New Look
Fortune Sound Club
Vancouver, BC

Review by Carolyn Smith

Canadian husband-wife duo New Look played their first gig in Vancouver, opening for SBTRKT at Fortune Sound Club. It was well worth the mission to Chinatown late on a Tuesday. The electric-synth pair from Hamilton, Ontario came out on stage and immediately entranced an unexpectant audience with their smooth dub-pop sound (and great looks).

Couple Sarah Ruba and Adam Pavao make the perfect combination – Ruba with her mesmerizing vocals (even more so live than on YouTube, which is always a good thing), and Pavao as simplistic and effortless mixer and producer. Their songs have romantic, catchy lyrics and that 80s synth-pop element that everyone’s wild about since obsessing over the Drive soundtrack. New Look’s edgy melodies sound like they belong on that album – and deserve the listenership that Kavinsky’s getting with Nightcall and Desire with Under Your Spell.

Sarah Ruba, model-turned future-pop star, is strikingly beautiful; her voice angelic. If you happen to be somewhere on the west coast in the next couple days, you should try to catch this seemingly untapped-in-North-America band. Tonight they’re in Seattle with SBTRKT at Neptune, San Fran at 103 Harriet on the 27th, and on to LA’s HARD Haunted Mansion Festival on the 28th. Hopefully they continue to make trips to the best coast and keep their fan base growing at home.

New Look has been compared to the Junior Boys, who I also saw and loved at the Commodore a couple months back. That comparison is presumably based on the fact that they’re both wicked electro-pop duos from the Steel Capital of Canada? Either or, I suggest you find out for yourself.

New Look’s best songs to download:

⁃ The Ballad
⁃ Numbers
⁃ Relax Your Mind
⁃ Nap on the Bow
⁃ So Real

The New Look album is available in the UK and Europe on !K7 Records, with singles on iTunes for download worldwide.