What better venue could there be for fanciful orchestral-pop septet Ohbijou than an acoustically perfect church, where their music can be truly appreciated without the clinking of beer bottles as competition?

On the Friday of Halifax Pop Explosion, the Toronto-based group graced the stage floor of the St. Matthew's United Church, the chancel long redesigned to accommodate such community events.

Before an audience filling wooden pews on the church's two levels, singer Casey Mecija and her fellow multi-instrumentalists -- Jennifer Mecija, Heather Kirby, James Bunton, Anissa Hart, Ryan Carley and Andrew Kinoshita -- emerged from the darkness to be lit by strings of white Christmas lights and small table lamps.

The setting provided the ideal ambiance for this band whose music is so beautiful and delicate, layered with cello, glockenspiel, banjo, trumpet, ukulele and violin alongside a more traditional guitar, drums, bass set-up.
"Thank you for being here," said Mecija before launching into 'Black Ice,' the third song from their hour-long set, which appears on their latest album, 'Beacons.' "Our friend Owen [Pallett of Final Fantasy] is playing with the Nova Scotia Symphony now. We thought no one was going to be here. So we're happy to see you."

Later she told a story about first moving from a small town to Toronto, where a walk to "lose myself in thought" led to an encounter on the sidewalk with a man who opened up his trench coat to expose himself. She went running down the street to call this friend. "Now I don't care, I see it all the time -- well, no, not all the time," she said to laughter. "This is the perfect lead up to this song 'Thunderlove.'"

The song is sweet and slow, a sparse track of simple beauty, not at all thunderous. It's almost Cowboy Junkies-esque in its quietness. "Maybe that wasn't the most appropriate story to tell," she said afterwards. Luckily, no bolt of lightening struck her down from St. Matthew's high ceiling.