For fifteen 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.
Today, his new album Fictionalized, is available everywhere, and in celebration, the acclaimed songwriter is sharing the new video for “Age Of Celebrity”, a song “about returning to music post-pandemic and post Hey Ocean!,” says Vertesi. “Things have changed a lot since I was starting out in this industry, and I often feel like my experience doesn't do much other than make me jaded. The thing I really miss is the pure enjoyment and self-confidence I had when I was just setting out. I'm doing my best to find it again.”
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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. Across 2010’s Cardiography, 2016’s Sad Dad Cruise Ship, and 2020’s Life Ghouls, Vertesi interrogates these somber questions with tender poetry and a sense of humour.
His latest LP Fictionalized, is the clearest synthesis of his wide-ranging pop philosophy yet. Effectively a concept album on the collective spiraling of the pandemic years through an intensely personal lens, Vertesi crafts the most potent and memorable melodies of his career. With featured performances from a lineup of some of Vancouver’s brightest talents: Jordan Klassen, Haley Blais, Jill Barber, and Sam Lynch, plus co-production from the likes of Jonathan Anderson (Andy Shauf, Aidan Knight), Klassen (Dear Rouge, Jillian Lake) and Daniel Klenner (Peach Pit, Babe Corner), Fictionalized marks a new and defined landscape for Vertesi. As powerful and personal as he’s ever been, as cathartic and kind as he’s ever appeared.
Throughout his work, Vertesi has 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.