Tess Parks - Blood Hot (2013)

Here at Ticket Towers, we reckon that Nico and Patti Smith have a lot to answer for. If it weren’t for those two singular, inspiring and downright amazing singers, 20-something Toronto performer Tess Parks simply wouldn’t have a career. Obvious influences aside, Parks has a particularly good handle on the hybrid music she proffers – here be scuzzy psychedelia, warped pop, garage rock and (hello, Nico) chilled atonal-drone musings on solitariness, passion, love gained and lost, etc. Parks has a clever sense of how to dress up the past in contemporary clothes, but she approaches that past with a marked degree of respect. Somedays and Life Is But a Dream, to name two from a strong 11-track list, have a tensile quality that puts more tepid psych-pop practitioners in the shade. Yes to Tess, then.