Hotel Mira (formerly known as JPNSGRLS) is a Canadian alternative rock band formed in Vancouver in 2010. It consists of Charlie Kerr on vocals, Mike Noble on bass, Clark Grieve on guitar and keyboards, and Cole George on drums.
History
The band members are all originally from the Greater Vancouver area. Kerr and co-founding lead guitarist Oliver Mann formed a core project in 2007 while still in high school, with Christopher McClelland joining in 2009 and Graham Serl rounding out the lineup for JPNSGRLS in 2010. Live shows were integral to the band from its beginning, performing in battles-of-the-bands and packing out any venue that would allow teenage performers and their audiences.
Prior to 2010, JPNSGRLS was known as the Beauties, but due to a name conflict with an existing band, the group changed its name to Japanese Girls. This was chosen as a tribute to another band they admired—an all-female Japanese indie group called Mass of the Fermenting Dregs. However, upon realizing the name caused difficulty when searching for the band online, they switched to using the disemvoweling JPNSGRLS.
JPNSGRLS was nominated for the Sirius XM Canada Independent Music Award for Emerging Artist of the Year (English) in April 2015.
In January 2016, after the recording of their second full-length album, Divorce, was completed, Mann announced via Facebook that he was leaving the band for other pursuits. "As some of you already know, 2016 will be a big change for me, in the fact that I have recently decided to leave JPNSGRLS. It was a tough decision to make, but something I had been thinking about for a long time", he said. "Being a part of JPNSGRLS was amazing, and I am sad to leave it. I got to see so much of the world and am very proud of what we had accomplished over the last 8 years". After the band mounted a search and auditioned several musicians, Colton Lauro, also from the Greater Vancouver area and having worked with several area acts as well as being a session musician, became the band's new lead guitarist in the spring of 2016.
In April 2018, Kerr announced via several social media platforms and the band website that the group was retiring the name JPNSGRLS and rebranding as Hotel Mira. He also announced a new iteration of the band lineup, as Serl and McClelland had left in January 2017. Lauro would stay on as lead guitarist and Mike Noble was added as a new bass player. Along with these changes, the announcement also included a new single, "3AM Lullaby"—the first as Hotel Mira.
After releasing a self-titled EP in August 2018, Hotel Mira released their first full-length album, Perfectionism, on Valentine's Day 2020. With this release, the band was now rounded out by the addition of Clark Grieve on keyboards and Cole George on drums—both previously session musicians with several bands in the Vancouver area. Lauro left Hotel Mira in 2021.
Releases
The Sharkweek EP (2013) as JPNSGRLS
JPNSGRLS made their debut with The Sharkweek EP in June 2013, distributed by Light Organ Records. The record was produced and engineered by Justin Brown and co-produced by the band and Mike Paton.
Reviewers noted the band's unique combination of syncopation, cohesion, modernity, and experimentation with lyrical content, musicianship, and influences. The first single and video released from The Sharkweek EP was "Vancouver Grizzly", and the video for the follow-up single, "Monarch Butterfly", debuted on Diffuser.fm in January 2014. JPNSGRLS also played at the BIME Festival in Bilbao, Spain, in November 2013, in support of the record.
The single "Red and Green" was included on Light Organ's Christmas album Sleighed, also in November 2013, with the video released at Christmas 2014.
Circulation (2014) as JPNSGRLS
For their full-length debut, having now been fully signed by Light Organ Records, the band went into Vancouver's Greenhouse Studios with producer Steve Bays (Hot Hot Heat, Mounties), and engineer Greg Calbi (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, MGMT, Tame Impala, St. Vincent). Circulation was recorded in seven days without a click track. The album was released in North America on July 15, 2014.
Singles issued from the album in North America were "Mushrooms", "Smalls", "Tiger", "Circulation", and "Southern Comforting", with official full videos released for "Mushrooms", "Smalls", and "Circulation".