Ottawa can be a pretty quiet town. You’re more likely to see folks in the park with a couple (hidden) cans of beer, flicking Frisbees and chilling out, than you are apt to find club kids staggering home arms akimbo. It’s all out there to do, but even the serenity in Ottawa offers a fantastic creative state for artists of all walks. Even silly walks.

Seriously now. Enter The Habit. One of Ottawa’s top up-and-coming bands (they’ve been voted by prominent local media as entertainers of the year and one of Ottawa’s top 10 bands of 2006), The Habit is a collective that is hard to pin down. Quite literally. Members seem to come and go, ranging the globe before dropping in again. Roberto Caron, the djembe player, is currently at large – probably somewhere in South America. Sitting down with seven members of The Habit over a few high noon Coronas, I learned that their very intimate jam space, itself only a corner of a sprawling Ottawa brownstone, doubles as home for singer Darren Rogers. I also found that the band has a healthy reverence for Saturday Night Live.

Dodging questions, refusing to answer them outright, coyly asking for retractions or dropping double entendres is The Habit’s comedic modus operandi for interviews. Described variously as folk, soul or pop, even the band’s sound is elusive; the members themselves just let it flow.

"We’re really a bit of a dog’s breakfast," explains saxophonist and Vernon, B.C. native Garett Pratt. "I really like indie rock and ’50s and ’60s jazz bands, but, if you go around the band, you will find very diverse interests. Dennis is a walking encyclopedia of indie rock and Warren doesn’t usually get his references at all."

"We will not be categorized!" adds guitarist Dennis Stuebing with faux pomp. "Musical evolution, musical evolution, musical evolution…"

Comprised of eight members, The Habit is singer and pianist Agatha Alstrom, guitarist Dan Voltan, founder, singer and bassist Darren Rogers, Dennis Stuebing on electric guitar and bass, Garett Pratt on sax and clarinet, Michael Stevenson on vox, sax and flute, drummer Trevor Curtis and, finally, Warren Kidd on violin. Despite only releasing their first record in 2004, the band has already made global waves. Preceding their latest album, The Sacred and the Profane, the band released a rather provocative single.

"Fighter was released at a time when there was a lot of talk about same-sex marriage, when Harper was bringing the bill back in to be voted on," explains Rogers. "Webmasters and bloggers from Europe, Japan and Latin America began posting the songs. We got a lot of free publicity and it popularized us in Japan."

Few emerging bands have ever found such widespread interest. But The Habit’s Fighter even attracted a scholastic study.

"It’s brilliant!" adds Pratt. "An academic in the States basically deconstructed the song and lyrics and how, for example, it was playing into the gay rights discourse of the day and what underlying messages there were."

"Any kind of publicity, when you’re an unknown quantity, is a really good thing," concludes Rogers, trying to remain serious. "We are always evolving and, as long as you are on people’s lips, it’s a good thing."

The Habit
w/ Sadie Hell, Eastborough
The Rainbow
May 2, 10 p.m.
$8