For 15 years, David Vertesi has appeared as an integral part of some of Canada’s most exciting indie-rock projects. Whether he’s playing in Hey Ocean!, Shad, Dear Rouge, Hannah Georgas, or Said the Whale, producing Haley Blais, Noble Son, Ashleigh Ball, or Riun Garner, Vertesi brings a uniquely sensuous and brooding sensibility, an intricate sonic depth that multiplies the layers of a song.
In his solo work, these dramatic flairs ignite on full display. Across a spectrum of rough-and-tumble and tightly polished sounds, Vertesi emerges as a centre-stage, dusty spotlight balladeer, a close-to-the-chest storyteller as the narrative core of his songwriting revolves in stories of confusion, loneliness, instability, death, and existential ennui. Vertesi interrogates these somber questions with tender poetry and a sense of humour.
Through his work, he’s made clear that he brings an equal command to choreographing lush and buzzing technologic atmospheres of instrumentation or squeezing the naked emotional heart out of a piano, a steady bass drum, the soft rhythm of a guitar, a choir of harmonies. But it’s his own voice that distinguishes his music, a growling inimitable baritone that deepens his playful work and further darkens his more haunted questions. It’s easy to hear why he draws comparisons to names like Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave, and Lou Reed and easy to see why Vertesi has emerged from his collaborative role into a fully formed front-man of his own musical expression.
