Toronto-based alternative soul singer Lori Nuic is that next music height. Contemporary, relevant and current.
What’s important isn’t going on right now. It’s what’s around the corner that matters. The new brigade disregards what’s happening in front of their face because they’re on the path to a new level.
Thank her sophomore full-length cd Flaws of Attraction (Fuse Records/Fontana North), the follow-up to 2007 debut Red Book Chronicles. This latest work is sincere and seductive yet purposeful and unafraid to taunt musical parameters. Coupling Nuic’s pursuit of genuine musicianship, personality and her richly luxurious voice, it’s the result of years of past colliding against what’s about to reinvent the now.
“Music has always been a big part of my life,” she chimes. “It was always playing on the radio at home or in the car, I took music and dance lessons as a child and I could hear singing around me all the time so it just seemed natural to delve into it further.”
Pursue it, she has, amassing both critical and fan praise in a few succinct years thanks to her efforts on Red Book Chronicles. From pivotal showcases at prominent events including Canadian Music Week, NXNE and winning a variety of revered competitions including The Beat 91.5’s 2004 Rhythm of the Future talent search, CMW’s 2005 Urban Star Quest, Flow 93.5’s Hook-Up Prize for song production at 2005’s Honey Jam and a 2008 Toronto Independent Music Award for “Best Pop,” her work has been heralded across the nation.
In fact, Red Book Chronicles quickly found lead single “Rear View” escalating to Number 12 on the Canadian Urban and CHR charts, leading to attention from prominent media and a host of appearances such as singing with Jarvis Church on CBC Radio’s Canada Raves On Motown 50th anniversary celebration of Motown Records, Canada’s National Jazz Awards, The Calgary Stampede and select dates in the U.K., Chile and in the UAE at the 2008 Dubai International Jazz Festival. Nuic has also shared the stage with colleagues Keshia Chante, Jully Black, Simply Red, Arrested Development and Maceo Parker.
They are fulfillments she intends to not only duplicate but surpass with Flaws Of Attraction. Inspired by a wealth of musical greats from the likes of vocal mavens Gladys Knight and Lauryn Hill to Jimi Hendrix, Prince, Fishbone, Dinah Washington and The Black Crowes, this secondary opus finds Nuic refusing to pull any punches lyrically or musically. From blindingly tight arrangements to raw, uncompromising lyrics characterized by unforgettable turns of phrase that are simultaneously universal and surprisingly intimate, Flaws of Attraction expounds on the power and drive of its predecessor.
“Writing and singing is a form of catharsis for me,” Nuic asserts about Flaws Of Attraction’s primary motivation. “I just kept building on and nurturing those roots. That’s why my writing is compelled by personal experience or what happens in my immediate surroundings. When coupled with the diversity of my influences, the musical range becomes quite broad, though I usually gravitate to a good melody/feel/sentiment/voice mixed with a little je ne sais quoi.”
With Flaws of Attraction, one of those “little somethings” is the adoption of a grittier sound without abandoning the essence of her past work. Produced by Adrian Eccleston (Jacksoul, Divine Brown) and ‘Pedalboardz’ partner Martin ‘Doc’ McKinney (k-os, Esthero, Maroon 5, Drake), Flaws of Attraction is a fluid blend of rock-fueled R&B/pop and soul with flourishes of blues haunting the edges; an extension of the gutsy, groove-driven sound Nuic and Eccleston first captured on Red Book Chronicles.
The results of those endeavours range in style from the stripped-down, jazz-tinged “Blue Day” with its take on the negative fallout of failed relationships to defiant “Back To Love” and album closer “Not Looking Back,” a work that passionately evokes the importance of allowing ourselves to be open to new love. Bolstered by its sincerity, boldness and unfettered honesty, Nuic notes how opener “Misunderstood”—a no-holds-barred catalogue of broken love’s collateral damage and making decisions with ‘the logic turned off and the crazy turned on’—sets the tone for Flaws Of Attraction’s directness.
“You hope attraction will lead to love but often it leads to complications and heartache,” she says. “Without awareness, if we keep making the same choices without paying attention to what’s going on inside, the laws of attraction can become very flawed.”
To that extent, Nuic notes how she was aware that her inimitable sound and style would be indelibly impacted by her musical, directional and artistic choices during both the writing and recording process. Drawing on influences ranging from contemporary to classic R&B, rock and pop, Nuic asserts that she was interested not in deliberately trying to retool her sound so much as invite a natural process of taking it all in. Letting the sounds blend together and relying on her creative instincts to do the rest, the results are showcased via the refined but natural, stark albeit elegant and intense yet subtle essence of Flaws Of Attraction.
“Music evolves and we evolve as people,” she concludes. “I’m not in the same place I was when I wrote Red Book Chronicles. I keep growing and learning, failing and struggling. Life’s a learning process. When love dies and you feel broken down and disheartened, you have to strip all that away and eventually you come out of it. Hopefully as Flaws of Attraction relates, you make better choices next time around.”
