http://www.herohill.com/2008/12/best-of-2008-top-10-canadian-eps.htm

http://herenb.canadaeast.com/music/article/289487

The nice folks at hero hill recently featured Don't Wake the Baby on their Canadian Mixtape Project. Download the New Brunswick edition here:

http://www.herohill.com/2008/03/canadian-mixtape-project-new-brunswick.htm

Quick hitters:: Olivier Jarda

I have to be honest. We were going to go with BC before we jumped to New Brunswick on the herohill mix tape project. We teetered on the edge, but I really wanted to talk about Olivier Jarda, so I tried to gently nudge Shane in that direction. Jarda’s latest release - Diagrams - is quite simply put, a hidden treasure.

Diagrams is a surprisingly sophisticated release full of melodic indie rock songs. Well that is as generic as a description as it get, Jarda’s songs are anything but. Truncated strums make you nod along to the title track, and over the course of the LP Jarda offers up some pleasant surprises (like the nice females vocals on Don’t Wake the Baby). His tight melodies have just enough fuzz and drone to give these introspective songs an edge, but the piano lines that dance in the background keep you emotionally attached.

While Jarda’s songs have that bounce (Victorian Faces), he can draw you in with the sparest of songs. With Flashing Lights is nothing more than his voice and an acoustic and he shows his charisma. Short story even shorter... Jarda is going to be one of the focal points of the New Brunswick mix tape, so why not get on board early?


http://www.herohill.com/2008/03/quick-hitters-olivier-jarda.htm

Album Review: Olivier Jarda - Diagrams
(Independent, Dec. 2007)

I was going to write about this album last night, but I ended up being a offered a free ticket to see the Raptors (they destroyed Vince Carter and the Nets, by the way). That said, last week I promised to delve further into Olivier Jarda's debut solo album, Diagrams (when I featured the lead-off track, "Victorian Faces" as my song of the week), so here I am—better late than never.

Thankfully for me Diagrams is an album that I've pretty much been listening to non-stop—something to which my Last.FM widgets and profile will attest—and, given its overall quality, I doubt that's a trend that will cease anytime soon.

Coming out of nowhere for me personally, as I'm not familiar with Jarda's previous band, The Turnstiles (which has gone into hibernation according to his Myspace), Diagrams immediately struck me as a confident and well-crafted release. Of course, that's not to say that he comes across as infallible in his lyrics, as these tracks each display a palpable sense of vulnerability that is easy to relate to. Take "Don't Wake the Baby" for example, as Jarda asserts the sympathetic prediction:

"We'll break each other's hearts and nurse each other's wounds and make each other cry and wipe each other's tears until we die."

In fact, while demanding attention by being front and centre in the mix, Jarda's very vocal presence is rife with introspective vulnerability. If I had to pin it down I'd liken the sound to that of The Shins, or Destroyer, though there's also a youthful exuberance and longing at play here, as on "Bomb Shelter" ("You shake her knees anytime you please.") or the rollicking "Tropical Medicine."

Of course, at the end of the day there's no reason to over-analyze the excellent tracks on this album, as lyrically fertile as they may be, as you really just ought to sit back and enjoy it. In fact, the ever-present engaging melodies of tracks like "Indigen" or "The Disappearance of the Great Adekunkle" make this a very rewarding task.

Don't sweat it, you've got plenty of time to delve deeper, as Diagrams not only stands up to repeated listens, it demands them.

-Paul Watson

Review link: http://www.wolveshawksandkites.com/2008/02/14/album-review-olivier-jarda-diagrams/

The kind folks at Zunior have made Diagrams available on their site for hi-qual downloadable goodness.