lily frost

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A rare bird from Canada's musical woods, Lily Frost is inspired by spiritual exploration, human relationships, achieving the impossible, and long espressos. A serious musician who plays her own guitar and writes all her own songs, she's released 8 albums to date (including her work with seminal lounge group The Colorifics). Her work is cinematic, blending film noir, stark minimalism, cinematic images, and coruscating, soul-stabbing honesty.

It's been said of Lily that she "seems to have been born under a sign that flashes cool." She's an old soul who sings immortal music appealing to young and old-anyone who's ever been in love, basically, known its vertiginous joys and bittersweet afterburn. Like her signature drink, the espresso martini, she's both intoxicating and invigorating, smooth and silky and always leaves you wanting more.

Her music is impossible to describe, utterly unique, in a category of its own. Slinky, cool, with haunting melodies and dreamlike imagery, exotic, rhythmic, in the Parisian chanteuse tradition of Francoise Hardy, but utterly modern. She "seduces audiences with her sultry serenades," as one (perhaps slightly smitten) newspaper writer once put it. She herself has described it as "dim candelight stuff, makeout music with Latino flavouring," which is maybe as close as words can get. Her music's been featured in a popular Telus ad ("Who's that singer?" everyone asked when it came out), on the soundtrack to the movie Crazy Beautiful starring Kristen Dunst and recently "Enchantment" from Cine-Magique was featured on ABC's ultrapopular drama (and great showcase for independent music) Grey's Anatomy.

What the press is saying:

Cine-Magique is an appropriate title for the fourth solo album from Canadian chanteuse Lily Frost, given the qualities both cinematic et Francais of the dreamy pop music contained therein. Certainly, if you’re jonesin’ for a Feist fix, you’ve come to the right place; this, too, is where languid Franco-torch chansons (“You’ve Shaken Every Part of Me,” the classy “Je Reviendrai Toujours Vers Toi”) and jaunty acoustic pop numbers (“Enchantment,” “I Called You”) sit happily side-by-side though, sadly, no Bee Gees covers here. Meanwhile, ballads worthy of a ’40s film noir (or a David Lynch movie) echo throughout Cine-Magique, with Frost’s voice deceptively or achingly sweet depending on the scene, as on the political “Raise the Veil” or the pretty shuffle of “Warm Dawn.” Not to be typecast, Frost ends the album with “Priscilla,” a catchy homage to the girl group/Phil Spector sound. Top-notch, as the French say.
-- Exclaim, September 06, 2006, Neil McDonald-

"...Most tried too hard. But a young chanteuse called Lily Frost crooned one of your early songs, Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye. She was almost cooler than thou, Leonard. Immobile in Chinese silk, her dark hair in a retro coif, she had a loungy voice like Julie London, and cut the tempo of the lyrics in half, making young Leonard sound like old Leonard. You would have liked her."
-- Macleans Magazine October 11, 2004 review of Leonard Cohen tribute-

"Frost is out seducing audiences with her sultry serenades, which lie cozily between the Franco-pop pleasures of Keren Ann, the icy torch songs of Stina Nordenstam and the sweeping desert dramas of Lhasa De Sala."
-- eye Weekly 14 July 2005

• more reviews
• For more information about Lily Frost visit her website: lilyfrost.com
• Find Lily on MySpace.