We first wrote about Toronto‘s Burs back in 2022 upon the release of their full-length album Holding Patterns. “A record which blended various shades of indie, folk and dream pop to allow the quartet to explore a myriad of different moods and settings,” as we put it. “What resulted was a rich and often ethereal collection of songs able to change with fluid ease.” Now the quartet—that’s Lauren Dillen (electric guitar, vocals), Ray Goudy (guitar, pedal steel, glitches, drum machine, vocals), Devon Savas (bass, synth, baritone guitar, glitches, vocals) and Aidan McConnell (drums, percussion, vocals, glitches)—are back with a brand new double single Soil // Blackflies on Birthday Cake Records to introduce the next stage of the Burs project. “These songs have been dear to us as exercises in the transformation of our chemistry,” as the band explained in a social media post, “as well as personal favourites to rip onstage in recent years.”
‘Soil’ establishes the style of this next step in the Burs evolution, a track which embraces an alt-country aesthetic to weave a sound full of wistfulness and compassion. Though certainly a break-up song, the single is not the typical picture of longing or regret. Instead, led by Dillen’s earnest, reflective delivery, it searches for a path forwards from within the uncertainty of a troubled situation, looking to embrace self-acceptance in order to find contentment once again. “How do you let go of the thing that doesn’t serve you anymore?” the band ask. “What is radical joy?” Questions which form the mission statement of the song as a whole.
Watch the video shot and directed by Burs themselves below:
If ‘Soil’ champions the virtues of being brave enough to be proactive and put oneself first, then ‘Blackflies’ offers a picture of the opposite situation. The fallout of holding onto something beyond its shelf-life, where something which was once sweet begins to slowly decompose in your hands. As such the lush country tones of the previous track are slightly more lonely and desperate here, the sound charged with the slow unease of coming to understand something is souring before you are ready or able to let go. As a pair, the two songs present two sides of the same coin. Both earthy in spirit yet opposite in tone. The potential for growth and rot ever present in the raw materials of life.
Soil // Blackflies is out now via Birthday Cake Records and you can get it from the Burs Bandcamp page.