Jon Martin and Lovers plays alt-Canadiana, chamber pop, and indie rock with big choruses and a streak of bittersweet optimism. Producer Gethin Pearson (Charli XCX, Badly Drawn Boy) described Edmonton songwriter Jon Martin’s music as “timeless capsules... whilst also feeling fresh and from your life.”
Onstage, the songs swerve between genres without losing the thread. The band takes the important stuff seriously and plays with the joy and abandon of teenagers in a garage. Martin leads on vocals, guitars, and keys with Matthew Bennet (bass, vocals), Alex Johrden (drums), and Max Hopkins (keys, vocals).
Late September Garden Party (2025) explores fatherhood, relocation, and finding new footing through cello-driven strings, electric 12-string, steel guitar, vibraphone, and Wurlitzer. It opens with “Bluebird,” a song of advice for a future son. This Could Be Our Year (2022) was named among the Edmonton Journal’s 10 best local releases of the year. Both albums were selected for Edmonton Public Library’s Capital City Records collection.
A love of writing and co-writing has recently taken Martin to studios including Abbey Road in London and Rockfield in Wales to make music. Closer to home, he has played the Aviary in Edmonton, the King Eddy in Calgary, and official Canadian Finals Rodeo shows. His seven albums and several EPs have received airplay across Canada, and a live performance was recorded and aired on CBC Radio One.
From his Edmonton studio, Martin also mixes and produces music for other artists. A fascination with how songs work led him to study music psychology and develop a songwriting app, the Original Songwriting Adventurer. Jon Martin and Lovers will be releasing a new album in summer 2027, along with an album entirely about space.
Onstage, the songs swerve between genres without losing the thread. The band takes the important stuff seriously and plays with the joy and abandon of teenagers in a garage. Martin leads on vocals, guitars, and keys with Matthew Bennet (bass, vocals), Alex Johrden (drums), and Max Hopkins (keys, vocals).
Late September Garden Party (2025) explores fatherhood, relocation, and finding new footing through cello-driven strings, electric 12-string, steel guitar, vibraphone, and Wurlitzer. It opens with “Bluebird,” a song of advice for a future son. This Could Be Our Year (2022) was named among the Edmonton Journal’s 10 best local releases of the year. Both albums were selected for Edmonton Public Library’s Capital City Records collection.
A love of writing and co-writing has recently taken Martin to studios including Abbey Road in London and Rockfield in Wales to make music. Closer to home, he has played the Aviary in Edmonton, the King Eddy in Calgary, and official Canadian Finals Rodeo shows. His seven albums and several EPs have received airplay across Canada, and a live performance was recorded and aired on CBC Radio One.
From his Edmonton studio, Martin also mixes and produces music for other artists. A fascination with how songs work led him to study music psychology and develop a songwriting app, the Original Songwriting Adventurer. Jon Martin and Lovers will be releasing a new album in summer 2027, along with an album entirely about space.
Interview with Tara McCarthy on CBC Radio One (March 25, 2026) about Late September Garden Party, songwriting, and upcoming show being recorded for broadcast.
https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-17-edmonton-am/clip/16205201-provincial-playlist-live-weekend
Bluebird review - Uranium Waves
"Papaya‑coloured dawn drips onto the ear when “Bluebird” spirals from the speakers, tasting like cardamom‑kissed maple syrup on cracked ice. Jon Martin and Lovers coax indie‑folk’s familiar heartbeat into an “orchestral alt‑Americana/Canadiana” fresco: finger‑picked guitar, wistful Wurlitzer, vibraphone glints, and a string sigh imported from trans‑Atlantic comrades. The arrangement is aerated, each timbre fluttering like the titular avian over a desert road still warm with parenthood’s anticipatory ache.
Martin’s lyricism reads less as storytelling than as epistolary counsel—advice addressed to a future son camouflaged in communal wisdom. His tenor, slightly frayed at the edges, complements the song’s ethos of tender imperfection; the refrain “fly easy like a bluebird” nests immediately in memory without resorting to saccharine cliché. Yet the composition is not faultless. The self‑production, though admirably intimate, occasionally permits low‑mid haze that muffles the vibraphone sparkle, and the repeated couplet “the things I ought to” risks mantra fatigue by the third pass.
Still, the track’s emotional diode glows steadily. There is a subtle invitation to introspection—should one pilot one’s own name through life’s thermal drafts, or surrender to inherited labels? “Bluebird” neither resolves the question nor pretends to; instead it vouches for gentle autonomy, encouraging listeners to glide rather than grind.
As a lead single, the piece sketches promising cartography for the upcoming album: prairie‑wide harmonics, immigrant instrumentation, and lyrical sincerity unmarred by performative angst. It positions Martin as a curator of flamboyance. One emerges feeling subtly taller, as though postural alignment were a sonic side‑effect—an understated, welcome sorcery."
Album Review "This Could Be Our Year" Edmonton Journal
From The Edmonton Journal:
"Jon Martin is a fresh face in Edmonton’s music scene, having moved here from Lethbridge last year, but his music arrives heavily imbued with nostalgia.
This Could Be Our Year is his latest release, sprung forth from the turbulence the pandemic ripped through our lives. Martin was forced to scuttle a tour his alt-country act Jon Martin and Lovers had plotted, redirecting his energy to crafting This Could Be Our Year.
The sound Martin crafts on the album calls to mind the radio-friendly brand of alternative rock popular on radio in the early 2000s — think early Pete Yorn and Ryan Adams; solid songs that pull on classic rock roots but in a contemporary setting.
A wrist injury in 2019 forced Martin to put down the guitar and learn how to play piano, eventually spurring the nine songs on This Could Be Our Year. Recorded with musicians from around the world (a drummer from Denver, Col., bassist in New York, Rhodes pianist from Manchester and flutist from Brazil are listed on numerous songs), Martin, also listed as multi-instrumentalist and songwriter, sets down reflective lyrics to driving music.
Kicking off with the single and album highlight, Simple Things finds Martin squarely in singer-songwriter mode, reminiscing about unsent letters, his soaring vocals held firm by an anchoring piano and gorgeous guitar noodling.
Not all of This Could Be Our Year is meat-and-potatoes Americana; strings help elevate tracks Holding on for Summer and the title track, and the flute adds some welcome colour to Sleepwalking. Lesson of the Heart is an outlier with its raspy vocals and grungy guitars. Edmonton’s music community should readily welcome Martin based on the solid songs found on This Could Be Our Year.
From Phonographme:
""WINTER SUNBURN", THE POP KALEIDOSCOPE OF JON MARTIN'S IMMERSIVE SOUND
This Monday afternoon brings, here to the blog, "Winter Sunburn", the delicious new single by Canadian singer-songwriter Jon Martin. "Winter Sunburn" is an emotional and very vibrant song, while intense and dreamy, in an immersive and very engaging dichotomy, always having as its main character the sweet and charismatic voice of Jon Martin, who won me over since I first heard it. Turn up the sound loud and press play, please.
Part of the EP Living Ghosts on The Livestream, "Winter Sunburn" is a Pop song, very dreamy and full of magic, filled with details and passionate and very appealing details, which make it a sweeping song full of soul and magic, as I like best.
With a somewhat nostalgic tone and always sounding fresh and new, this is the sound of Jon Martin, marked by his charismatic voice and full of magic, and with real and very relatable lyrics, full of layers and textures and, above all, very engaging, as you want.
Perfect to dream and to cheer us up the Winter (which already seems to never end), "Winter Sunburn" is the perfect song to listen to loud and on loop, as good songs deserve, because something tells me that the unique sound of Jon Martin will still keep us company again, around here, more often."
https://phonographme.blogspot.com/2023/02/jon-martin-winter-sunburn.html
From Ear to the Ground:
"Jon Martin – “A new drug”
-The piano on this song caught my attention right away, but truth be told the whole package is really good. Martin’s voice pulls it together nicely. The balance feels like the best of what I like about Dawes. The lyrics are – how shall I say – more relatable than I am willing to write about publicly. The emotional connection that I immediately feel listening to this is remarkable. If you’re a fan of songs that serve as a cathartic message while also ripping your heart out of your chest so you can watch it beat on the table… then give this one a spin. For fans of rock-leaning Americana that has excellent lyrics."
https://www.eartothegroundmusic.co/2022/06/03/three-outstanding-americana-tunes-in-the-alt-country-vein-sure-to-impress-listeners/