Gramercy Riffs
Inspired by the depths of Montreal winters
It was a night like any other night at last year’s NXNE. The booze was flowing mightily, the music was blowing eardrums, and comely young men and women were fighting and falling in love in the clubs and on the sidewalks of Toronto.
My childhood friend Jeff, however, was unimpressed. The two of us had waited a little too long for a particularly hyped band to start their particularly hyped set. Upon starting, said band proved to be underwhelming and atonal.
Frustrated, we left whatever club we were in and hightailed it to the Bread & Circus, where we were told earlier an interesting band from Newfoundland was set to play.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Gramercy Riffs’ pop, sad and involved and performed with undeniable emotion and genuine passion, was what the festival seemed to be missing until that night. Added bonus: They’re named for a street gang in the cult film The Warriors.
“We had a show coming up and we needed a band name,” says Lee Hanlon, who, with Mara Pellerin, handles (among other things) vocals for the band. “[The Warriors] was one of my favorite movies and I thought it was pretty rad at the time. I'm still fine with it although we could have probably came up with something easier to pronounce.”
Calling their sound heartbreak pop, a notion hammered home by the title of their Mark Bragg-produced debut record It’s Heartbreak, Gramercy Riffs are a band clearly on the rise. The buzz that they might have had at last year’s NXNE is finally arriving, and has helped them plot their capital-A arrival.
As of today, the Riffs are accompanying fellow Newfoundlanders Hey Rosetta! on a national tour. It’s the first time they’ve been out on what anyone could call a major tour, and Hanlon is soaking up every iota of it.
“It's going to be a blast,” he says. “We've never played west of Ontario so we are really looking forward to seeing the rest of the country and playing for all kinds of new people.”
Formed just over three years ago, Gramercy Riffs will never be accused of doing things the easy way. At the beginning, Hanlon was in Germany and Pellerin in Newfoundland. They wrote and sent material between those places. When Hanlon came home to St. John’s, Pellerin moved to Montreal to study. Today, they live in Toronto. And, while Hanlon says the band “identify [themselves] most strongly as Newfoundlanders who live in Toronto,” there is one bit of them that will always belong to Montreal.
“A couple of the tunes were inspired by and written in the depths of Montreal winters, ‘Dreaming’ for instance.”
Grammercy Riffs plays @ Cabaret Mile End w/ Hey Rosetta! on February 18th
Grammercy Riffs
Grammercy Riffs
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