True confessions time: I am a children’s choir survivor. I can still feel the itch of unflattering polyester capes, and cringe at flashbacks of warbling “negro spirituals” with hundreds of other overprivileged white preteens as though it were yesterday.
While my residual trauma is common among former kiddie choristers, there are exceptions to the rule. Katie Stelmanis wears her Canadian Children’s Opera Chorus laurels with pride, even going so far as to claim her tenure with the organization from age 10 onwards was, “like, the best time of my life.”
You can hear Stelmanis’ classical training all over her debut LP, Join Us (Blocks Recording Club), which she launches Friday (Jan. 11) at the Silver Dollar, alongside Montreal’s Luyas, The Torrent and Emma McKenna. The legacy of fascist conductors and boot camp–style vocalizing exercises lies in the singer’s soaring melismas, from-the-diaphragm projection and complex, meticulously layered vocal harmonies.
Though Stelmanis is best known as one-third of post-riot grrrl rock squad Galaxy, she didn’t originally aspire to cramped clubs. Her dreams were far more highbrow — to belt majestic arias in luxurious theatres.
In fact, Stelmanis was all geared up to study opera at McGill until she encountered an influence who’s changed the course of many a young girl’s life.
“About a week before school started, I decided I didn’t want to go to Montreal, and it was around that time that I started getting into Ani Difranco,” she explains, somewhat sheepishly. “I started writing lots and lots of songs on acoustic guitar. When I got sick of the guitar, I got a computer and started writing songs that way.
Rest assured that Join Us betrays no debt to the infamous Righteous Babe. Stelmanis’ songs are mercurial mixes of MIDI, tumultuous waves of near-gothic synthesizers and post-apocalyptic click-and-whirr percussion, swirling around her multi-tracked vocals, closer in tone and feeling to Kate Bush and Thom Yorke’s solo work than anything coffeehouse-oriented.
And although Stelmanis’ avant-garde/classical underpinnings might be too esoteric for some tastes, she’s found an ideal home within the Blocks Recording Club. Releasing her album with Blocks was a long-time goal, she says, and with recent changes in the co-op’s operating structure due in part to shifts in the board (founding member Steve Kado declined to run again, making room for new minds and ideas), Stelmanis is ecstatic about the direction in which Blocks is headed.
“I know Steve wanted it to be really punk rock, and it’s done a good job of being like that and staying like that. But I think there are other people in Blocks who can see it becoming a bigger thing.”
In memoriam
Bonnie O’Donnell, a member of the Pandyamonium management team (Serena Ryder, Jully Black) died suddenly after a brief illness Jan. 7. Our thoughts are with her friends, family and colleagues.