artist The Unsettlers

An eleven-piece band of time-traveling troubadours, The Unsettlers specialize in dark polkas, menacing waltzes, horse-drawn lullabies and funeral dirges for the living - all filtered through the creaking floorboards of a whiskey-soaked saloon. Based in Montreal, the lineup features a contortionist, multiple vocalists, clarinet, accordion, violin, horns, guitar, piano, bass, and trashcan drums. Sounding peculiarly familiar, darkly celebratory, and maniacally assured, The Unsettlers have gathered a devoted following with their haunting, windswept vocal harmonies and pulsing, danceable blend of Klezmer, Beat poetry, and big-top dixie. 

Since forming in 2007, The Unsettlers have played over 200 shows, including: multiple appearances at Windsor's Festival Epicure, Pop Montreal, and Montreal Fringe; a month as featured entertainment atCarnivale Lune Bleue, a 1930s-style carnival based on the HBO series Carnivale; and most recently the evening finale on the Tree Stage at Montreal's Osheaga festival. The Unsettlers also recently brought their creeping madness to the Revival Nightclub as part of the Rue Morgue Festival of Fear "Night of the New Flesh". 

The Unsettlers discography begins in spring 2008 with an eponymous ten-track debut recorded on half-inch eight-track at the delightful and commodious Auroratone Studios in Montreal. A live EP, recorded by CBC at Montreal's Sala Rossa, and aired on Radio 2's Canada Live, was released in August 2009. A number of these songs, as well as some newly commissioned tracks, were used as the soundtrack for the sideshow Alive on the Inside featured at the 2010 Carnivale Lune Bleue in Bromont, QC. The Band's sophomore studio effort, a double album entitled Oil and Blood, was recorded in early 2010 at the legendary Studio Victor in Montreal and was released November 13th at The Rialto Theatre. The double album will be available on this site shortly.