Songs of the Week: February 19 - 25, 2024
“No Safe + Sound” by July Talk
A year after the release of their album Remeber Never Before, July Talk are back with a deluxe edition! The new version of the album features two new songs, including “No Safe + Sound”, produced by Kevin Drew.
According to Leah Fay Goldstein, the new song is “a series of promises. It is about greeting uncertain and imperfect futures with a willingness to show up and keep trying. The nagging divine and communal pressure that urges us to never lose hope is as mundane and as vital as the blood in our veins. You don’t tell your heart to pump or your lungs to breathe, they just do it. Yes there will be suffering, yes there will be valid reasons for fear, but there will always also be love. Love is the cure, love is the greatest assurance of all. Love is how we got here. Love is why we stay.”
The Deluxe album also features three live recordings from their 2023 tour, “After This,” “Human Side,” and “I Am Water", as well as a ‘piano version’ of “When You Stop”. Keep an eye out for it on March 8th!
Kirk
“Hello Everyone (Ceasefire Now)” by Jenn Grant
Last week Jenn Grant released “Hello everyone (Ceasefire Now)” alongside an incredible group of over 35 musicians from across Canada, Ireland and Australia.
The song was co-written with Daniel Ledwell, and features Aquakultre, Justin Rutledge, Mo Kenney, Sarah Slean, Terra Lightfoot, The Once, and Tim Chaisson, among many, many others.
You can pick up the song on Bandcamp, with 100% of proceeds going to Palestinian Red Crescent Society (as well as see a full list of everyone involved).
Kirk
“Dancing For The Soldiers” by Adrian Glynn
Adrian Glynn (whose folk group The Fugitives was nominated for a JUNO in 2022) is about to release a new solo album (tomorrow!) titled You’re Just A Place That I Know.
The new work is based around his family heritage, and keeps his dark-folk sound, but uses the addition of traditional Ukrainian instruments and a Ukranian-Canadian Choir.
Glynn says: “After speaking with my Aunt Genya, the story-keeper of my Ukrainian side of the family, a couple years ago, I began composing a song-cycle that follows the details of my grandparents’ narrative, including: my Baba, at 16, being forced by Germans from her Carpathian village into forced labour a thousand kilometers away; my Dido folk-dancing to win cigarettes from impressed Allied soldiers in a refugee camp; my Baba invoking the words of poet Taras Shevchenko to lay her husband to rest after their long life together in Montreal; and lastly, to my own final visit with my Baba in her room at Royal Vic hospital, her memories now a mosaic of dementia as we flipped through an old photo album together”.
“This album is not about modern Ukraine, but certainly the current and horrific existential threat to my ancestral homeland spurred me to to tell this story of my grandparents’ flight from war to settle somewhere unfamiliar. A story that is all too true for Ukrainians today, 80 years on”.
Take a listen to one of the new songs, “Dancing For The Soldiers”, below.
Christine
“Bruised” by BOBBI
A few years ago, Vancouver musician Kaylee Johnston picked up, moved to London (England, not Ontario) and started making music under the name BOBBI.
New she’s back with a brand new song “Bruised”, which was mere weeks before her life -- and the entire world -- was upended in 2020. It’s a haunting electro-pop tune about ‘spiritual narcissism’, and is the first new single off her EP, coming out later this year.
The song was written with Model 86, and you can check out the video directed by Adem Boutlidja below!
Kirk
“She Told Me Where To Go” by Old Man Luedecke
Last week Old Man Luedecke released the title track from his new album She Told Me Where To Go.
The album was produced by Afie Jurvanen (Bahamas) and sees OML putting down the signature banjo for it. Don’t be worried though, as you’ll hear in the track below, the new music is hella fun.
He’s heading out on the road for a string of dates with Matt Anderson, and his own tour, and while there’s no Vancouver date yet, you bet I’ll be keeping an eye out!
Christine
