This series of posts were written just prior to the release of my album Emotional Labour. This one recaps my last album (2016’s Extinct!) and what I’ve worked on musically since. I said my last album was about “how to think about environmentalism.” In terms of inspiration, I went pretty academic and read a lot of books. The songs themselves are halfway between the bleakness of “we’re all screwed” that is people’s general attitude towards environmental issues and some sort of considered, pragmatic optimism. In my own life at the time I wasn’t sure what move I should make next, since I couldn’t find a way to make music pay enough. So again I think what’s driving Extinct! is some existential anxiety mixed with the hope that I’ll figure out a way to move forward.
Of the things I included in those songs, I enjoyed when I was able to work in what I studied about environmental economics, eg. “money’s a substitute there’s no substitute for / it misses more than it counts” from the song “Something Better Happen Soon.” Although Asperger as a term is less and less PC, I was proud of how the first song on the album, “Asperger Messiah,” wound up predicting an environmental leader on the autism spectrum by a couple years at least (Greta Thunberg). And in “Commit!” and “Second Try,” I drew from my renewed relationship with my partner, Sarah Jickling. There’s an interesting mix of things I got from my reading, my personal life, and my imagination. I made a few videos for it and put it up on Bandcamp, streaming services, etc. It’s much less google-able than my previous album MB-LP so it doesn’t have anywhere near as many plays, but I’ve had some nice feedback on it by now.
My new album is five years after Extinct!, which is a long gap. But it’s not like I haven’t done music stuff in between. We toured the Good for Grapes album I mentioned in the previous post but despite some good reviews, it didn’t wind up taking the band to any kind of “next level,” and with no budget or grants to pay for more music, that project stalled.
I stayed in touch with some friends out east who do fringe fest musicals, and I did three more productions for them of two new shows, (Better Than) Dying Alone in 2017 and BFFs in 2018 and 2019. They flew me out to watch one of the 2019 shows in Toronto, which was super fun. My role for those was limited to writing the music and lyrics for the songs that accompany the dialogue and story that the producer and director would specify. So exercising agency was always interesting since the characters were heavily based on the story writers, who needed to approve of whatever choices I made. I also had to work efficiently, since they contacted me to write the BFFs show while I was in the middle of getting a master’s in library studies (and working!). So I wrote that show over the course of a spring break.
Another thing I did was produce most of Sarah’s 2019 album The Family Curse. I was originally just supposed to contribute some of the instruments, as I did for her previous album, but the producer she wanted to work with ended up being too busy and she didn’t have the budget to make anything else work so I wound up doing most of the songs. I got to play on the Harley Small-produced “Saint,” and also got to work on “Villain,” “Better,” and “Cautionary Tale” with Sarah and her friend and amazing musician Laura Smith (ex-Rococode, currently Daggerss).
Working on the songs for The Family Curse was a cool experience. Normally I would have done them entirely at home, but because of construction noise from down the block we did the vocal recordings in the free studio space at the Vancouver Library. For the songs we did with Laura, we were working back and forth between our home studios. It was really helpful having her involved; I don’t have the nicest bedside manner when I’m in charge of recording. I get a bit abrupt and/or demanding which is fine when I do my own stuff, but something I really have to work on when tracking with others. And the content of the songs meant that Sarah was really stressed about releasing them.
Not that the lyrics are that extreme, but there are some very specific details included that are true to her experience and hard for her to talk about. So realizing that she needed to write about them, then be okay with releasing what she wrote, then preparing her family for the release was a whole process. Music-wise, we were going for some specific references that included Lily Allen, Beyoncé’s Lemonade, and Billie Eilish, but more indie. We had some plans to play shows supporting the album in 2020 that the pandemic ended up cancelling.
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