Name: Ian Wilson
Height: 5’ 10”
Birthday / Sign: October 8 / Libra
Instruments: Keyboard and vocals
1st concert you attended: Better Than Ezra, 1997, playing some random town festival in Aspen.
1st tape purchase: I think the first one I bought myself was Sheryl Crow’s Tuesday Night Music Club.
Best concert you ever attended: Too many good ones… the best stadium show was Tori Amos, December 1998, at Michigan State, fourth row. I’m pretty sure she made eye contact with me and just me at one point. The best club show I saw was the first time I saw the Dresden Dolls, sometime in the fall of 2004, in a little shack in Providence, RI. I never knew two people could produce that much sound before.
Favorite records: The desert island list... Tori Amos – Boys for Pele; Death Cab for Cutie – Transatlanticism; Modest Mouse – The Moon and Antarctica; Ani DiFranco – Revelling/Reckoning; Radiohead – OK Computer; Bjork – Homogenic; Sufjan Stevens – Come on Feel the Illinoise!
What have you been listening to lately: Final Fantasy, Beirut, Andrew Bird, The Acorn, Basia Bulat, Destroyer, Cloud Cult, The National, Regina Spektor, Zoe Keating, The Frames
What’s the best part about being in a band: Getting to play with a bunch of really talented musicians on a regular basis
Hardest part: Irreversible ear damage
Favorite food: Anything Thai
Favorite book: Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. Nothing captures Boston like a private tennis academy next to a rehab center.
Favorite movie: Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Pet: An old cat named Lilly
Favorite childhood vacation: We went to Hawaii for two weeks when I was in 3rd grade. My sister was badly stung by a jellyfish, but I got to see lava actually spewing out of a real volcano. To a 3rd-grader that’s a totally acceptable trade-off.
Favorite boardgame: Settlers of Catan
Favorite weather: 60 degrees, light breeze
If you could live somewhere other than Chicago, where would it be? San Francisco or Vancouver
“…effortless, effervescent pop that doesn't call undue attention to
its carefully constructed layers of intertwining melodies… the ork-pop genre has produced
some of the best bands in the Chicago underground in the last decade… Canasta certainly
deserves a place on this list…
”
— Chicago Sun-Times
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“…Canasta can be called an indie-pop band for good enough reasons, but on
their debut album We Were Set Up they display both an ambition and a
sense of range that any number of early 21st century American groups described
in similar terms would be wise to follow… subtle… mesmerizing… stunning…
”
— AllMusic
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“…Canasta’s strength has been mixing genres, ever so slightly, to keep it
unpredictable… The band’s impressive orchestral pop, which really could catch on at
any moment in a big, big way, will not cease in its power – listening to We Were Set Up
again for the first time in a long while, I can’t believe I was able to put it down in the
first place.
”
— New City
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“Chicago’s Canasta play a rich and usually satisfyingly lush brand of orchestral pop… impressively diverse… rapturous…
”
— PopMatters
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“Trumpet. Upright bass. Cello. Pedal-steel guitar. these tools are integrated into the mix in a smart and subtle manner, and the album's 13 songs never feel cluttered or convoluted… I'm sure that both Belle and Sebastian and The New Pornographers would be proud to claim it as one of their own.
”
— Plague of Angels
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“How does one improve, or better yet expand on a full-length debut as swell as Canasta’s We Were Set Up? By turning the whole kit and caboodle over to remixers to work their magic on the songs, that’s how.
”
— Chicago FreePress
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“It’s harrowing and beautiful. This is maybe the best pop band
you’ve never heard of.
”
— The Stir Online
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“Canasta has slowly made a name for itself in recent years,
thanks to its inventive arrangements… (the band) has separated
itself by layering its sounds while retaining remarkable catchiness…
Canasta looks primed for a considerable breakthrough.
”
— NPR’s “World Cafe”
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