Small Sins

Trackimage Playbut Trackname Playbut Trackname
Stay 03:52 Tools
On The Line 04:09 Tools
Why Don't You Believe Me 04:07 Tools
Prove Me Wrong 03:59 Tools
All Will Be Fine 03:35 Tools
She's the Source 03:37 Tools
Threw it All Away 03:50 Tools
Won't Make it Easier 03:14 Tools
I Need A Friend 03:37 Tools
Too Much to Lose 04:54 Tools
It's Easy 03:37 Tools
What Your Baby's Been Doing 03:43 Tools
We Won't Last the Winter 03:44 Tools
Morning Face 03:31 Tools
Is She the One? 04:48 Tools
At Least You Feel Something 05:56 Tools
It Keeps Me On My Toes 03:41 Tools
We Will Break Our Own Hearts 03:46 Tools
Drunk E-mails 03:32 Tools
Airport 03:19 Tools
On The Run 03:48 Tools
On A Mission 03:29 Tools
Holiday 03:50 Tools
Pot Calls Kettle Black 04:25 Tools
Bullet 04:16 Tools
'Til I Go Home 03:27 Tools
Never Again 03:29 Tools
Where There's Gold 03:30 Tools
Small Sins/Big Within 04:23 Tools
Small Sins / Big Within 04:23 Tools
You Will Lie 03:34 Tools
Déjà Vu feat. K-OS 02:59 Tools
Everything You Need 03:49 Tools
My Dear 04:01 Tools
Tonight 03:47 Tools
Stay (Full Band Version) 03:47 Tools
Stay (Small Sins Remix) 05:59 Tools
Small Sins/ Big Within 04:24 Tools
Necessary Change 04:32 Tools
All The Way 03:28 Tools
Stay (Radio 4 Remix) 07:40 Tools
Stay (Todor K. String Mix) 04:06 Tools
Small Sins - Why Don't You Believe Me? 04:07 Tools
Small Sins , Big Within 04:07 Tools
Small Sins (Big Within) 04:23 Tools
Déjà Vu (feat. K-OS) 03:01 Tools
Deja Vu 02:57 Tools
Big Within 04:23 Tools
Deja Vu feat. K-OS 02:59 Tools
I Need A Friend (Acoustic (Bonus Track)) 02:59 Tools
Stay (Album Version) 02:59 Tools
Deja Vu Featuring K-OS 02:59 Tools
I Need a Friend (Acoustic) [Bonus Track] 03:37 Tools
Small Sins (Big Within) 04:24 Tools
Bullet (String Mix (Bonus Track)) 04:24 Tools
`Til I Go Home 03:27 Tools
Bullet (String Mix) [Bonus Track] 04:18 Tools
Bullet (String Mix) 04:18 Tools
I Need A Friend (Acoustic) 03:37 Tools
Talk Talk 03:14 Tools
Déjà Vu ft. K-OS 03:37 Tools
Small Sins, Big Within 04:24 Tools
Small Sins - Stay 03:50 Tools
I Left My Girl 03:54 Tools
Put It All Together 02:24 Tools
Mikey 04:32 Tools
Deja Vu (feat. K-OS) 04:29 Tools
Holiday (The Cansecos Remix) 04:32 Tools
Dj Vu feat. K-OS 04:32 Tools
When I See My Vision 04:29 Tools
Deja Vu f. k-os 04:29 Tools
Déja Vu (Feat. K-OS) 03:00 Tools
Your Bad Moods 05:35 Tools
Small Sins - On The Line 02:42 Tools
The Man You're Left With 03:08 Tools
What Princes Feel 02:42 Tools
Keep Your Head Up High 03:08 Tools
Happy Holidays 03:08 Tools
WOXY.com Lounge Act - Small Sins 03:08 Tools
Small Sins - All Will Be Fine 03:08 Tools
The Good Life 03:08 Tools
I Want You To Know 03:43 Tools
Where There`s Gold 03:29 Tools
I Need A Friend - Acoustic (Bonus Track) 03:00 Tools
Déjà Vu Featuring K-OS 03:00 Tools
Get Better 03:00 Tools
Stay - Small Sins Remix 06:02 Tools
Stay - Full Band Version 04:08 Tools
OnThe Line 03:00 Tools
Small Sins - Prove Me Wrong 03:00 Tools
Love The One You Want 03:00 Tools
Bullet - String Mix (Bonus Track) 02:59 Tools
Déjà Vu 02:59 Tools
`Til You Stop Loving Me 03:00 Tools
'Til You Stop Loving Me 02:59 Tools
Stay - Todor K. String Mix 04:08 Tools
WOXY.com Lounge Act 06/26/06 04:08 Tools
07 - SMALL SINS - Too Much To Lose 06:02 Tools
Saty [Full Band Version] 06:02 Tools
Stay [Album Version] 06:02 Tools
Too Much Too Lose 06:02 Tools
06 - SMALL SINS - It's Easy 06:02 Tools
02 - SMALL SINS - Threw It All Away 06:02 Tools
05 - SMALL SINS - She's The Source 06:02 Tools
Threw It Away 06:02 Tools
10 - SMALL SINS - Is She The One 04:08 Tools
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Thomas D'Arcy marches to the beat of his own drum machine. That's what D'Arcy -- the solo mastermind behind Small Sins (formerly known as The Ladies And Gentlemen) discovered after spending the better chunk of a decade in bands percolating around the indie-rock scene of his Toronto hometown. By Christmas 2004, D'Arcy found his band broken up and himself in the midst of a "mid-twenties crisis." "I was really questioning what I was doing with my life," D'Arcy says. "Why am I in this band I don't love? Why am I not making music that I do love? I was thinking back to how things used to be, when it was pure spirit and fun. Music had become work, yet I still felt like I should be getting to work on something." And get to work he did. D'Arcy retreated alone to the basement of his childhood home: armed with little more than a Roland 707 drum machine, a clutch of vintage Moog keyboards, and a sixteen-track recorder, he was determined to create sounds that reflected the passion that led him to music in the first place. After nearly a year of woodshedding, D'Arcy fulfilled his goal, emerging with Small Sins. A masterpiece of heartfelt electro chamber-pop, Small Sins bubbles with gorgeously layered harmonies, synth gurgles, and hook-filled tales of love lost and found as honest and bracing as the Canadian winter. Despite its intensely personal nature, Small Sins became D'Arcy's most well-received musical venture yet. Boompa Records, a Vancouver-based independent label, initially released Small Sins to critical acclaim across Canada in September 2005. The buzz became even more prevalent after Boompa Records' label showcase at Austin's SxSW music festival, where Small Sins (a.k.a. The Ladies and Gentlemen) were one of their showcasing artists. Astralwerks then signed D'Arcy under the Small Sins moniker in 2005 for the rest of the world. And with success came the comparisons. Critics found parallels in Small Sins sound to the melancholy atmospherics of the Magnetic Fields, the widescreen man-machine pop of Grandaddy, and the superstar electronica-indie hybridists the Postal Service. While complimentary, D'Arcy finds such assessments largely coincidental. "Those are the obvious comparisons that are very easy to draw, as those bands use keyboards and drum machines, too," D'Arcy explains. "Grandaddy have a cool balance of electro and organic sounds, but I don't really think my music sounds like them; I didn't even hear the Postal Service album until I was almost done with the record. Actually, the last couple years I've had dissatisfaction with modern music in general. I haven't appreciated too many new bands these days. There are some standouts -- Yankee Hotel Foxtrot by Wilco and the first three records by Spoon are amazing--but other than that, I've stopped paying attention to what other people are doing." Instead, D'Arcy's been listening to old punk rock like the Ramones and Buzzcocks and even older iconoclasts Neil Young. "Neil Young is totally punk rock," D'Arcy says. "There's something going on there that you can't describe. Maybe every vocal part isn't nailed, maybe the production is shitty; still, there's something in it that's so special and organic you can't put your finger on, that can't be reproduced. That's been an influence on this record: if something isn't recorded or played perfectly, if it works for the song, I kept it in." This handcrafted approach keeps Small Sins' electronic-based music from the robotic. "I tried hard to make everything sound human," D'Arcy says. "You might not be able to tell if something is a loop, but knowing that I played it all the way through by hand, maybe there's some sort of feel in there coming through." A human touch as well comes out in the literary, minimalist songwriting captured on Small Sins, which documents the ins, outs, ups, downs and betrayals of D'Arcy's mid-twenties crisis: via his near-whispered vocals and delicate yet complex instrumentation, D'Arcy spins evocative, simple tales of little junkie girls and the boy-men that love them, the challenging confessional subject matter belied by insistent pop hooks. "Stay," the album's first single, couples its drum-machine pulse and disembodied synth lines with a dark but maddeningly infectious chorus: "You can stay if you want to/But you can't sleep in my bed." D'Arcy doesn't rely entirely on electronic sonics for emotional color, however: he strips away much of the circuitry on the largely acoustic, fragile "At Least You Feel Something" before it simmers anew into a haunting, affecting space-rock ballad. The journey to Small Sins began when D'Arcy was born in the UK's Isle of Guernsey in 1979, an island in the English Channel with a rich history. His family immigrated two years later to Toronto, Canada, where D'Arcy's music career began in earnest as he reached high-school age during the grunge era. "I'm young enough so that I liked the Breeders before I knew who the Pixies were," D'Arcy laughs. "And when all your friends and your older brother were starting bands, you started a band, too." D'Arcy named and conceived of his first band, Pseudonym, in 1994 -- even before he'd bought a bass guitar to play. Pseudonym evolved into D'Arcy's next band, the Carnations, in 1996. But by 2004 D'Arcy was burnt out by the band dynamic, and found himself preferring his homemade demos to the studio recordings made by the band. "I found that a lot of the music I was making at home was changing in a way I didn't like once it got converted by the band," D'Arcy explains. "I wanted to make music that was true to what I was inspired to do on my own. I made a rule that when I wrote songs, I recorded every part myself. As well, I pledged to write no more meaningless pop songs--the words had to mean something to me." In that personal, intimate way, Small Sins were born. Since finishing the album, however, D'Arcy has put together a live unit featuring keyboardist Todor Kobakov, drummer Brent Follett, and keyboardist/handclapper Kevin Hilliard ("How can you not have fun listening to handclaps?" D'Arcy notes). Guitarist Steve Kreklo, meanwhile, is D'Arcy's former bandmate in the Carnations, which brings it all back home. "Steve taught me to play bass," D'Arcy explains, "and we wrote our first songs together." Kreklo is in fact one of the few outside musicians on Small Sins, contributing the guitar solo on "At Least You Feel Something" (as well, engineer Simon Head is responsible for the backwards guitar figures on "Threw It All Away," while the lap-steel drones on "She's The Source" are courtesy Jamie Robertson). Small Sins live show has evolved into a different beast from D'Arcy's more nuanced solo recordings: onstage, the band wears all white costumes and memorably amps up the material with more volume and thrust, edging Small Sins back to D'Arcy's more band-oriented roots. This contrast between band and project makes it hard to place Small Sins in Canada's thriving, diverse indie universe of bands and artists like The Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Peaches, Feist, and Metric. D'Arcy sees Small Sins as operating somewhere between the lines of the current mega-hype. "Those bands have actually been around for a while--I think I saw the Arcade Fire three years ago at a club that holds like just under 100 people," D'Arcy says. "Those bands are doing really well right now, they're making a lot of great music, but I don't feel any connection to them. I don't think I'm part of their community; I probably won't have a guest spot on the next Broken Social Scene record like everybody else. But the community is small enough is that I know most of the guys. Canada really is like a small town: there has to be some sort of connection as to why all these bands emerged from the same scene. We are all from the same 'hood, so there has to be something in the air here." Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.