Getting to know David Martel

There are some epic love songs that leave you breathless, transporting you to someplace far away in your mind. David Martel, a Canadian indie-folk singer from Montreal possesses that amazing story telling quality in his music. One moment you’re in the crowd, watching him play his guitar and the next you’re caught up in the passionate landscape that he paints.

I watched David perform in October at Lee’s Palace in Toronto, as an opener for Mother Mother, wearing an old fashioned hat and fuzzy slippers. He sang like his life depended on it, and I was hooked. Plus a cellist was involved, which made it even more soulful and romantic sounding. It was musical-love at first sight.
His debut album, “I Hardly Knew Me,” was birthed in 2007, with the help of many different musicians intricately layering their instrumental gifts. This album resembles a love letter read in bed, with the winter sunlight peeping under your curtains. Capable of both slow, soft lyrical moments, David sings with an unquestionable passion and playfulness on stage and on record. Songs like, “End of self” have a rock anthem/ ballad quality to them which crash with intensity.


He captivatingly takes you through his highs and lows, with songs like, “Cancel all your plans,” and “Stay In,” which end on powerful, thundering tempos. “Be all, end all,” is another fierce song about the end of relationships.

Are you waiting for the sun to rise
to make this over?
just hold me up to the light
see what’s still left over
stop waiting for the sun to rise
don’t pretend it’s over
your freedom waits in sacrifice.

Like any good love story his songs take you on a high, leaving you with the feeling that in life, despite the endings that occur, there is something on the horizon. Intimate lyrics are meshed with the sounds of guitar, piano, accordion, flutes and synths, as well as his talented female vocalist, Natasha-Lou Landry.
I’m sure that his visually stunning lyrics and disarming performances will get a lot of attention in the near future. Hopefully Canada will be getting to know the talented Mr. Martel a lot better, very soon.

Lullabies for little criminals

“I tried to pass myself off as an adult when I was a kid, and now, ironically, I am an adult who tried to write in the voice of a child,” writes Heather O’Neil, who regurgitates moments from her childhood in vivid passages as luminescent as poetry in her first novel, “Lullabies for little criminals.”

Baby is the character partially modeled after O’Neil’s own experiences growing up in Montreal, with a father addicted to heroin, and turning to drugs and prostitution at the age of 13. Despite the dark and twisted aspects of Baby’s life, moving from cheap apartments to juvenile institutions, back to dirtier apartments, her imagination and optimism is never extinguished. What is revealed deeply throughout the core of O’Neil’s character is the need to be loved. As relatable as breathing, Baby walks through life placing her trust in others, searching for someone to notice her, protect her and find the value that she hasn’t yet found inside herself. Shadow and light intermingles in this novel which depicts a girl’s life of poverty and her struggles to become accepted and hold on to her childhood and the sweetness and innocence it holds.

Baby eventually turns to drugs to escape her life where her father’s withdrawal makes her into the enemy and sex becomes a meaningless act that a pimp convinces her is an inevitable fate. She starts to believe that she isn’t worth anything better and that her joy is slowly being sucked out through straw. In one scene she shoots up heroin in a bathroom stall to satisfy her craving for momentary salvation. “This dope was different. I could hear the sound of my own heart beating. The woman in the picture began combing her hair. I whispered the word “Shit” and it came out of my mouth in calligraphic letters, like in a cartoon…. I decided I’d better keep my mouth shut. I was way too stoned.”

Every experience in Baby’s life is written like poetry, or song lyrics too honest to be uttered aloud. O’Neil’s words punctuate every passage with shameless ease that flow and draw you avidly into her observations. Her story is described simply and what you’re left with is a brightly painted picture that hangs in your mind long after you’ve read it.

Every comparison is so blunt and unique, like, “the night was like a typewriter that got stuck”, or “I’d turned to a guy sitting next to me and said, ‘Somewhere there is a sparrow singing in B minor.’ I swear to God, pot made me a genius.”

Such simple things are made beautiful, and even when horrible events are taking place in the turmoil that whirls around her Baby gives everyday images a fresh meaning, like, “In the window, the moon had made itself so tiny it was just a hole in the elbow of a sweater.”

As O’Neil’s first published work, which won CBC's, Canada Reads award in 2007, this is a remarkable novel, poignantly told without reserve or fear. The part of us that wants to be loved and accepted is exposed in a raw, startling way. A meaningful message is summed up when Baby says, “I was just going to have to start being my own person.” Ultimately we can all be little criminals, but the choice is ours.