By Jim Barber
Intensely creative, emotionally resonant, musically dynamic, filled with a sense of renewal, of artistic exploration and of exceptional lyrical literacy, Toronto dream-rock band Ace of Wands is aptly named, with its Tarot-inspired nomenclature a perfect fit for the three-piece act’s recordings and live performances.
The band is set to release its third studio album, Future Wave, a Carrollian rabbit-hole dive into themes of the fickleness, the omnipresence and the relentlessness of time, as well as a delving into the human psyche as it comes to grips with the power of the past and the future on the here and now.
It was the awakening created through learning about Tarot that inspired the band’s name, but could also be said for helping create its mission statement as a musical entity.
“When the band was first starting out, I was getting into Tarot and just that whole world a little bit. I had been given a Tarot deck as a present from a friend. And in terms of my relationship with Tarot, I would not say that I am an expert, and I wouldn’t necessarily say I adhere to the dogma or anything of Tarot, but I think it’s a really cool tool to take inspiration from,” said the band’s founder, songwriter, lead vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Lee Rose over Zoom.
“The imagery is really very beautiful and the writing about each of the cards is quite poetic and it kind of stirs up your imagination. So when I was thinking about band names, I just pulled a card and it was the Ace of Wands and the meaning of that card was perfect for the formation of a new project. It’s like a spark of creativity and an intensity of emotion, all kind of tied up together.”
Which really does suit Rose as a human and Ace of Wands as a musical enterprise. There is an exceptionalism of musicality, combined with a lyrical and emotional dynamism that, especially in a live setting, is as soul stirring as it is wonderfully unique. And it also just plain rocks!
Ace of Wands, comprised of Rose, guitarist Anna Mernieks and drummer Jody Brumell, recently released an engaging new single, ‘Uncanny’ from their forthcoming album Future Wave, set for release at the end of April. It was recorded at Pro Gold Studios in Toronto alongside producer/studio owner Ian Blurton (Cowboy Junkies, Lowest of the Low, Skydiggers), and is the band’s third studio album, alongside a couple of EPs [10,000 Feet and Grown From Good, both released in 2018].
“Writing for this band, it definitely dovetails with each record because I have found that songwriting for me doesn’t always come very quickly. It takes a while to accumulate enough songs for a record that I feel are strong enough. When our last record, Desiring, came out, I had probably written about four of the songs already that we’re going to be putting on this new record. That record came out in 2023 and we were actually in the studio recording for Future Wave in January of 2024, and it was fully recorded and mastered by the end of 2024, because I had a bit of a head start with those four songs all ready to go. So, it’s been sitting around for a little while. And actually some of these songs, they are actually even older than the last record. They had started being written before Desiring came out, but they didn’t have a place on that album,” said Rose, who talked about the thematic elements of Future Wave.
“Themes have developed more so with the last two record than with our very first one. For this one, I would say when we were really starting to get into the demoing is when it developed. I generally write a demo on my own and there’s sort of a skeletal structure of potential drums and potential lead guitar kinds of ideas sketched out. But then Anna and Jody, when we get together on the song, they start to dig in with their own musical ideas. And it was during that process that those sort of thematic elements really started to appear. The main theme for this record is it’s all about this idea of time and how the future is this advancing thing that none of us can control. We have no control over it whatsoever. It’s coming no matter whether we like it or not. And all of the parts of our lives that have brought us to this particular moment, those past events are also rushing up to meet us at the same time. So we’re in the middle of this kind of storm, with the past and the future intruding on the present moment and trying to find a place within that.”
Rose has been playing music in bands for nearly two decades. But it was only since creating Ace of Wands that she took a deep dive into the songwriting ocean, and believes that she has evolved significantly since those early days of expressing her creative voice in such a profound way.
“Ace of Wands has been a band since 2017. Our first show together was that year and then our first album [Lioness] came out in 2019. And that was really kind of when I started writing songs. I had been in a band for about 10 years prior to Ace of Wands, but I wasn’t the songwriter. I was the lead singer and I played bass. It was a band called Rival Boys with my older brother Graeme [her dad Bob Rose has an extensive and eclectic record collection and encouraged his kids’ budding talents]. I was 17 when that started, and he would write the songs and I would sing them. By 2017 I started to experiment with songwriting and what my voice sounded like in that way. I guess over the 10 years now of writing for Ace of Wands, my songwriting has changed from being solely about an exploration of my own personal experiences and feelings, although I think it’s always going to be a reflection of what I’m going through as a human in some way or another. But as I’ve gotten older and as I’ve gotten more experienced with writing, it’s become much more, like, outward facing. So I’ve become more conscious of the listener, I guess, a bit more as I’m writing and sharing those experiences that I’m having and developing more of an empathetic relationship with the listener,” she said, as she explained her current process.
“Usually what comes first is some kind of instrumentation. It depends on what instrument I am writing on. If I’m writing on guitar, it will be some kind of rhythmic guitar line that I’m singing along to and my formulation of words generally comes from there. I might have a concept for a song idea, but very often I’m not really singing words, I’m kind of forming like vowel sounds, you know, kind of mumbling nonsense along with the music and eventually I get this sense based on those mouth movements on the words. So it’s the physicality of the shapes of my mouth that helps the lyrics come together, because if it feels good to my voice to sing those words, because they’re coming from a place where my body and mind are sort of locked in, it means that the words will feel more true or something. It’s kind of a physical sense feeling that I’m getting from the songwriting. The words, the lyrics themselves are a very private process when that’s happening. Sometimes it’ll be me walking down the street and I have a line come into my head and I’ll jot it down on my phone and then it turns into something later in a notebook or as I said before, oftentimes those kind of mouth sounds that I’m making, when I listen back to the voice memos of myself singing those and hearing words come out then the words start to emerge.
“And then if I’m writing a song on the violin, like this latest single ‘Uncanny,’ that’s a very different process. So, in the band, I play organ bass pedals as the bass instrument, and I play them at the same time as playing guitar or violin. When I’m writing on the guitar, I’m generally playing the root notes on the guitar, so the bass is supporting that. But when I’m playing the violin, it’s a very distinct countermelody. That’s because often the bass is holding down the melody and the violin is going to be doing something different and intricate around that. When I’m writing on the violin, I’ll usually come up with a bass line first and then violin can kind of weave in and out of that. And then the other thing is I have to be able to sing and play at the same time, so the songs do get simplified in some ways generally so that I’m not just stumbling over myself all the time.”
Watching live videos of Rose and Ace of Wands in action, it looks as much like a choreographed dance routine as a musical performance when she is playing violin and bass pedals simultaneously.
“I’ve been playing those bass pedals since 2014, so it’s been 12 years now, which is a good long time. I’ve had a lot of practice. It has become a bit more innate now, I would say. Like, every song has a learning curve from me demoing it on my computer and then turning it into something I can play live. But it gets easier with every passing year. I think actually that dance aspect really does impact how fluid the performance of the song is because part of the ‘dance’ is keeping the beat,” she said, explaining how the violin has been, and will always be an integral part of her creativity and musicianship.
“I started playing violin as part of the kind of itinerant music program at my elementary school when I was in Grade 5 and I really, really took to it. I had taken piano lessons up to that point, but I just couldn’t get into the piano. It wasn’t my instrument. Sometimes you can kind of feel it when you’re trying to learn something new whether it’s clicking or not, and the violin, right away, really felt like it was my instrument. So I started taking lessons and then ended up studying classical violin at York University [in Toronto] for my BA. And I think getting out of the classical world and into using the instrument in a rock music context, that was when it sort of really started happening for me. I think my instruction up until that point was very rigid, like the less movement you made when you played, the better. I remember one of my teachers at university having me practice with my back up against the wall, which was the antithesis of musicality to me. So it was very freeing to leave that behind and step into being able to write and play my own music on the violin. I mean, I definitely got a lot out of that formal education in terms of technique and all that stuff, but it feels much more at home playing in this style.
“But initially violin was not part of the plan. The band that I was in with my brother, Rival Boys, I was playing bass guitar, and the only reason why I switched to the bass pedals was because I just realized one that that I wanted to play violin. I’d been studying this instrument formally for 15 years at that point, and I wanted to be able to play it in that band. So, we got the bass pedals going so I didn’t have to lose the bass, and we also didn’t want to have a fourth member join. So there wasn’t actually any kind of road map that I was looking towards. And it’s interesting, because I actually found a lot of the rock music that might have had some violin in it, it wasn’t really my thing, especially if it was kind of psychedelic or jazzy. I just wasn’t really into that kind of music. It’s not like I was sitting there listening to Jethro Tull and thinking, ‘oh, that’s what I want to try to do.’ I really felt like I was making my own thing. I wasn’t comparing myself to anyone along the way, which was kind of cool. And even now, when people ask me who my biggest classical violin or rock violin influences are, I have a hard time coming up with more than a couple of names.”
The band she started in alongside her brother was a trio, as is Ace of Wands. And that’s a deliberate choice.
“I mean, I have known anything else, really, so it’s hard to say what it would be like in any other configuration. My thinking is that it’s just so tight when you have three instruments. With Ace of Wands, because I’m playing the bass pedals and another instrument at the same time, it feels and sounds like we have four people on stage. But I believe there’s a distillation of the sound that happens with only three instruments, where everything has to be, not necessarily orchestrated, which might be the wrong word, but it’s very much thought through. Everything that we’re doing, there’s a purpose and a direction to all the sounds that we’re making, because when we’re just three, one person can’t really be going off and doing something completely improvised, necessarily, because we’re wanting to keep it as this tight unit all the time. And it’s just logistically so much easier. Three people, three schedules, and more room on the road, so we can tour in a minivan,” she said, explaining how Mernieks and Brumell came into her life and her band.
“Jody and I met because we were both enlisted to be in the Do Good Assassins, which is one of the side projects of Ron Hawkins of Lowest of the Low, and we were opening for Blue Rodeo across Canada. So we were on that tour together and he was drumming, I was playing violin and we just really hit it off. And Jody is an incredible drummer, just so versatile and such a kind and just awesome person. So I met this incredible drummer just when I was thinking about starting my own band. He and I struck up a friendship and then Anna I knew from her own band called Beams, and they’ve been around for a really long time. Beams and Rival Boys had played some shows together and we had kind of become friends through that scene. When I was thinking about starting something new, I just knew I wanted to collaborate with her. She’s just incredible, and she wasn’t really playing too much guitar at that time. She was playing banjo primarily in Beams, but she wanted to be playing more electric guitar. That was her first instrument and she wanted to get back into that. So it was kind of a perfect timing thing for all three of us to be trying something new and experimenting together.”
A deep thinker, well read, highly articulate and blessed with not only exceptional creative ability but also a focused imagination, Rose says the creation of music does help her weather the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in these complex, conflict-riven times, but where the really therapeutic catharsis happens in onstage.
“I have often thought about what non-artists do. How do they cope? And the response that I’ve gotten sometimes from people who are not artists themselves, but who are fans and who appreciate is it’s the art that allows them to cope. So my coping through this kind of expression is this reciprocal thing that happens. And that’s really cool. As an art maker, I feel so much value in that sharing of art. If I were a songwriter, but I wasn’t also a performer, I don’t know if it would be as fulfilling for me. I would absolutely get something out of it, but it’s taking it to that next step of sharing it with other people that I think is the most healing par for me,” she said, expounding on the importance of art and music in times of trouble.
“I think it’s one of the few ways that can foster a sense of community so quickly. People’s connection to the artistic world, whether it’s seeing something in the theatre or on TV or being in a room and seeing a band play, that’s something that you can share with another human without needing words. You’re all experiencing the same thing in the same moment in time, and I think as we’ve become so isolated from each other with the digital world and social media and all these different places, human connection becomes harder and harder to get. So the space that art can take to just get people into community feels like it’s so critical right now. It lets you know that you’re not alone in feeling that chaos or feeling that void. I feel that every single time we take the stage, it’s like getting people in person smiling at each other, like everyone’s feeling something at the same moment. It’s healing for people.”
Returning to the subject of the music coming out on Future Wave, ‘Uncanny’ is the second single to have been released thus far. ‘Edge of the Edge’ came out earlier this year and it is the result of an interesting ‘journey’ that Rose embarked on.
“’Edge of the Edge,’ well, the inspiration for it was actually a psychedelic trip on mushrooms that I was having when my partner and I were visiting a friend’s cottage on Georgian Bay [in Central Ontario]. We were on an island, we were taking mushrooms and walking around the island in the middle of the night and I was feeling this kind of clarity about my relationship with my partner. It was relatively new at the time and I was just feeling this kind of sense of extreme comfort and security with this new person. And at the same time, it’s also a reflection of this whole theme of the future, and that there’s a future that’s going to come at us that we have no control over, but we’re just going to jump right over that edge together and face it, whatever it is,” she said, moving on to explain how ‘Uncanny’ came about.
“It’s sort of inspired by this idea of the doppelganger. I was doing some research when I was thinking about this. At the time I was applying for the grant for this album and I was thinking about its themes and the theme of time and the concept of time as it shows up in Gothic literature and art about ghosts and things haunting you from your past. And it led to this idea of the Gothic double, which is the doppelganger, and it’s this being that looks exactly like you but something is wrong with it. It’s just this idea that you can recognize yourself and feel unsettled by it. So that’s the idea, and I took that and ran with it from the perspective of the self that I present when I’m online all the time, promoting the band, self-facing, on camera, talking to the media, and looking back at those videos and thinking, ‘do I look like that? Like, who is this person?’ And feeling this very weird existential disconnection with that person who’s online and presenting to the public and feeling unsettled by that and reflecting on that pursuit of perfection. I don’t know, it’s really a very existential, creepy exploration.”
A third single will be coming out before the onset of the Future Wave album, a song entitled ‘Black River’ which may be the closest thing to a romantic tune that Rose has ever written.
“This one is a much more straightforward love song. It was actually written back in 2020 when the pandemic first kicked in, and it was all about missing connection and feeling this huge distance and not being so close to someone, but you can’t touch them because of this distancing we were all experiencing at that time,” she said.
In terms of touring in support of Future Wave, Ace of Wands is performing at the Hotel Wolfe Island near Kingston, Ontario on Friday, March 20, followed by a date at the House of Targ in Ottawa the next night. The official album release show is May 22 at The Sound Garage in Toronto, with Skye Wallace opening the show. A number of other shows take place throughout Ontario in April and May before a June 26 concert in Montreal.
For more information on tour dates, the new album and more, visit https://www.aceofwandsband.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, Ontario, Canada, who has been writing about music and musicians for more than 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavors, he works as a communications and marketing specialist and is an avid volunteer in his community. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
