Three to get ready

>>Montreal’s the Luyas are go

RINGING IN THEIR EARS: The Luyas

by LORRAINE CARPENTER

Jesse Stein was distracted when I called last Thursday. Not only was she navigating the 401, heading to Toronto to launch the Luyas’ debut album, Faker Death, but she was attentively absorbing a friend’s album. So when Stein’s brand new phone rang, she assumed that the unfamiliar ring tone was emanating from the record.

“And I was like, ‘Oh, that’s an interesting decision,’” she says. “Then it happened again in the next song, and I was surprised and delighted by this weird synthesizer moment.”

After a nudge from one of her bandmates, Stein picked up on my third attempt. Three seems to be a significant number for the Luyas; they’re a trio, they’re Stein’s third band (she used to front SS Cardiacs, and plays with Miracle Fortress), and they’re one of three bands featuring Pietro Amato and/or Stefan Schneider, the others being Bell Orchestre, Torngat and Jorane’s live band. Stein met Amato in 2003 at a Torngat show in Toronto, where she was studying.

“Canada’s pretty small, and Canadian indie rock is especially small, so we ran into each other over the years, and our bands would play together.”

Following the break-up of her band, and “a train wreck of a love story,” she moved to Halifax, but soon returned to Montreal, reconnecting with Amato and meeting his Bell Orchestre bandmate, Schneider.

“It had a nice immediacy where it sounded like its own thing right away,” says Stein of early Luyas jams. “But I guess that’s inherent in the semi-atypical band structure.”

With reedy girlish vocals, personable guitars, scene-stealing drums, no-nonsense French horn, eccentric keys and melodica, the band built eight distinctive songs, with fairly sparse arrangements and simple structures. “It’s the way that they’re decorated that’s a little harder to digest, hopefully more interesting to digest.”

Sample it while you can—the band members’ other commitments will keep Luyas shows few and far between. But they’ll be back, on stage as well as in the studio, buffing their creaky compositions to as shine. “We still have a bunch of work that we can do to maximize our potential—they’re laughing at me,” she says, referring to the guys. “I love the record, but we can do better.”

CD launch with Fort Miracle and
Anemones at Casa del Popolo
on Friday, Aug. 10, 9 p.m., $8