Peter Elkas Live Review - 03-16-2012 - Ottawa, NAC 4th Stage

Review by David Barrett
Photos by Mike Bouchard 

Peter Elkas in Ottawa at the NAC - Mar. 16, 2010
More photos by Mike Bouchard on Flickr

The Fourth Stage at the NAC is a unique venue in Ottawa- at once intimate and spartan, the stage is barely raised from the floor, placing the artist on an almost equal footing as the audience. To many of the acts that play there, this lends an opportunity to converse fairly freely with the audience and this was obvious from the start on this night, with Peter Elkas working the room well with his disarming smile, perfect teeth and natural, spontaneous stage banter. We learned, for instance, before the show got going how he was born in Montréal and had played in many venues in Ottawa over the years; in fact he listed off each venue, one by one (tally being around 14, for those interested). The series of bands playing at the 4th Stage has been impressive, with someone giving careful consideration to those artists that would take maximum advantage of the room's qualities and this was no exception.

“I tune because I care” was something of an ongoing joke and the band even strayed from the setlist to accommodate one or two requests

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Review - Peter Elkas - Repeat Offender

Written by: Sharon Williamson

Repeat Offender album artI hopped on the Peter Elkas band wagon long after his time with the Local Rabbits.  My adoration began with his solo work “Party of One” in 2004 and “Wall of Fire” in 2007.  Since their release, not a month (sometimes not even a week) goes by that Peter’s tasteful, catchy and smooth songs aren’t adding to the soundtrack of my life.  So I may not necessarily be the most unbiased person to review his latest release “Repeat Offender” (an unfortunate choice of titles for those that recall Richard Marx’s album of the same name).  Available on vinyl with a CD version included, let me just get it out of the way, that Peter is a beautiful man, and I love that his picture adorns the cover so that I may dance with it and pretend that all those puppy dogs belong to him and I and we take them for long walks..... I digress.

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