A band needs to know where they’re from in order to know where they’re going.

The members of Little City grew up in the close suburbs and not-as-close rural reaches of the larger Toronto area, eventually meeting through university or music or mutual friends. They formed in the heart of the city not to mimic the scene, but to refine a craft that merges the brains of their complex instrumentation and words with the comfort and beauty of pop’s sensibilities.

With a reverence and fascination for recreating often-overlooked classic pop sounds and their youth’s innate inclination towards modern indie and folk-rock structures, Little City lay conspicuous and skillful claim to influences ranging from veterans Fleetwood Mac and Paul Simon to contemporaries Wilco and the Arcade Fire. Little City is working through the spring to perfect their songs with renowned Canadian producer/engineer Laurence Currie (Sloan, Hey Rosetta!, Holy F***), and have found an ally in his fine-tuned ear as he cultivates the sound that owes as much to the past as it does to the present—not unlike the sharp lyrical accounts of the clarity and reflection specific to young adulthood (“Lincoln Learning French”), assembling hard-sought fragments of life and home (“Bright Glow”), and putting bygones to bed (“Rise Up”).

Little City is an ode to the lost and the found, not only in music, but in inspiration, in motivation, and in self.