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Canadian musician Priya Thomas is wilfull, able and restless; and asks no pardon for going her own road, and setting off in unlikely directions. Entitled, Blood Heron (renovation tracks) is set for release in Canada in fall 08. Priya Thomas has been a critical favorite for more than a decade in Canada, -she released her first full length in 1996- and has long been considered one of Canada's most uncompromising and innovative acts flying under the radar. Best known for her lyrical literacy and incendiary live performances, Priya Thomas has shared the stage with John Cale, The Fall, Radiohead, The Dears and others. Blood Heron promises to be a collection of songs more intimate and immediate than anything she has released to date. It's an assemblage of missed mutes, tape stretch, first takes only, no automation, and irregular time signatures, which bend and float, and put stark simplicity and the idiosyncracy of the creative process front and centre. Recorded at home to half inch 8, every creak of the floors, the buzz and hum of warp-necked guitars, and the sound of musicians stumbling around a tiny room, mid-renovation, has been left in the clanking mix.

Blood Heron is a collection of smoldering, raw, hazy and unpolished love songs; and was written on the road while on tour doing merch for fellow musician and Broken Social Scenester, Jason Collett. The scrapbook style arrangements are skeletal & threadbare with wide-open spaces that reflect time spent on the road; the slow pace of driving through an epic landscape. Thomas wrote much of the record in hotel rooms, and through continually carrying a little black notebook; borrowing the odd spare guitar. The result is a loose and ragged homage to love; a confessional and reflective record that mumbles into dreamscapes, and drifts into the psychedelic smoke of traveling cross-country in a van of strangers. Despite the foray into a gentler, moodier soundscape, the lyrics still reveal an ascerbic wit and pistol personality:

"Don’t you come courting me now with that carrot on a stick, Like you know what makes me tick, You and your mercenary functions - do I look like I need your sanctifications?"
(Had I Known, I would have declined)

Or, the scathing indictment of betrayal in Wine, Moonshine, Sugar Beams with its relentless phrasing, "to the end, to the end, to the end, row your boat":

“He knows you exist he smiles, the widest, wildest, brightest starfucking smile."

Local Canadian musicians populate Blood Heron. The record was co-produced by Steve Pitkin (Elliott Brood, Flashing Lights) who also played drums, and also features Mike O'Brien of Jason Collett's band PasoMino, and Lindy Vopnfjord of Major Maker. Thomas picks up the rest of the instrumentation heard on the record; tries her hand at banging pots and pans with wooden spoons on Farewell Creek, and plays drums on Gunpowder Heart. Thomas will be touring the record in Canada as well as the Uk in 2008 following its release. For more info, check out the official website at http://www.priyathomas.com

People say:

"Onstage she unleashes a swagger that would make Mick Jagger proud"- Daniel McCabe, Elle Canada

"Her music hails from the full-on rock and roll side of punk, but it’s her moves, angular yet flowing like a staccato ballet, that really grab your attention"- BBC Manchester

"Priya Thomas emotes so much devout passion on this ten-tracker, that you'll wonder if God is stuck in her throat"-Christine Estima, The Gate

"Thomas herself is wild: a dark, skinny, suicide-blonde dervish of a performer...Big on originality - there's nobody else like her, really." -Howard Druckman CMW

Each song is literally the best two to three minutes of your life! She was fiendishly dancing right off the top, all over the cramped stage...She even fell a few times! She was like a caged animal, pacing through her territory" -ChartAttack Live Review, Christina Estima

..."fantastic...confrontational" -The Globe and Mail, Canada

Motherfucking West
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