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Winter Gloves began as one guy’s way of figuring out how to plug himself into life in the big city. It was a single microphone and minimal equipment gathered into Charles F’s downtown Montreal apartment to piece together all the distances he’d covered since growing up in rural Quebec. The jarring shift of such a transition seemed to peek through every chance it could, a constant inspiration as much as frustration that was drafted in the band’s self-released Let Me Drive EP of mainly demo tracks.
Today, Winter Gloves is Charles F (lead singer/songwriter/wurlitzer), Pat Sayers (drums), Vincent Chalifour (synth) and Jean-Michel Pigeon (guitar/glockenspiel). With only a handful of live shows behind them at the beginning of the 2008, Winter Gloves was already receiving invitations to join bands like Tokyo Police Club on a series of sold-out tour dates. Such well-attended shows helped spread what was becoming the wildfire of the earlier EP demo tracks that spiked on top 10 lists with record downloads after being made available on iTunes, and lead to top pick coverage at both major annual music festivals in Canada, Canadian Music Week and NXNE.
After the Canadian release of the band’s full length in the Fall of 2008, the band continued on the same foot as things had started with dates alongside Tokyo Police Club and a slot at Toronto’s Virgin Festival before hitting the road across Canada with Vancouver’s You Say Party! We Say Die! and Quebec’s Beast. Reactions to the album and these shows immediately secured showcase opportunities at International conferences, invitations for further touring and secured spots on “Best of 2008” yearend lists including “Best New Artist” from iTunes Canada.
The about a girl LP is ten songs driven by the sounds of keyboards and drums, all wrapped up in a constant buzz of bass and gritty synths. Pitchfork Media premiered the band’s recently completed video for the album’s leadoff track, “Let Me Drive”, which received an incredible 11,000 views in its first week of online posting as people tried to figure out the method behind the flipbook madness of the video!