“Channelling the sincerity and wry humour of fellow Manitoban John K. Samson, Brodovsky presents the scene with equal parts playfulness and emotional resonance, our titular baker mocked by the sourdoughs and begged by the bagels as he pines after his lost love, the gluten-free flour asking if he is okay.” So we wrote of Jacob Brodovsky‘s ‘Night Baker’ back in 2022, a single from album I Love you And I’m Sorry which saw the Winnipeg songwriter present a character study of a person moving in what we called “the unseen ecosystem of a city at night.” It demonstrated Brodovsky’s ability to offer a certain level of tongue-in-cheek mischief without losing the compassionate tone that marks his work.
This summer, Jacbob Brodovsky is returning with Tell The Kids We Tried, a full-length which continues this style to meditate on themes of community, connection and family within the tumult that is the present moment. Like it’s predecessor, the album is far from a solo endeavour, supported by some of Canada’s finest musicians. Gavin Gardiner (The Wooden Sky, MOONRIIVR), Charlotte Cornfield, Jason Tait (The Weakerthans), Champagne James Robertson, John Baron, Dominique Adams, Keiran Placatka and Julie Penner (The FemBots, Broken Social Scene) all lending their talents to push the sound towards a rich folk rock sound.
Two singles have been unveiled in preparation for the release. Penned within the dark depths of the pandemic, opener ‘Past Mistakes’ dwells on the ostensible hopelessness of our times, its characters attempting to build a life within a world where the future seems unwilling or unable to materialise. The mood is understandably morose, the arrangement subtle and subdued as Brodovsky’s earnest vocals detail an array of precise, melancholic images. But it never quite slips into outright despair. As though to share and sing of such feelings is in some way to refuse them.
It’s been so hard to feel hopeful
It’s been so hard to look ahead
It’s been so hard to say I’m sorry about before
It’s been so hard getting out of bed.
Watch the video Brodovsky made along with Christine Fellows below:
Follow up ‘Colorado Low’ is altogether more buoyant, peppy in rhythm and charged with a certain electricity, though loses none of the emotional depth. A song which pines for the past while trying to imagine that reluctant future, wishing to reconnect to fonder periods while knowing there’s no chance of really going home. “I wrote it in early 2016 when I had just moved back to Winnipeg from Toronto,” Brodovsky explains. “I remember feeling underwhelmed by the Winnipeg winter and missing the snow drifts that I remembered from childhood. On the radio they kept referencing this impending ‘Colorado Low’ that would bring in the winter and I wrote this song about hypothetical characters waiting for winter, while also pondering my own decisions about coming back home and trying to settle back into life in Winnipeg after half a decade away.”
Tell The Kids We Tried will be released on the 10th July via Make My Day Records and you can pre-order it from Bandcamp.
