The Sands

The Sands had their The Beast to Bone Release at the China Cloud VancouverBC Feb 6th:
"What a fantastic show! Hauntingly beautiful, achingly honest and super cool music performed flawlessly.

Garnering great reviews across the country and beyond, the music of Beast to Bone hits Vancouver. Two longtime musical friends and collaborators celebrate the release of their independent new work.

“Vancouver singer Julie McGeer and cellist/pianist-about-town Peggy Lee have created a charmingly idiosyncratic little keeper in their first joint foray as The Sands. Beast to Bone, produced with the help of West Coast violin iconoclast Jesse Zubot — who helmed Tanya Tagaq’s Polaris Music Prize-winning Animism last year — flutters between indie folk, jazz and experimentalism in beguiling fashion, its breathy vocals and lilting, gossamer melodies belying an undercurrent of toughness that occasionally manifests itself in knotty guitar tones and lyrical darkness. It’s quite a unique piece of work, casting a spell.” Hold On” is pure, sighing, brassy pop pleasure.”
-- Ben Rayner, The Toronto Star

“**** “Astonishing!! Peggy Lee and Julie McGeer have great synergy and they pretty well create a whole new sonic language."
Mark Anthony Brennan

"The Sands brings a new caress of folk and jazz, vivid and fresh.
Brad Simm, Beatroute

'One listens with childish glee and an appreciation of a novel. The album makes for great pop with little to no cliche.. with scenes both vast and incredibly intimate...not something you hear every day.'
-Jack Derricourt, GrayOwl Point

"Between them, they have created the most seductive local recording of 2014"
Tom Harrison, The Vancouver Province

".more than enough of meat on Beast To Bone to warrant multiple listens.'
-Francois Marchand, Vancouver Sun

“The album has elegance accentuated by the contributions of a crack up team of musicians… eloquently poetic and demure.”
-Gregory Adams, The Georgia Straight

THE SANDS BIO
The album is a fiercely original and intimate experience that combines jazz, indie pop and folk roots to find a sum that is greater than its parts. Seductive grooves resonate with soul and intermingle as lush horn arrangements form a complex idiosyncratic counterpoint, casting dark shadows and vibrant light sometimes simultaneously.

The Sands is a rare confluence of Western Canada's foremost players from the jazz and indie scene including JP Carter (Inhabitants, Destroyer, Dan Mangan), Paul Rigby (Neko Case, AC Newman), Cole Schmidt (Pugs and Crows), Darren Parris (Frazey Ford) and Barry Mirochnik ( Neko Case, Veda Hille).
Collectively, the ensemble comprises over a hundred years of musical experience -- a vintage imbedded in the music.