by LORRAINE CARPENTER

“The Rocky Mountains and the warm Japanese sea current protect Vancouver from the excesses of Canadian winter,” boasts a B.C. tourism site, adding a little disclaimer, “Rain is not uncommon.” Apart from its spectacular mountains and trees and stars, Vancouver looks a lot like England in wintertime, endlessly wet and grey with cold winds off the water.

Four out of five members of Vancouver’s the Organ grew up in and around the city, the fifth in B.C.’s interior, and the lyrics on their Sinking Hearts EP seem spiked with seasonal affective disorder (SAD). Desperation, darkness and cold course through lines like, “It really shook you when I said/No one has ever looked so dead” and “I am not surprised/I got my big head caught underneath the ice,” but these young ladies, aged 21 to 27, prefer depression you can dance to. Jenny Smyth - who plays the band’s namesake, a Hammond 123XL “Romance series” - has called their music “75 per cent dance, 25 per cent sway,” a sound not unlike the great gloom-pop gone by.

“It’s true that we evoke the same mood, but we don’t sound like Joy Division or the Cure,” says singer-lyricist Katie Sketch. “Well, not that much.”

Listening to the Organ’s spare, lightly produced songs, which put vocals and keys out front, allotting equal space to guitar, bass and drums, you can’t help but think “early Smiths with a Hammond.” Sketch’s rich vocals and sombre melodies have earned her such titles as “female Morrissey” and, despite her petite hairdo, “a child produced by Morrissey and Siouxsie Sioux.”

“What a nightmare,” she says, laughing off the thought of such a spawn. “But I actually understand that.”

As a child, Sketch experienced the ’80s without older siblings to expose her to underground sounds. “Tiffany and Bon Jovi - that was my take on ’80s music.” Her thinking changed in the late ’90s, when she scored a job and a music mentor in one stroke.

“I was in a musical lull, I couldn’t stand what I was listening to,” says Sketch, naming Sleater-Kinney as one example. “The local scene was also pretty shitty, and of course the radio was brutal. Then, by total fluke, my mom’s friend’s husband, Ron Obvious, hired me to help with the audio wiring for a studio he was building for Bryan Adams.” Obvious promptly began plying Sketch with vinyl and mix tapes, slowly educating her in all things ’80s. In another fortuitous twist, this job also led Sketch to Tara Nelson, the engineer who would later record the Organ’s EP.

A nickel for your thoughts

For a band still in its infancy, the Organ have amassed a thick stack of press and generous industry attention. They’ve recently co-signed with Mint Records and 604, a label headed by Nickelback singer Chad Kroeger. Bassist Ashley Webber is quick to downplay the Nickelback connection (“Chad didn’t even like our music”), saying 604 lawyer Jonathan Simkin was the enamoured party who pursued them for six months before working out a partnership with Mint. Apart from their desire to stay indie, the Organ already had a Mint link through the New Pornographers’ Kurt Dahle, another excitable fan who worked his way into the picture as producer of their debut album, currently in the works.

“He was really into it, he was coming to our shows, he was right there the whole time,” says Sketch, who happily gave in to Dahle’s harassment as the ink dried on the Mint deal. Webber adds, “He’s working really hard, and he lets us do what we want. We were scared we wouldn’t have that with anybody else.”

So far, the Organ have geared their business manoeuvres toward ultimate ease and creative control, and the success of Sinking Hearts looks like vindication for their unique band dynamic. Sketch and Smyth, who previously played in an instrumental act called Full Sketch, hired the rest of the band for their enthusiasm rather than their skill. Guitarist Deborah Cohen, drummer Shelby Stocks and Webber were taken on in seven-month intervals, giving Sketch time to teach them how to play.

“They haven’t had any musical training whatsoever,” says the marm, a classically trained violinist who describes herself as “bossy.”

“We’re all good friends now and we seem to have overcome those challenges.” :

With Echo Kitty and Tremolo at Petit Campus
on Thursday, March 6, 9pm, $6.50

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