ABOUT
A wildflower meadow doesn’t bloom in the first year it’s planted. Takes three years to see your first flower. Maybe longer. A firm believer in the slow build, Larysa Musick established herself as a poet and illustrator-author before crossing into singer-songwriter territory. Given her last name, it may have been fate.
Though she comes from Winnipeg, her style of folk hardly represents her home city’s proverbial sound. Her time-bending sound is nostalgic for 60s Greenwich Village clubs or Woodstock. A skilled guitarist, Larysa’s imaginative finger-picking and alternate tuning arrangements holds her in league with Joni Mitchell, and her unmistakeable voice blends elements of Stevie Nicks and Janis Joplin. Wide-eyed, flower-power-era nostalgia folk that sometimes bends into the psychedelic, and alt-rock spaces.
Lyrically, Larysa is adventurous and earnest, probably from her years spent performing spoken word poetry. At poetry slams, competing for scores from zero to ten, not unlike Olympic diving. At various bars and pubs across the provinces, and as far as Detroit, touring in a tiny hatchback. At streetlit cyphers, where freestyling poets showed Larysa the power of improvisation. As Artistic Director of the Winnipeg Poetry Slam, Larysa learned a few tricks to turn a phrase, some more when she wrote, illustrated and self-published her poetry colouring book To See and Be Seen.
That got sidetracked in 2020 when on long walks around the prairie grass reserves in her family neighbourhood in Headingley, Larysa started humming the melodies to what would become her debut EP Tomorrow Is Bound to Come (to be fully released in September 2023). A collection of whimsical, self-reflective, coming-of-age songs. Some told with a cheeky tone and wry smile, others with a lamenting croon, all carried by Larysa’s signature sparkly vocal which naturally instills levity in every phrase. Receiving critical acclaim and a dedicated following in its first year of release, with two packed release shows in Winnipeg, Larysa is proving to be a contender in the local scene.
Soon after emerging onto the Winnipeg music scene, Larysa’s inimitable style captured the attention of prominent Canadian artist, virtuoso fiddler and up-and-coming producer, Sierra Noble. The two joined forces, co-producing Larysa’s EP with award-winning producer and engineer, Madeleine Roger, daughter of Lloyd Peterson (The Weakerthans, The Wailin’ Jennys, JP Hoe, Oh My Darling). Larysa’s proud to have achieved gender parity with these recordings, rallying together a list of exceptional players including Rory Verbrugge (pedal steel guitar), Sheena Grobb (keys), Kieran Placatka (keys), banjo (Alison De Groot), upright bass (Julian Bradford), to name a few.
Rushing nothing in the process, it's clear that Larysa is not the type of singer-songwriter to cut corners. Rather, a disciplined artist carving out a niche in her own time.
PRESS QUOTES
“Poetic sensibility and her observations of the world remain vivid in her music.”
“Larysa’s trembling vibrato gives this folk an intoxicating exotic elegance. That kind of detail adds a seductive aura to her presence, one full of mystery and curious emotion. It lifts her talent beyond the realm of academia and into the realm of the chosen. Singers like Larysa feel touched by a spiritual musical legacy.”
“Opens your ears to a cornucopia of vintage-tinged sound, including the confident strums of an acoustic guitar… lyrics – they read as if poetry and would easily stand on their own, without any music at all. Musick’s vibrato… at times, reminiscent of Fiona Apple”