Chic Gamine are quite a bit of lovely… although a different kind of lovely than their earlier work may have suggested. Chic Gamine are a four-piece girl group, rounded out by a pretty amazing drummer. The outfit are from Canada and earlier this year they released their self-titled US debut. The album rings of sounds ranging from Motown to Ye’ye girls and even contemporary sassypants songstresses like Kate Nash. I recently got a chance to chat with one of Chic Gamine’s four singers, Alexa Dirks, and I tell her that I’ve been describing the self-titled album as “indie soul pop,” to which she replies, “I like that characterization better than some of them,” reflecting that Chic Gamine are currently quite a bit different from their roots: “I mean, we started out as a folk band, but we’re not some Canadian, folky, accapella band. We’re not that band anymore… we have a lot of harmonies runnin’ round in the band… There are five writers. It’s soulful, but has some indie influences.” The band are hoping to get a chance to do a full-scale US tour in the fall but they dohave a handful of upcoming East Coast dates scheduled for the end of June (dates listed below). Dirks tells me, “Our live sound has a lot of energy and the sound is a lot bigger than you’d expect. It’s gonna sound a lot more like a full-band than the record.” She also tells me that while Chic Gamine has enjoyed touring the states in the past, they really only played folk festivals and are anxious to get into the cozily grimy clubs where their kind of soul belongs (Okay, I ad-libbed that… but I’m pretty sure that’s what she was getting at.)
June 21 – Club Helsinki Hudson (Hudson, NY)
June 22 – Nectar’s (Burlington, VT)
June 23 – Johnny D’s Uptown Restaurant & Music Club (Somerville, MA)
June 24 – Narrows Center for the Arts (Fall River, MA)
June 26 – Iron Horse Music Hall (Northhampton, MA)
June 27 – Rockwood Music Hall Stage 2 (New York, NYC)
June 28 – The Red Square (Albany, NY)
June 29 – Maxwell’s (Hoboken, NJ)