The Urban Aesthetics stand at the crossroads of Canada's musical past and present, combining the introspective, folk inflected singer-songwriter tradition of Leonard Cohen and Neil Young with the youthful energy and freewheeling eclecticism of millenial indie rock pioneers Broken Social Scene and The New Pornographers.

Beneath the layers of The UA’s lush ensemble sound — Mike Braia’s guitar, Neil Gerster’s bass, Jon Rifkin’s drums, Jen Rouse’s vocal harmonies, Lawrence Pernica’s trumpet, and Evan Runge’s violin — are the songs of vocalist and rhythm guitar player Greg Janssen, songs as pretty and melodic as they are heavy and thoughtful, addressing subjects both political and personal, secular and spiritual.  The band began as the singer-songwriter’s solo project.

“Basically, I had a bunch of songs and nowhere to play them,” Janssen says.  “Acoustic, they’re all very quiet and I found out that people in bars and clubs aren’t.” 

At first the idea was for the band to lend his songs enough loudness that audiences would have to listen, but as various members came and went in the year that followed, the singer-songwriter found his backing band doing more than merely providing accompaniment, evolving instead into a full-fledged musical collective. 

“I still write the songs,” Janssen says, “but the arrangements are collaborative now, which makes them a lot more dynamic.”

This is how Greg Janssen & Band became The Urban Aesthetics.  Rouse coined the name to describe the band’s artistic philosophy, which values the spontaneity of naturally occurring moods and sounds in the context of carefully designed musical structures.  The resulting sonic cityscapes are as rich with surface details as they are with emotional and intellectual depths. 

Receiving a FACTOR demo grant in fall 2007, The Urban Aesthetics immediately set to work demoing tracks which, re-recorded with veteran Ottawa indie producer/engineer Dean Watson (Jetplanes of Abraham, Ana Miura), would become The Urban Aesthetics EP.  The disc finds the fledgling combo finding its voice, trying its hand at a variety of topics and styles, from pop to protest, folk rock to art rock.

Following a successful October 2, 2008 CD release at Ottawa’s Rainbow Bistro as well as national and online distribution on the band's Indie Empire label, The Urban Aesthetics received a great deal of press attention, as well as airplay on college radio stations across the country and a number of CBC programs such as Bandwidth and Radio 2 Drive. 

The Urban Aesthetics EP demonstrates for the Canadian music scene at large the exciting sounds emanating from our nation’s capital.  For more information on The Urban Aesthetics and their EP, click on the links above and below.