WILLIAM LOUISON

Justin Pelan and Alexandra Thomson balance school time along with making their unique music.

East of Eden is an established local presence now, but the band may never have came to be had it not been for a forgotten Kijiji ad.

Alexandra Thomson, who moved to Saskatoon from Regina in 2010 to study chemical engineering at the University of Saskatchewan, was eager to pursue her passion for singing. Being largely a vocalist and not an instrumentalist, Thomson put an ad on Kijiji for a guitar player.

“I had almost given up hope,” she said. “But I got this interesting reply from Justin.”

Justin Pelan, originally from Edmonton, was also an engineering student at the U of S. They arranged a meeting and found there was an instant connection on both a musical and personal level.

Pelan learned guitar by playing the blues and is not limited to one style or one type of guitar. His skillset fit with what Thomson was looking for — a diversified, open-minded musician with enough creativity and talent to match her own.

It was that first, fateful meeting that would seal the next three years for this newly formed duo.

One of the first steps to making their fresh group official was to come up with a band name. The pair describes their name as a reference to how humanity is naturally flawed.

“We’ll never be perfect,” Thomson said. “That’s sort of what our music is about. It’s a bit deeper; it’s sort of dark. It’s a bit haunting — East of Eden represents paradise lost.”

“It sets the tone of our songs so far, actually,” Pelan said in agreement. “We’re not ‘Walking on Sunshine’ here. We’re always trying to keep it real.

“We’re not in the Garden of Eden anymore. We’re East of Eden — and when we picked [the name] out, it felt right.”

East of Eden spent the first few years of their journey playing live shows and festivals. It is only recently that their focus has shifted toward crafting of an album. Like all recording artists, though, East of Eden found themselves in need of a producer.

Enter local musician and producer Jesse Weiman. Apart from producing East of Eden’s debut effort, including their debut single “She Cries Beauty (It’s A War Zone),” Weiman plays piano for the group as well as fills in percussion and other instrumentations for their recordings.

“He’s really opened up how big we can build a song, because we don’t always have a symphony behind us,” Pelan said of Weiman.

Weiman also has a hand in the songwriting process which Thomson calls a “three way collaboration.”

“I’ll start picking something and [Thomson will] start singing and we write a song,” Pelan said. After that the song is given to Weiman, who adds in extra parts and puts everything together.

“She Cries Beauty” went through a similar process. When speaking about writing the song, Thomson said it “is inspired by somebody who has been in my life. Basically this person is just very shallow-minded, very materialistic and [the song is] just questioning ‘what will you have left in your life if you continue on that path?’”

“Almost like a warning,” Pelan added.

The song began as a simple union of vocals and guitar, but once Weiman was finished it became a slick, well-produced track with a haunting violin introduction and a steady beat that intensifies as the song progresses toward the chorus.

Thomson enters the song with smooth, understated vocals before showing off the higher end of her register. There’s a certain operatic-jazzy style to her voice that can’t be fully classified by a specific genre, but that lack of definition is exactly what East of Eden strives for.

“There’s a jazzy aspect to my voice and a bluesy aspect to Justin’s guitar playing,” Thomson said. “Our producer adds in that element of pop, so all of these elements come together. Listening to [our music], I would say we’re sort of a mix of indie, pop and folk. We’re not rock, we’re not country, but we can be anything in between.”

“She Cries Beauty (It’s A War Zone)” is available right now on iTunes. A video for the song can be seen on YouTube, and fans can connect with East of Eden via their Facebook page.

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Photo: Supplied