Lanikai

With Wild Indigo, Marti Sarbit empties out her tumultuous heart and fills it back up again. The Winnipeg-based songwriter behind Lanikai’s lush indie pop fights for love and friendship, counts her bruises, and heals ecstatically on the band’s full-length debut, creating a deeply personal and fully-formed artistic vision that builds on the wildly catchy vibes she’s known for while delivering stunning emotional impact. The album is by turns desolate and moody, serene and dreamy, and ultimately triumphant, navigating the nuances and complexities that punctuate modern relationships in all their painful, gorgeous glory. Wild Indigo blooms and pulses with the same vibrant energy its namesake flower does all over Manitoba. And like the purple-petaled plant, it’s a thing of beauty that also contains a certain amount of danger.
Lanikai is also Natalie Bohrn, pumping out slinky, toe-tapping basslines; Tim Iskierski, precisely pounding the skins; and Casimir Gruwel, building atmospheres with guitar and keys. For Wild Indigo, they brought in some ringers: Tom Moffet on trumpet, Drew Jurecka on violin, Michelle Faehrmann on cello, and Sarbit’s ex-Imaginary Cities bandmate Rusty Matyas shook a tambourine and lent his pipes to the gang vocals for “Your Sadness.” Thomas D’Arcy (The Sheepdogs, July Talk, Hannah Georgas) features on multiple instruments, produced and engineered the album in Winnipeg (Stereobus Recording) and Toronto (Taurus Recording).