Imaginary Cities was born in a Winnipeg club called The Cavern, in between sets. This new group, founded in a chance meeting, is fast becoming one of the world’s brightest new bands. Western Canadian band Imaginary Cities’ debut disc Temporary Resident is so fully realized – exuberant and anthemic at times, moody and soulful at others – that it’s surprising to learn that happenstance first brought primary songwriters Marti Sarbit and Rusty Matyas together in Winnipeg’s small, but fertile music scene.

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It was Marti Sarbit’s voice that immediately captured multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Rusty Matyas’s attention at the Cavern, a Winnipeg bar where Sarbit was fronting a Motown cover band and Matyas had come to mix the sound. Matyas, a major label veteran via his band The Waking Eyes and a touring member of Canadian indie rock stalwarts The Weakerthans, knew he wanted to write something for — or with — this innately gifted young singer if only to commit her voice to tape and hear what the results might be. The instantly compelling “Say You” was the song they soon whipped up, and one quick listen to what is now Imaginary Cities’ dramatic album opener clearly demonstrates what caught Matyas’s ear – and what subsequently propelled the duo to the top of Canada’s college charts and year-end best-of lists.

Throughout 2011 Imaginary Cities’ debut has gradually been released in various territories outside of Canada, including Europe and Australia, where they toured last year, backed by a band they’d assembled with other Winnipeg-based musician friends. The duo’s reputation in their native country grew swiftly, particularly after they appeared at the North By Northeast Music Festival in Toronto last June. They won a Western Canada Music Award for Best Pop Album of the Year and were long-listed for the Polaris Prize, Canada’s version of Britain’s prestigious Mercury Prize. Along with their own increasingly well-attended club gigs, they snagged opening slots with groups like Ra Ra Riot and Besnard Lakes. Most impressively, they were invited to join the Pixies on the entire run of their North American tour last year, which put them in front of large audiences in both Canada and the U.S. Which brings the Imaginary Cities story right up to now. In a little over a year, Rusty and Marti have evolved from strangers, to a pair of musical allies tinkering in the studio to part of a permanent five-piece band preparing for the U.S. release of Temporary Resident and subsequent tour dates. Imaginary Cities is proof that sometimes the best creative partnerships are simply destined to be.