Lorraine Leckie

Music critic, Tom Semioli, named Martini Eyes as 
THE BEST ALBUM OF THE YEAR 
on the Village Voice's Pazz & Jop 2010 list!

THE SUNDAY SALON @ ZIRZAMIN                                                                                                          "This past Sunday’s show featured dark Americana rocker Lorraine Leckie and Her Demons playing a rare acoustic set. This time out, Leckie mixed it up. Backed by J Wallace on bass and Hugh Pool wailing as intensely on acoustic guitar as he typically does on electric, they opened with The Everywhere Man, a creepy serial killer chamber pop song from Leckie’s brilliant new collaboration with Anthony Haden-Guest, Rudely Interrupted. They revisited that offhand menace with the absolutely gorgeous, bittersweet piano ballad Happy City, channeled late-period Marc Bolan with Rainbow and You’re So Cool, and ripped through slightly quieter-than-usual versions of the snarling Canadian gothic Language of the Night and Ontario." - Alan Young, New York Music Daily 

DON'T GIGGLE AT THE CORPSE 
"Lorraine Leckie wears a bowler hat, strums her guitar, and sings a funereal dirge she composed called "Don't Giggle at the Corpse." - Colin Moynihan, New York Times 

LOCAL TROUBADOR 
"Music, from the likes of the Brian Jonestown Massacre on the soundtrack and local troubador Lorraine Leckie in the film [Dirty Old Town] itself, is well curated." - Variety Magazine, VarietyMagazine.com 

STEALS THE SHOW 
"[Lorraine Leckie] steals the show... [she] sings the folksy songs that tell the tale[s of the Lower East Side]." - Steve Lewis, Black Book Magazine 

“[She is] an Ontario folkie gal… naively likeable” - Village Voice 

SPOOKY, SEDUCTIVE 
"Martini Eyes is a spooky, seductive and a mesmerizing multifarious trip to the dark side... Lorriane waxes wicked in such cuts as "Don't Giggle at the Corpse" and "I Met A Man" - a torrid tale of a successful drug runner who put "T in her chee chee…" - Tom Semioli, Amplifier Magazine 

DELICIOUSLY GHOULISH 
"Lorraine Leckie's Martini Eyes Are Bloodshot and Sinister "For the better part of the last ten years, Lorraine Leckie has been writing dark, deadpan songs that owe as much to punk – at least the spirit of punk – as they do Americana. Her new album Martini Eyes is deliciously ghoulish, and it’s her best one yet. It’s her Nebraska: simple, spare arrangements, most of them with just vocals and acoustic guitar or piano. If Patti Smith had gone Nashville gothic instead of punk, she might have sounded something like this... Count this as a late addition to the rapidly closing list of the best albums of 2010." 
- Delarue, Lucid Culture 

"LORRAINE LECKIE AND HER DEMONS HAVE ATTITUDE ENOUGH FOR A MAXIMUM- SECURITY PRISON" 
- Henric Nielsen, Relix Magazine 

POIGNANT AND WORTH MANY LISTENS 
"Lorraine Leckie is dark and broody. Quirky, yet simple. The production throughout the album is beautifully stark, with arrangements consisting mostly of acoustic guitar and vocals. The piano-based "I Met a Man" has the feel of early Regina Specktor, while "Listen to the Girl" is full of Emily Jane White style melancholy. It is rare to find an artist who can stand up so well without musical adornments or lavish processing. Lorraine Leckie's Martini Eyes is short, poignant, and worth many listens." 
- Jen Levins, Origivation Magazine 

AN AUTHENTICALLY DARK JOURNEY 
"... an authentically dark journey down New York’s forbidden alleyways." 
- David Terra, Beyond Race Magazine 

REVOLUTIONARY 
"Such quietness is revolutionary..." 
- Steve Wishnia, The Indypendent

CAPTIVATING 
"Leckie takes on a folksy Dust Bowl groove that would frighten Edgar Allen Poe or perhaps Nick Cave... Still, she is ever more captivating—tangling the listener in all of her fables with an uncompromising allure that is consistent throughout." 
As originally appearing in Socially Superlative 

LORRAINE LECKIE HAUNTS BANJO JIM'S 
August 8, 2010 - Posted by delarue 
Lorraine Leckie’s songs have a stylish menace, but they’re more about menace than style. Calling her excellent backup band Her Demons completes the picture – her music mines a rich urban noir vein, equal parts powerpop, Americana and psychedelia, a throwback to a more dangerous era in New York both musically and otherwise. Last night at Banjo Jim’s she treated a packed house to a mix of well-worn crowd-pleasers as well as new material with a similar dark, gritty intensity. Her casual, unaffected vocals took on just the hint of a snarl in places, especially on the bitter 6/8 murder ballad, Hillbilly, where a Mississippi transplant moves into the neighborhood, steals the narrator’s man and ends up paying the ultimate price for it. An anti-trendoid song? Maybe. Although she originally hails from Ontario, Leckie’s Williamsburg roots go back a lot further than the recent infestation of trust-funded posers. 

She opened with a swinging, bluesy, phantasmagorically-tinged number possibly titled Everything Goes Wrong, a song that would fit nicely in the Carol Lipnik catalog. Guitarist Hugh Pool – who played inspired, tunefully virtuosic, smartly thought-out fills and riffs all night – kicked off the ominously boogie-flavored party anthem Language of the Night with a train-whistle motif. Alyson Greenfield joined the band on piano on the catchy Ontario: “Drank my last shot of the Ontario sky,” Leckie sang wistfully (they have good whiskey up there). She dedicated a surprisingly upbeat, optimistic solo acoustic song about crackheads in love to filmmaker Clayton Patterson (who was in the audience). The swaying, catchy Paint the Town Red and the Werewolves of London-ish Rainbow ended the set on a high note: they encored with a sultry, noir blues and then an ecstatically resounding version of Nobody’s Girl, a gorgeous paisley underground rock anthem that could be the great lost track from the Dream Syndicate’s first album. Leckie has a new solo cd coming out next month, with a cd release show coming up at the big room at the Rockwood: watch this space. 
http://lucidculture.wordpress.com/2010/08/08/lorraine/ 

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MARTINI EYES: 
"Martini Eyes is a spooky, seductive and a mesmerizing multifarious trip to the dark side... Lorriane waxes wicked in such cuts as "Don't Giggle at the Corpse" and "I Met A Man" - a torrid tale of a successful drug runner who put "T in her chee chee…" 
- Tom Semioli, Amplifier Magazine