local duo has spent the fall touring across Canada, and this gig represented the end of its 2012 campaign. Given the adoring response they received from the fans in the Commodore Ballroom, the pair must have felt grateful to be back in Vancouver.

The evening boasted an outstanding all-local bill, and openers the Ballantynes got the festivities off to an electrifying start as concertgoers filed into the room. The seven-piece's setup included two drummers and three vocalists, and their full-bodied arrangements gave some rock 'n' roll heft to their vintage soul-pop songs.

Unquestionably, the star of the performance was singer-organist (and occasional guitarist) Jarrod O'Dell, whose vocals found the middle ground between a heartthrob croon and a punk-rock snarl. During one upbeat number, he slung his guitar to his side and dipped his mike stand close to the floor without missing a note. A couple of songs later, he almost clocked singer Vanessa Dandurand over the head with said mike stand as he flailed and thrashed around the stage.

The distinct possibility of injury made his dangerous display all the more thrilling, and the Ballantynes were rightly rewarded with a warm ovation from the audience, which had swelled significantly over the course of the performance... - The Georgia Straight

You rarely see the kind of balanced fan representation that was on display last Friday at the Commodore. What I mean is, when The Ballantynes streamed onto the stage at 9:30, they weren’t playing to a disappointingly thin opening crowd. There were more than a few people in attendance whose main draw were The Ballantynes.

The seven-piece East Van ensemble wasted no time in heating things up, kicking off their set with “Stay”, which saw the saucy Jennifer Wilks and Vanessa Dandurand trade off vocals with bandleader Jarrod Odell while he made angry love with his Hammond. Odell amped up even more for “The Message”, gesturing grandly and pointing to the rafters like a true, inspired Reverend of the New Church of Garage Revival.

Then came “No Love”. By mid-song, you could almost see the band members’ individual energies shake off any remaining early set restraints and just… click. From that point on, The Ballantynes went full throttle, performing with an uncompromising vitality and a genuine, infectious exuberance that is rarely seen on a stage. Playing through their set with the rapid refrain of a runaway locomotive, The Ballantynes could not have set the bar any higher...
- Vancouver Weekly

At its core, great music is about feeling – pure, raw guttural emotion. Virtuoso playing and technical skill obviously counts for something, but the music that lasts always comes from that most purely human part of us. It’s Soul. It’s Rock ‘n’ Roll. It’s R&B. It’s Funk. All of which are labels that people have tried to apply to The Ballantynes. “I’ve had such little success accurately describing what we sound like. It’s remarkable, really. I can’t do it. It’s like if you were to go to a police sketch artist and describe your own face,” says frontman Jarrod O’Dell, talking to me from the band’s home base in Vancouver. “We’ve been called indie, funk, pop, rock, soul, ska and every other genre. I struggle greatly with describing it. We use the term garage gospel. I think that because it isn’t so much about tonality or what the sound is, it just kind of conveys something that I feel like what we are.”

Garage gospel is a perfect term for the ramshackle energy that radiates from the band’s songs. The Ballantynes look like a soul band and often sound like a soul band, but they play with the energy of a high school hard rock band on the brink of falling apart, all while dripping with the emotion of a hundred broken hearts. But, maybe it’s less complex than that. Vocalist and organist Jen Wilks sums it up more succinctly: “It can be kind of exhausting to try to explain what genre it is, but you know, it’s for dancing.”

While there’s nothing out there that sounds quite like The Ballantynes, they’re building from such a familiar base that anyone with even a passing interest in music is going to find something to dig into. “One of the major things I love about R&B and soul music is that it’s a counterpoint. There’s something about the juxtaposition of tragedy and heartbreak with a good dance beat,” O’Dell explains. “There’s something of a cathartic release when dancing to keep from crying. That’s always something I’ve been really drawn to. It doesn’t take away guts or grit, and in fact, it needs it to succeed, for it to be honest. For it to be a strong song it needs to be a balance of heart and dirt,” he adds.

“I like dancing and I appreciate sass. That’s why I like soul music,” quips Wilks; once again summing up the universal appeal of soul music more succinctly than O’Dell or I could ever hope to.

This past August – after a few years of existence and multiple 7’’s and an EP – the band released their first full length album, Dark Drives, Life Signs. A 40-minute blast of energy, the record moves plenty quick enough to put on at a party and full of enough emotion to make it suitable for any headphone experience you desire.

“Greene,” a soul ballad of the highest order is one of the most arresting heartbreak songs you’re going to hear this side of Otis Redding. “I try very, very hard to be honest in what I’m writing about. That song I tried to pull away any way of hiding the content. It was about someone I cared very deeply about. I needed to write it as straight forward as possible. It was pretty raw still, which usually isn’t the case with me. Most of the time I have some time after the experience before I write about it, but this one took place in that time for me,” says O’Dell of the standout track from a record that has more than its share. That The Ballantynes are out there, easing their pain through music, is a victory for all of the lovesick among us that just need a little dancefloor therapy. - Feedback Magazine

Being that the Victory Square Block Party is put on partly by the organizers of Music Waste (along with Megaphone magazine), there’s an inevitable crossover between the two events. Many of the acts that played this year’s Labour Day Weekend party in the Downtown Eastside had also rung in the summer back in June at Music Waste. It was refreshing, then, to get some outsider input this Sunday via the pounding percussive rhythms of Blue Whistling Horse.

The drum troupe usually numbers around 15, but only band member Ian Bee stood on-stage to open the festivities at Victory Square. He performed two pieces on his hand drum, welcoming the incoming crowd on behalf of the Coast Salish, but admitted that he had seen better days: one of the group’s drummers had passed away earlier this weekend. Despite the loss, Bee stoically hammered out his beats, and sang with a haunting clarity.

Love Cuts’ set, on the other hand, seemed a little unrehearsed. The Cub-style cuddlecore revivalists managed to charm anyone still trickling into the East Van grounds, though. Drummer Cheryl Carpenter nonchalantly whomped her drums on the somewhat punky jangler “Call in the Dogs,” which also found endearingly awkward bassist-vocalist Tracey Vath balancing like a heron each time she opened her mouth to sing.

Weed claimed the best-band tag pretty early on, despite a delayed start time. The group even kind of frittered about after an introduction by Sunday Service wise guys Taz VanRassel and Ryan Beil, but eventually jumped head first into a frenzied collection of ‘90s alt-pop. Will Anderson’s shift from measured mumbles to a neck-vein-popping, post-puberty wail on “Ben’s Tour,” off Weed’s recently fuzzy Gun Control EP, brought an added intensity to a set that already had the band—including the ball of hair, plaid, and black knee socks that is bassist Hugo Noriega—bounding around the concrete stage.

For a bunch of apparently stoned-out hip-hop heads, Too High Crew’s set was particularly punctual—it’s midafternoon set started, naturally, at 4:20. Rolling 11 deep, the jokey rap ensemble provided an ample amount of pot puns and potty talk. If you had a toddler attached to your hip during the bass-rumbling, interstellar orgy story “Alien Azz Pharm”, you probably peaced out of the park pretty quick.

“This one’s about smoking weed,” ringleader Ryan “RyRy” Wagner quipped at one point before adding a sarcastic “Surprise!” Pussy Pete, meanwhile, bragged about lining up a row of women to go “balls deep” into on “All the Ladies in the Front.” All he actually got, however, was a grey-haired dude in athletic flip-flops giving him a thumbs-up.

For whatever reason, the paved pit in front of the stage didn’t attract as much attention as it had in years past. The most action Korean Gut got during its performance was a bike-trick demo from a guy who swooped by on his fixie for a couple spin moves before hightailing toward the cenotaph. As for the band, it bashed out surf instrumentals and scrappy pop-punk cuts, with leader Jarrett Evan Samson busting countless strings along the way. The gaps between songs let him talk about how terrible his nearly ball-revealing acid-wash cutoffs were. “They get shorter and shorter all the time,” he said ashamedly of his apparently still-in-progress home job.

Mode Moderne has a handle on the moody postpunk thing, but that doesn’t mean it moved the mellowed-out patrons relaxing on blankets on the slanted knoll just feet away. As if pleading with the crowd, baritone vocalist Phillip Intile mewled out his desire to dance on “Disco Ruff”, but the audience ended up taking it easy the whole set through.

It didn’t seem to get any better for country-informed rockers Indian Wars, who played through a harmonica-heavy set as if separated from the audience by the world’s largest invisible chicken-wire fence. While at one point, a rowdy whistle was heard somewhere midfield, most people sat politely as bassist-vocalist Brad Felotick drawled his way through the group’s 12-bar bangers. But then something weird happened. Just as the quintet chimed into closer “Already Home,” which featured some saucy six-string slide work by multitasking member Craig Pettman, one young couple broke out into a do-si-do. Sure enough, the miniature hoedown inspired a couple more kids to loosen up and shake it during Indian Wars' final few bars.

East Van Soul Club DJ Jonny Was capitalized on the surge of movement by spinning R&B classics like the Isley Brothers’ “Why When Love Is Gone,” which packed the area as if it were an outdoor version of the sweaty monthly he and Ballantynes vocalist Jarrod O’Dell run at the Biltmore.

With O’Dell’s band having only a couple of 7-inch singles to its name, it may have seemed a bit premature to book the developing outfit as headliners. That said, the act managed to do what the rest of the lineup hadn’t: it got a mass of people moving. Of the dozens crammed up front to catch the energetic septet, on - The Georgia Straight

The Ballantynes make beautiful nighttime noise. On their latest release, Liquor Store Gun Store Pawn Shop Church, the garage soul outfit sermonizes on longing and love, vice and sin, good times and bad. Notes of 50s diner rock appear in the roiling keys and back alley choir support, and especially in the him-and-her vocals: his with a froggy twang reminiscent of The Sonics, hers a scarlet soulful growl. Church is a bewitching six-song spread of bouncing rhythms and singalong infectiousness. With this album The Ballantynes have made the perfect companion to a 3AM walk home, wandering through blinking stoplights and lonely streets, a little companionship to keep you warm until you fall into bed. - Ion Magazine

“Misery/Stay” (La-Ti-Da)

Remember when music was recorded direct-to-tape in old-fashioned, wood-panelled studios that smelled like sweat, ratty couches, and stale cigarette smoke? Based on this fantastically analogue-sounding 7-inch, garage-soul revivalists the Ballantynes most certainly do.

Some of the group’s red-lined live energy gets lost in translation here, which is to be expected considering the way the seven-piece puts out on-stage. What you get instead is two retro-tinted shots of soul-drenched ’60s pop, the Hammond keyboards of singer Jarrod O’Dell placed right where they belong at the front of the mix.

Close your eyes and you can practically see O’Dell’s neck veins bulging in “Misery”, which is sweetened by the grrrl-group goodness of backup singers Jen Wilks and Vanessa Dandurand.

With equally winning results, the ladies grab the mikes and step to the front for “Stay”, with O’Dell giving ’er on backing duties like a man making the most of his big shot on Hullabaloo. If you can get through both sides of this single without wishing you’d been born at a time when men wore thin-cut grey suits and white vinyl boots were the height of fashion, you clearly need a little more soul in your diet. Here’s humbly suggesting you start with the Ballantynes’ next live extravaganza. - The Georgia Straight

There isn’t much I like better than kicking off a new month by seeing a show I’ve been dying to see for months, on a weekend night. It helps kick things off on a high note and wipe away my unjustifiable, slothful lack of production and excessive-partying guilt (and resulting debt) of the previous month. The more positive the music, the better.

You can’t get better vibes from the soul food that was being served up at Fortune Sound Club last Saturday – Vancouver’s own raucous soul-garage-gospel gems, The Ballantynes, opening for none other than living soul legend and his electric band, Lee Fields & The Expressions, who recently released Faithful Man, an album that is sure to grace many Best Of 2012 lists.

The seven-piece (!) Ballantynes took to the stage, gave each other some “You good? Let’s go,” looks, and got right to doing what their first song announced – “blow ‘em away”. “The Message” gives you a good sense of what this raucous, good-time group is all about – after an initial, three-second ringing chord, the train takes off and all seven cogs click along in jangling unison as conductor/madman Jarrod Odell lovingly hammers his Hammond, yelling out “Hey, I got a message!”, a heralding call echoed by his sultry soul sisters, Jennifer Wilks and Vanessa Dandurand.

Whether you’re following Odell’s dramatic performance or just can’t break from Dandurand’s Medusa-hot gaze, it’s nigh impossible to look away from The Ballantynes. Max Sample’s bopping bass rides the clickity-clack tracks laid down by the double drums of Trevor Racz and Michael “Mr. Nice Guy” McDiarmid, as Corey Poluk’s sharp, reverbed, borderline-surfer guitar cuts through it all. This merry band gives its all on stage and, most of all, have fun, which is obvious in the sweat, smiles and soul on display.

I’ve never heard “M-I-S-E-R-Y” being called and answered with such happiness. “No Love”, “You Don’t Know” (which they debuted on Saturday), “Goodbye Baby”… there’s no point trying to identify highlights in their set. It all feels good, it all feels new, and damn is it fun! If you didn’t get the message a couple paragraphs ago, here it is again – give them a spin. Also, do not miss them at The Electric Owl on September 22. It would be criminal.

As if Fortune wasn’t full enough already, by the time Lee Fields took to the stage, the place was certifiably jam-packed; people jockeying for position almost all the way to the back wall, lines for the bar merging confusedly with the crowd, lucky ducks sitting on top of the side booths with their enviable vantage points. The Expressions eased us in with a mood-setting instrumental intro, which served as precursor to Lee Fields’ long-awaited appearance and his jump into “Two Timer”. “It’s so good to be here, Vancouver! Let’s get this party started!” The man’s will to have a good time and put on a killer show was palpable.

Be it the simmered-in-soul laments of “Still Hanging On” (“I’m not over you yet / You’re in my head and I can’t forget,”), the sexy, sweet nothings in “Ladies” (“Ladies / Lovely ladies / Beautiful ladies / You’re so fine, so fine,”) or the confident assurances of “I Still Got It” (“Take my hat, my shoes, my girl / I still got it,”), the way Lee Fields sings his words are just as, if not more important than the words themselves. Despite the man’s small stature and his more than six decades of living, the power and feeling he emanates are enormous, undeniable.

“I was up here, tryin’ to be cool, with this hot-ass jacket on,” he joked before tossing his jacket after the first handful of songs. He couldn’t have been more bang-on with his hot/cool wordplay, because the Fortune was steaming by mid-set, with an inordinate number of hot foxes and cool cats getting their groove on all over the place.

Every song, most of which were off Faithful Man and 2009’s My World, hit the bull’s eye – “Wish You Were Here”, “Love Comes And Goes”, “Honey Dove”, the fantastic back-to-back smack-in-the-heart that was “You’re the Kind of Girl” and “Faithful Man”… it was all gold.

Thank you, Lee, for kicking off September 2012 in style. Much love and respect. Until next time. - Vancouver Weekly

There are those magical nights when a band plugs in and delivers an above-and-beyond effort, signs of which include massive sweating, no shortage of clever stage banter, heavy drinking, and a complete refusal to stand in one place for more than four seconds.

And then there are those even rarer nights when a group truly leaves everything on-stage, sending no one home disappointed. Think playing hard enough that instruments literally end up trashed. Think projecting enough unhinged charisma to scare both Lux Interior and circa ’77 Johnny Rotten. And think having the nards to not only roll out a Clash track from the immortal London Calling, but actually matching the energy of the original.

Amazingly, Vancouver garage-soul upstarts the Ballantynes pretty much covered all the above bases Friday night at the Cobalt, where they were the guest stars of the excellent weekly event Come Friday.

There were no passengers in the band, whether you were talking ever-busy bassist Max Sample, guitarist Corey Poluk, or dual drummers Mike McDiarmid and Trevor Racz, the former looking retro-’60s-classy in a snappy thin-cut suit and the latter projecting an early Keith Richards–meets–Richard Hell coolness.

Visually, singers Jen Wilks and Vanessa Dandurand were the early odds-on favourites to strut away the show, especially considering that the liberally tattied Dandurand hit the stage in shorts and clutching a honey-bear bottle seemingly filled with something higher-proof than honey. As impressively as the two acquitted themselves, they had some unbeatable competition from a man who would ultimately trump everyone in the band spectacle-wise.

That would be keyboardist, singer, sometime-guitarist, and complete lunatic Jarrod O’Dell, who, right from the maximum–R & B kickoff number “Stay” came on like a man who’d just escaped a mental institution. The start of the show found him hunched over his Hammond with the studied intensity of a Hastings tweaker scouring the sidewalk for crack rocks. O’Dell also displayed a propensity for completely hammering away at his organ (which admittedly sounds dirtier than it was). He must have done some major damage during the breakdown in the pump-it-up new-waver “Message”, because shortly thereafter he announced, “I can’t believe I broke another key, man!”

Give the rest of the Ballantynes props for having the stamina to (almost) keep up with him. Dandurand and Wilks gave every indication they were having a blast, whether enthusiastically trading off vocals in “Faith” or unleashing their inner soul sisters for the revved-up “The Railtown Abbey”. (Bonus points during the latter number went to the bespectacled, baseball cap–wearing BrooklynVegan subscriber on the dance floor who sang along like a born-again southerner at a tent revival.)

There’s a valid case to be made that O’Dell ruined some of the sugar-spun sweetness of “Misery” by staring off into space psychotically, but he compensated for that with moves that suggested James Brown hopped to the tits on angel dust.

The set concluded with the Ballantynes’ now sweat-stained wild card announcing “This song is about being an asshole. Which I am.” That may be true, but at least he’s an epically entertaining asshole. You could tell how much he was givin’ ’er by the fact that his pit stick had completely failed by the encore number “Hateful”.

Considering how hard his fellow Ballantynes were working, he probably wasn’t alone on that front. Yes, this one was that perspiration-drenched, over-the-top, and all-round awesome. - The Georgia Straight

This is the presentation of a huge project and unexpected That Comes from Vancouver, Canada, called The Ballantynes.
Edited by La-Ti-Da Records his first 7'' Which bills Itself to the multitude of diverse elements evoke the spirits That more dancing, it was not his main weapon is the Hammond organ and the wealth of rhythmic clapping, tambourines and Other Instruments .
The vocalization of Jarrod Odell is eminently "mod" as well as the instrumentation present in "The Message" song on side A, side B is in the the pearl "The Railtown Abbey" is a sort of "garage-punk-gospel-soul "the revivalist and the same in the fresh voice of Vanessa Dandurand. This is simply not a retro hard, it's a habit of listening, much due to Their freshness.
Make way for The Ballantynes ??and dance, dance, dance .. - Rock Around The Blog

The Ballantynes

This East Van sevensome (don’t look that up…) has been smashing the tambourine for a few years now, releasing three 7” and most recently, their first EP, Liquor Store Gun Store Pawn Shop Church (released October 25 on La Ti Da Records, along with their video for “No Love”). In their relatively young band-lifespan, the group has supported the likes of The Pack A.D., Brooklyn rock’n’rollers The Jay Vons, and the legendary Lee Fields. If Prohibition were still a thing, The Ballantynes would be the premiere booze can house band – actually, they’d probably be running the place. Ballantynes’ Moonshyne does have a ring to it…

The rhythm section here is massive, with Michael McDiarmid and Trevor Racz each pounding their own sets of drums, and mustachioed Max Sample laying down a bass line you could hitch a caboose to. Corey “Babyface” Poluk’s energetic guitar-playing matches bandleader Jarrod Odell’s wild frenzy, and everything gets tied together by the sweetly saucy voices of Jennifer Wilks and Vanessa Dandurand. Though seven people on a stage may seem a little excessive to the untrained eye and ear, it takes about seven seconds of live performance to convince you that each piece here’s integral to the whole.

The October EP release show at The Astoria saw The Ballantynes take to the stage in good company – with young upstarts Skinny Kids and another hot Vancouver group you shouldn’t miss out on, Gang Signs. I’ve never left a Ballantynes gig sober, dry, or sad – it’s always the opposite of all three. I can’t often offer an absolute guarantee of a good time when recommending a show, but I can with The Ballantynes. If you’ve seen them already, you need no convincing. If you haven’t, well, stop sucking and get on it!

Catch The Ballantynes at the Hotel Vancouver’s massive multiroom New Year’s party next week, brought to you by the same creative team that threw those wild Waldorf hootenannies.

-Daniel Robichaud - Vancouver Weekly

Holy fucking shit! Best debut gig I’ve EVER seen!! Full-on mod/soul ASSAULT! Such fun and amazingly cool kids. I expect big things outta this Vancouver, BC collective in the new year! - Campfireisland

Cool stuff from Vancouver's Ballantynes – the Hammond-heavy, moddish stormer "The Message" and the equally driving "Railtown Abbey" on the flip! The group does a pretty sweet job of building on 60s dancefloor rock & soul sounds without stepping too deep into a throwback vibe. Each of the group's 7 core members has a percussion credit and 5 of the 7 are credited with vocals – which clues you in on the stomping, clapping, sing-a-long kinda garage soul sound. A nice introduction to the group! - Dusty Groove America

Don’t know if they actually have R&B charts in Canada, but if they do this soulful slab of glorious gospel-voiced, organ-grinding should be headed to #1 with a bullet! - Roctober Magazine Reviews

A revival is in the air and it’s about damn time. The Ballantynes have arrived and are working Vancouver into a frenzy. When a band this special comes along, it doesn’t take long for word to spread. Along with Chains of Love, The Ballantynes are part of a garage/soul revival that is about to take the country by storm.

This is not retro-for-retro’s sake, as The Ballantynes are adept at merging the sometimes conflicting genres of garage, soul and elements of punk and gospel. The combination creates a huge, classic sound that makes you want to move your body, which is appropriate, because according to vocalist Vanessa Dandurand, “We endeavour to only play two kinds of music: dance and slow dance.”

As anyone who has gone to see live music in recent memory knows, it can be really hard to get people to lose their inhibitions and dance, but The Ballantynes bring a lot of muscle in the form of a huge seven-member band that features two drummers, organs, lots of singing and a tambourine in every empty hand. The Ballantynes feature members from The Transmitors, The Parallels, The Valuable and even Calgary’s own power pop legends, The Hazard Lights.

Earlier this year, The Ballantynes released their debut 7” single on Victoria’s La Ti Da Records, one of the Canada’s finest small labels. The single is a small taste of big things to come with two songs: “The Message” is a song on the slow-dance side and features ex-Transmitor Jarrod Odell on lead vocals, a song that works itself into a heavy, slow groove. “The Railtown Abbey” has all the elements of a classic, reworking the Hammond riff from Bon Jovi’s “Lay Your Hands On Me” into a modern-day “Shout,” complete with breathtaking tradeoff vocals from Odell and Dandurand. Hard to believe that “The Railtown Abbey” isn’t already a breakaway hit.

As much as I desperately want to see The Ballantynes as a part of a bigger movement or a response to the nihilism of the Vancouver music scene, bassist Max Sample notes that the band is simply an “expression of what we can add to [the Vancouver] scene and how we'd like it to develop. Ultimately, we're just doing what we like and being very honest and natural with the process, and this is what it sounds like.” This honesty has paid off with a diverse following, with guitarist Corey Poluk noting that The Ballantynes appeal to “punk fans, garage fans, soul music fans — it doesn't really seem to matter what music you love.”

The motto on The Ballantynes Bandcamp site reads, “we fight the good fight and it sounds a lot like love,” which makes perfect sense after getting a read on the minds behind the music. The band describes a tight bond, with members each playing a crucial role in the group that genuinely seems cohesive and mutually supportive. The Ballantynes are just starting out and are keeping their heads firmly planted on their shoulders, notes Odell: “I'm certainly feeling the excitement and love coming from people but, it is way too early for me to get caught up in it.” Good things come to those who wait. - Beatroute Magazine

"If you want to get those dancing shoes on then look no further. East Vancouver’s Ballantynes have released their first seven-inch single, featuring the incredibly addictive songs “The Message” and “The Railtown Abbey.”
Considering it was recorded at Little Red Sounds Studio — which recently brought you the retro magic of Chains of Love — it’s no surprise that the Ballantynes tout a similar blend of mid-sixties beat, soul and garage rock.

But rather than pulling from the charming girl groups of the era, you get influences from blue-eyed soul groups like the Young Rascals or the Animals.
“The Message” features Jarrod Odell on lead vocals, not to mention a delicious Hammond organ. The vocalist’s deep and bluesy pipes are drenched in echo, contrasting the light female backup vocals that provide breezy call-backs. The thumping beat and fun stops and starts will have you bobbing your head whether you’re conscious of it or not.
B-side “The Railtown Abbey” is just as impressive. Its explosive intro, which has Vanessa Dandurand belting out its opening lyrics, is reminiscent of the Shangri-Las version of “Shout”. Once drums and handclaps kick in, you start to imagine an entire gospel choir working their way onstage. Odell takes the second verse and from there it becomes an exhilarating duet. What a treat to have a band that consists of two show-stopping vocalists.
The Ballantynes have a whopping seven members. They’re a big band, but they sure have the big sound to back it up." - Angela Yen - Discorder Magazine

"If the principles of basic biology gave way to magic for a mythical moment in the early ’80s and allowed the oft-imagined love triangle between Sam and Dave and Joe Strummer to bear fruit in the form of musical septuplets, their offspring would look and sound a lot like the Ballantynes.

Since forming in Vancouver just one short year ago, The Ballantynes quickly set to work recording a self-titled 7" for local label, c, and playing in various venues across the West Coast to a growing legion of faithful fans. The band’s fan base is a multifarious composite of hard-core punks, old soul lovers, dance-aholics and soccer moms. Lead singer, Jarrod O’Dell, explains:

“Vancouver’s probably a lot like Victoria in that we don’t have too many venues. What ends up happening ... and it’s kinda like a happy accident ... what ends up happening is that you get these seemingly strange mixes of scenes. On any given night, you might get some indie band on the same bill as a hardcore punk band, and a country western band, or maybe a soul band; worlds collide, and it’s pretty neat to see what happens. Most of the time it’s great!”

The Ballantynes’ diverse following is a testament to the plethora of elements at play in the beautiful menagerie of influences dancing upon the complex web of their sound. Summoning the spirits of many, yet imitating nobody, the band’s overlying thesis is deceivingly simple: shake your ass and have some fun.

Set to make their Victorian debut this Saturday night, it is obvious that the Ballantynes plan to conquer. The festivities begin at Club 919 where, armed with a Hammond Organ, a wealth of tambourines and other assorted instruments, the band will headline its inaugural Victorian show, supported by local darlings The Chantrelles. The party will then stumble up Broughton Street to Smith’s Pub, where the band will vie for a coveted spot behind a needle.

So rest up, Victoria. Forgo your best laid Friday night plans, and eat a big ol’ breakfast on Saturday morning. The Ballantynes settle for nothing short of several litres of sweat upon 919’s lit up dance floor. They’re gonna bring it; you should, too. This is an early show, with doors at 6:30 p.m. Tickets. $10." - by Nick Lyons - Monday Magazine