Familiar Touch

Perpetual Surrender, the debut LP from Toronto's DIANA was among the most celebrated releases of 2013, but while DIANA's members had been involved with prior projects (singer/guitarist Carmen Elle touring as a member of Austra, and Joseph Shabason playing saxophone for Destroyer), the album was the effort of a band that barely existed, having essentially come into being as the album was being written and recorded. The band was initially conceived as a one-off recording project, a constructive way to use studio time that drummer/producer Kieran Adams and Shabason had on their hands, and the excitement that greeted "Born Again," the first track released from the album, was completely unexpected, propelling the band to a place they had never planned on going.