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The Acorn sprouts a PBR release

Posted Mon Feb 12, 13:10 by El Comandante

Nestled proudly in the cultural bubble between Canada’s musical hotbeds of Montreal and Toronto, The Acorn make their home in the fertile swamplands of Ottawa, Ontario.

The Acorn was initially the solo-project of Ottawa music scene veteran Rolf Klausener (Recoilers, Greenfield Main). Rolf recruited Jeff Debutte (The Soft Disaster), Howie Tsui, and Jeffrey Malecki during the recording of his first project The Pink Ghosts, a song cycle about the Ottawa region’s spectral geography and topography. These songs, a collection of complex folk guitartistry and ambient soundscapery, were released later that summer.

In 2005, after a year of playing and composing together, they recorded and released, an EP called Blankets!, which added a more lyrical and melodic sensibility to the bucolic instrumentation of the first release. Guitar lines interpenetrate each other, complex and powerful rhythms bemuse and propel, while Klausener’s lyrics reflect an engagement with the psychogeography of Ottawa City.

Then they toured to Canada’s east, west and creamy centre. In 2006, they decided to put some new songs down on magnetic tape, creating the Tin Fist EP. This six-song ep written primarily live off the floor at Ottawa’s Little Bullhorn Prods (Howe Gelb, Wooden Stars, Julie Doiron, Kathleen Edwards) begins where the wistful “Blankets!” left off, and takes new roads both dark and jubilant. The Acorn is joined on Tinfist, and now as full-time member, by Keiko Devaux (of Montreal’s People for Audio, Storyboard Label) on Marimba and Keyboards. Look for it in stores March 20th of this year.

The five-piece are currently squirreled away deep in a basement in Ottawa’s Centre-town to record a new full-length album, a musical exploration of the life of Klausener’s mother and a further expression of their eclecticism with the addition of traditional Honduran rhythms and instrumentation. The new full length is slated for a Fall 2007 release on Paper Bag Records.

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